During the Second World War, Kryn worked in the Ondergedoken Camera (underground camera) movement secretly photographing German abuses in the Netherlands. Kryn and Tess met in Paris in 1950 when Kryn was the first Dutch photographer invited to join Magnum, the prestigious Paris-based press agency, and Tess was working as a darkroom technician and as a caption writer for Henri Cartier-Bresson. Kryn’s relationship with Magnum degraded in the wake of political fallout from a celebrated series produced during the two weeks he spent with the National Liberation Army of Algeria in 1957 documenting their battle against French colonial forces. Tess and Kryn moved to Toronto in 1959. Tess documented the lively Toronto art scene of the 1960s. Kryn worked as a freelance photojournalist on assignments across Canada and internationally during the 1960s and 1970s, and collaborated with the National Film Board’s Still Photography Division, producing a lauded series on Hutterite communities in the West. In addition to making her own photographs, Tess had a paid contract with Star Weekly to print her husband’s photographs.

Image: Tess Boudreau, Rita Letendre, early 1960s, gelatin silver print, 23.7 x 34.8 cm, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.

For further reading, see:

Carey, Brian, and Louise Guay. Kryn Taconis, Photojournalist. Ottawa: National Archives of Canada, 1989, 50.

Close, Susan. “The Hidden Camera of Kryn Taconis (Photojournalist Was a Member of the Dutch Resistance Group Ondergedoken Camera).” Queen’s Quarterly 103, no. 1 (1996): 63.

Hostetler, John A., and Gertrude Enders Huntington. The Hutterites in North America. With photos by Kryn Taconis. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.

Lachoskyj, Cat. “Under the Light: Preserving Tess Boudreau’s Negatives and Contact Sheets.” Art Gallery of Ontario, July 20, 2016. ago.ca/agoinsider/under-light-preserving-tess-boudreaus-negatives-and-contact-sheets.