confederation day

My Parks Canada Gros Morne annual pass expired to-day.

I have applied

When preparing for a talk some time ago, I realised that who I thought I was and what I was doing wasn’t in fact backed by my work. While the underlying aspects of my work were still the same, how I approached my work – the subject - had changed.

I saw myself as a person who made photographs rife with humanity without the people. The talk however had quite a few people. I didn’t see myself as a pictorialist but someone who tried to use the neutrality and ambiguity of the photograph but I was choosing images made with cheap plastic cameras that made a soft nostalgic distancing effect.

Coming upon this realisation I looked back at the work in the attempt of seeing not when I changed but what had caused the change. I found that it came from placing myself in new situations with something comfortable and something new. The comfortable was my security blanket if the new didn’t turn out. The new was more successful than I realised.

While looking at the board at the Eastern Edge Gallery in St. John’s I saw an announcement for KIAC and while interested – and getting raves from my college friend Betsy Rosenwald - thought it not the place for me, someone who supposedly needed endless bodies of water, couldn’t be landlocked and, while I was in St. John’s in January, tended toward warmer climates. I seemed to have ignored the fact that I had been living in the Upper Midwest since 1980 and am out and about in winter in a sweatshirt but instead some sort of transplanted Brasilian simply awaiting my return to Rio.

These superficialities apart, my work has always been about sense of place and how it is determined. I applied to the Pouch Cove Foundation residency for all the significant insignificancies – time zone out of wack, as far east in North America as I can go, the relative isolation of an island and a postal code that starts A0A.

I am applying to the KIAC modifying the insignificancies – while it is on the road to Alaska, Dawson City is remote – and from what little I have seen – I try to keep it that way as I try to make work that addresses the rupture of what is imagined versus what is real before the real obliterates the imagined - it is in an area of outstanding beauty which can lead to all sorts of photographic clichés. Gros Morne was challenging – humanity in an area of outstanding beauty they are inextricably linked. I don’t want the false feeling that one is alone with nature in my photographs.

This time I broke with the tradition of something safe and something new. The “official” work was large format platinotypes the materials I carted from the States, so being self sufficient I would need little in terms of resources from the residency. I wanted to make work and be visible making work while I was there, having the images be more directly influenced by feedback from the community. I left the studio open to encourage this. I also had “dailies” placed at the Discovery Centre again to garner a personal histories. I didn’t want to gather images to be edited later away from Bonne Bay. It is important that my work be seen where it is made.

I also took a point and shoot digital camera – mainly to illustrate my on-line daybook. In the end – and with constant talks with my travelling companion – I hope she has applied also – ended up being a coming to terms with my sense of place there.

For the KIAC, continuing my investigation of sense of place, I have come up with a hybrid, medium format film for added mobility and less of a strain financially with the final prints being either inkjets – for books - or darkroom as you have one and I am still seduced by the silver gelatine print. I want my images to be a point of departure with the community, we informing each other. I would like to leave a set of what I do with you when I leave.

Driving Directions from Pleasant Prairie, WI to Dawson City, YT

Bordering on Heresy

It was about now last year when while excited about spending so much time on the rock during the upcoming summer, I was worried. I would be so far from the rock that I knew no Bruce’s, running into Sharon, joking with Henry on his way to either free coffee or a six pack of Canadian. Away from the seamlessly endless slog along route 20 out of St. John’s to Pouch which seems to be worsening day by day – either that or I am driving more and more like a Newfoundlander. No Duke and I would be looking in the wrong direction – Québec in the distance not Europe.

What came of the experience was – as was obvious – an even deeper affection for the island. I had come to think that like most people off the Avalon that Newfoundland ended at the overpass. While missing the comforts of big city life – the evening read of the Globe, the glut of papers on Saturday to get me through Sunday, the lack of decent beer, to where I was looking forward to 1492, the self sufficiency was much more rewarding. The realisation I could function 40km from the main road and 70 from the most basic requirements was enlightening as was even though I teared up seeing the Signal Hill, the harbour and the Bubble – but not The Rooms – we were more than happy to head west again a bit early to the parks house.

This realisation has opened up a can of worms. I day dream over maps. I wonder if the same could be done in Burgeo – always wanted to see Burgeo – the extreme it seems to be as being at the end of a long endless road. Buchans – the same with no sea view.

Worse it has opened up options away from the nation’s far east. I could go off island. There are other remote places even though they have normal time zones. There is a residency in the Klondike, I now know someone who has been there and it sounds as challenging as my initial forays north and east. The application deadline is 1 April, I have to get on it. Because of the revelations of last summer, am dead set on driving. The drive to the rock was a trial I remember stating that we needed some reward after long days of nothing – making it only to Scranton on the first day, the endless urban areas of Upstate New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts actually all the way to Portland where even crossing state lines weren’t fulfilling.

There was, however, the final push in Maine the emptying out of the land – the feel that stops could be done was worth the agony of everything up to then. I was also made aware of the distance.

The ride back told me that I am even able to do it alone – and stop – and not race – well until the Maine New Hampshire border.

With none of the urban stress after Edmonton, the outing to Dawson City could be a piece of cake and if i missed Newfoundland, I could always stop over in Fort McMurray