Canadian, born 1931

A self-taught photographer, Robert Bourdeau studied art history at Queen’s University, Kingston, followed by architectural studies at the University of Toronto. He has shown extensively throughout North America and Europe ever since the first exhibition of his work in 1968 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Bourdeau was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) in 1983 and had consistently been included in important photographic surveys at the National Gallery of Canada and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. A major exhibition of his work, The Meditated Image, was initiated by the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 1988, traveled to venues throughout Canada, including the the Vancouver Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, and was eventually brought to the Canadian Embassy in Toyko, Japan.

A number of catalogues and monographs have been published on the work of Robert Bourdeau, and his photographs can be found in numerous public collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Vancouver Art Gallery; the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, and the Public Archives of Canada.