Portfolio

2023 to present  

“Lexicon for Loss” is a collection of images that began in early 2023. This exploration emerged from a deep personal loss and a move from the prairies to Vancouver Island. All the images were captured on a flatbed scanner in my garden in Sidney, British Columbia. 

The Lexicon for Loss images draw inspiration from 17th-century floral paintings created by the Dutch Masters. Flatbed scanners, originally designed to copy two-dimensional objects like documents, have a shallow depth of field that is not suitable for three-dimensional subjects. This limitation affects how highlights and shadows are rendered, producing a chiaroscuro effect like the lighting techniques used in Dutch Masters’ still life paintings. The resulting images resemble evocative floral still lifes. Upon closer examination, viewers will notice subtle details, such as wilting flowers, imperfect leaves affected by garden pests, and the presence of insects within the compositions. Like the still life paintings of the 17th century, the Lexicon for Loss images capture themes of the passage of time and the impermanence of life. 

Multiple perspectives achieved by photographing reflections in a found mirror serve as a metaphor for living at the intersection of multiple cultures. Understanding the world around us is multi-faceted, defined by our individualities. Portals present the reality of a geographic place from multiple points of view simultaneously in much the same way as cultural intersectionality. The images reflect multiple understandings that can coexist in a disparate environment concurrently.

Dream Sequence is a small series of six self-portraits produced in 1992. In this work I paired an image of myself with night-time images of vacant streets in Montreal, Quebec, and Kiev creating a quiet visual metaphor for the state of dreaming in the landscape of both individual and social environments.

Throughout my creative practice I have been engaged in the exploration of portrait photography. My interest lies in the investigation of the complexities of personal relationships, the constructions and contradictions of identity, and the intricacies of community.

In the summer of 2009 curiosity and the company of good friends, took me to two small rodeos in Alberta and southern Saskatchewan. I set up a studio with lighting and a backdrop in the beer garden at both venues and offered to take formal portraits of all interested individuals. The Wood Mountain Stampede, located in southern Saskatchewan provided the lions’ share of the portraits subject material represented in this collection.

In the summer of 2010 I returned to the Wood Mountain Stampede and used the same process to take more portraits of the rodeo participants. The Wood Mountain Stampede is the oldest running small rodeo in Canada with over 120 years of history. Wood Mountain’s history is rich. The town of Wood Mountain was settled by Métis families in the 1870s after the failure of the Red River Rebellion. Sitting Bull and as many as 5000 of his followers took refuge in Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan after the Battle of The Little Bighorn in 1876. Many of the people of Wood Mountain and the surrounding area today claim heritage to this history.

I have spent most of my life living and working in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I love my home. The openness of the landscape seems to inform the sensibilities of the prairie people. In many ways the subjects of these photographs are much like the prairie landscape itself. At a glance, cowboys look the same. Their difference, like the prairie, lies in the nuance. Their strength lies in their ability not to tame the wildness of the land but rather to have formed a symbiotic relationship with the prairie.