Several local galleries are participating in this year’s Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival, now in its 20th year. The largest photography event in the world, the festival features 1500 artists in 200 exhibitions across the Greater Toronto Area.

Exhibition: The Dark Room 5.0
Artist: Various
Gallery: 918 Bathurst
918 Bathurst St.
Date: May 17

Mark your ballot on May 17 at 918 Bathurst for The Dark Room 5.0, which will feature a one day only juried exhibition showcasing the many processes of analog and alternative photography.

Exhibition: The Language of Flowers
Artist: Carol Auld
Gallery: Café Pamenar
307 Augusta Ave.
Dates: May 1 – 31

At Cafe Pamenar, The Language of Flowers explores the spectacular beauty of daily life and multiple meanings that can be ascribed to flowers. All the images in Carol Auld’s exhibition of original giclée prints were taken from gardens in downtown Toronto.

Exhibition: Carbon Manifest
Artist: J. R. Bernstein
Gallery: Bezpala Brown Gallery
21 Yorkville Ave.
Dates: May 8 – June 1

Carbon Manifest by J. R. Bernstein at the Bezpala Brown Gallery in Yorkville consists of carbon-printed black and white landscape photos of the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic. Taken during an international artist residency in 2014, the images in the exhibition investigate the theme of metamorphosis, evolution, and the inevitable change of our physical environment.

Exhibition: The InterLove Project
Artist: Colin Boyd Shafer
Gallery: Miles Nadal JCC
750 Spadina
Dates: April 30 – May 22

And Colin Boyd Shafer’s exhibition, The InterLove Project showing at The Miles Nadal JCC celebrates the love that can flourish between people of different religious beliefs.

—Annemarie Brissenden with files from Neiland Brissenden