Ian Willms is a post-documentary photographer whose multi-year photo essay projects often address the intimacies of power struggles, inequities and profound compromise.
Ian's Mennonite ancestors fled violent persecution in Russia before settling in Canada, where Ian grew up in a subsidized apartment building for at-risk women. His formative years were steeped in a community with lived experiences in mental health, addiction, homelessness, poverty, racism and gender-based oppression.
Ian has shown his work around the world, including the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, G44 the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Toronto, F3 in Berlin and the Coalmine Gallery in Switzerland. His recent self published books Sick Days I and Sick days II, visual assemblages of the fear, distrust and politicisation which swept into the global pandemic, are now sold out.
