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    EVOLVING A PERSONAL VISUAL APPROACH

    Before Photoshop, stitching images together or mobie-phone pano-mode, for me black and white photo-chemical processes were the only way to go. It was a challenge I took on to find a new format of sorts using conventional means. Wishing never to transgress the nature of the medium, it was a breakthrough for me to push the boundaries of the 35mm format without dis-respecting the integrity of the frame by cropping. I simply put two frames together, which was not unheard of by any means. I did however have my own means to achieve this madness, so in these cases by tricking the advancing mechanism on my old Nikkormat 35mm film camera to advance only as far as I wish it to without creating a break-line which would normally divide the frames on the filmstrip. The result was a horizon that our brains can't resist re-constructing. I played on that notion for the summer of 82 and well beyond. I ended up with literally hundreds of these studies and inadvertantly preserved images of many building and spaces now gone or changed forever.

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Bending the landscape

My journey of discovery through landscape and architecture in the summer of 1982.

In 1982 I think it is safe to say I was only emerging as an artist and photographer... in fact at exactly that time, there was a lively discussion going on as to whether photography could even be considered art. Many curators at the time, including most notably Jane Corkin, defended photography and helped prove its ligitimacy in the art world as a valuable comodity. But regardless of the discussions going on over my head, I simply wanted to emerse myself in the practice of capturing and visualizing landscape and architecture. Fortunately, Canada Council for the Arts agreed with me on this and funded my first grant application which enabled this project. I was ecstatic and took this on as the most important work ( maybe my first serious outing ) at finding my visual style.

In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.

- Alfred Stieglitz-

Looking at the world reveals there are visual rythms everywhere. Capturing landscape and architecture is an effective way of becoming more aware of those paterns and rythms but capturing their ellusive qualities becomes the challenge.

From the 1982 landscape and architecture project.
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