ARTIST'S STATEMENT Cartoons have been the fundamental mode of expression of the artistic temperment since the stone age. The simple drawing. The suggestion of a thing, rather than the real thing itself. An agile line that weaves itself around a reality without having to penetrate it. The full story told by the most minimal symbols. Pre-abstractionist, pre-pointilist, pre-representationalist, pre-iconographic, but to this day very much alive and more relevant than ever, cartoons are the common denominator of the visual arts. 

Cartoons are proof that "less is more", and that the mind is able to perceive and interpret entire concepts and categories from the leanest of visual clues.Applying the cartoon technique onto manipulated polariod portraits is a study in counterpoint. On the one hand, the information on the image is much more than on a normal cartoon, and on the other it is much less. The lack of photographic detail (on the intentionally washed-out faces) intrigues the viewer. This invites a closer look, and an appreciation of its novelty, its whimsy, its insight and its quest for meaning. Cartoon Society is an on-going project of mine, and it urges me on with its own impetus. I have worked on several other, simultaneous portfolios, but I always come back to my cartoons, to explore them further, to let them surprise and delight me. They afford me the priceless pleasure of loking at people from a brand new perspective and tthe opportunity to create images that are sparked by the imagination.

BIO Algis Kemezys has worked as a professional photographer since the age of 21. He began his career assisting photo-doyenne Berenice Abbott, during her last active period (1979-80), printing, finishing and archiving the most famous images of her 60 year output. Since then, Algis has dedicated his life entirely to photography and art. Starting with his first solo show at Montreal's Galerie Photogramme in 1984, he has exhibited his many portfolios internationally. Algis has been reviewed and written about in major publications worldwide and has been published in photography / art magazines. He has made numerous appearances on TV and radio. An active photojournalist as well as a photographic artist, his work includes the black & white Street Mysteries and Graven Images, and more recently, Holy Cow, an extensive portrait of India from the perspective of its sacred bovines (shown in New York, Chicago and Bombay, and in Montreal at Galerie Mistral). He has also worked in colour, with Altered States, a visionary, futuristic, multi-media look at nature; and Cartoon Society, a work-in-progress of hand-manipulated Polaroid portraits.