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A playlist by artist Bart Gazzola to complement DISCARDED, his ongoing documentation of abandoned shopping carts. As seen in our TYPOLOGY edition. Find it here - or on SPOTIFY! Desolation Row by Bob Dylan This one might seem obvious, but it’s more so because of lines like ‘at midnight, all the agents and the superhuman crew come out and round up everyone who knows more than they do.’ Many of my shots happen at night, when I’m walking, and the city is quiet and mysterious. Grey by Ani DiFranco This one is specific to one cart I shot, one of the first toppled ones, where I began to see this series as something more than what I’d thought it might be, and for the line of ‘as bad as I am, I am proud of the fact that I am worse than I seem’..... One Great City! + Left and Leaving by the Weakerthans If you’re familiar with my cart images - and how the only rule that I still hold to, with this project, is that they be abandoned, not staged - and the lyrics of these songs from this fine band that can make despair aesthetically seductive, no further explanation is needed. But if that’s not the case : ‘My city's still breathing, but barely, it's true, through buildings gone missing like teeth’ ran through my mind upon seeing St. Catharines again after nearly two decades, where I ‘watch the North End die and sing, “I love this town”’..... Trucker Speed by Fred Eaglesmith “....sometimes I feel like my wheels ain't touchin' the ground…” Maybe my carts are self portraits, or maybe I’m obfuscating, ahem. Can’t trust an art critic talking about their own art work. It is known. I Gotta Get Drunk by George Jones Sometimes I stay out later drinking just so I can capture images of carts on the way home, looking as abandoned and lonely as I feel on the long walk from downtown to where I sleep. My Little Town by Simon & Garfunkel “Nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town” : my cart works may also be a commentary on returning to my ‘hometown’ after several decades, after swearing I would never do any such thing (like getting a tattoo. I now have two of those, ahem). Smells like Teen Spirit by Nirvana I have sometimes captioned carts with the evocative lyrics of "with the lights out / its less dangerous / here we are now / entertain us / I feel stupid / and contagious / here we are now /entertain us"....and as a member of Gen X, this is a theme song, whatever, nevermind. Did I Ever Love You? by Leonard Cohen Many people who enjoy my carts, or send me images, anthropomorphize them, and there is always a romantic element to that. This song, and this album, have been on my playlist continuously since I returned to Niagara in 2015, and began the cart works. I’ve always been Crazy by Waylon Jennings I have no idea why I took that first cart photograph, and at times I still have no idea why they fascinate me, and why so many other people enjoy them and send me their own snaps of abandoned carts. They are very, very different from the art I made for most of my life. Always been crazy, but it’s kept me from going insane - mostly. Reasons to Quit by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard Many of my images are taken while walking, and not a few while walking home from the downtown after an evening of libations, perhaps a bit inebriated (I mention Tom Waits later, and have been known to claim that the carts have been drinking, not me, not me, whereas Waits blames the piano…..) Damn These Vampires by The Mountain Goats ‘sleep like dead men wake up like dead men and when the sun comes try not to hate the light some day we'll try to walk upright’ I’ve always preferred capturing carts that have tumbled and fallen. Any suggestions re: self portraiture in that respect are acknowledged, slyly. This Year by The Mountain Goats Relocating to Niagara was difficult, the first few years were harsh, but I was ‘going to make it through this year if it killed me.’ Black Sheep by Metric “Hello again, friend of a friend, I knew you when our common goal was waiting for the world to end.” An artist I respect greatly commented in passing a few years ago that I ‘take pictures of what is left when the world ends.’ This Mess We’re In by PJ Harvey “And thank you. I don’t think we will meet again.” There’s an amusing singularity to the pictures I take: shoot them now, for they won’t be there when you pass by that spot again. Throw Me to the Rats + Bleeding Hallelujah by Tom Fun Orchestra One of the last bands I saw in Saskatoon before leaving the prairies was the Tom Fun Orchestra, and I have joked that Throw Me to the Rats should be played at my funeral. Bleeding Hallelujah is a plaintive hymn for that which was but now is not - like a cart that was useful then left. Just like Tom Thumb Blues by Nina Simone (Bob Dylan cover) “I started out on burgundy, but soon hit the harder stuff. Everybody said they'd stand behind me when the game got rough. But the joke was on me, there was nobody even there to bluff. I'm goin' back to New York City, I do believe I've had enough.” Another friend once suggested to me that I felt my move to Niagara was a self imposed act of exile, or simply having had enough….and this song always makes me sad, as so many of my cart images seem to evoke an equal sense of melancholy in people. And add anything from Bone Machine (especially Who Are You?), or Nighthawks at the Diner, by Tom Waits. Follow Bart + the carts on INSTAGRAM : @gazzolabart Enjoyed this free read?! Consider supporting us! As the ONLY independent editorial photography publication on Canadian newsstands we'd love to continue producing great content for you to enjoy! JOIN US AS A PATRON • SUBSCRIBE FOR PRINT DELIVERY • GET DIGITAL ISSUUS

Whether you are garage sailing, surfing online, or exploring vintage shop shelves, here are five important things to look at to quickly assess SLR and rangefinder cameras so that you don’t go home with a dud you can’t shoot with. 1. Battery Compartment: Open the battery compartment and make sure there are no signs of damage or corrosion. Blue stains on the metal or acid gunk that has leaked and solidified are bad signs. 2. Shutter Curtain: When you open up the film compartment, you will see a thin black piece of fabric. That’s the shutter curtain. Make sure it lays flat, is clean, and is free of tears, rips, or any other damage. You should be able to click the shutter release button and see it open and close smoothly, returning into place. 3. Light Meter: The light meter allows you to determine which shutter speed and f-stop should be used for the best exposure of film, based on which film speed you’re using and what the lighting conditions are like. Some really old cameras won’t even have a light meter, but if you’re looking at an SLR that does, you’ll see a scale to the right or the left of the viewfinder. If the camera doesn’t have working batteries in it when you’re checking it out, you may not be able to verify if it will work. (Quick tip: Throw a couple AAs or a 123 lithium battery in your pocket or bag if you’ve planned a camera hunting mission.) If you do decide to buy a camera without a working light meter (or without one at all), don’t worry! You can still make it work for you. Download a light meter app on your smartphone to get the settings information you need. If the camera does have a light meter, comparing the results between your app and the camera’s light meter is a good way to ensure it’s in working order. 4. Shutter: A broken shutter means that the camera won’t be more than a shelf decoration. Click the shutter button a few times to make sure it works well and doesn’t jam. The timing of the shutter is also important. To test this, set the shutter speed to 2 seconds, and count for yourself 2 seconds while watching to make sure the shutter opens and closes in that time. 5. Lens: This might be common sense, but the glass should be clean and clear of any scratches or nicks. Unless you have the ability to properly clean it yourself (or want to spend the money to have it professionally done), take a close look. You should also take a look around the rim of the lens to look for any dents that may indicate it has been dropped, possibly preventing it from properly focusing. Watch out for fungus! It’s gross, but yes, older lenses can have something that almost looks like spiderwebs inside the lens. That can indicate fungus, and that can be a serious health and safety issue. A quick online image search will show you what that could look like. + Looking at something else that’s looking cool and old school analog? Our top tip on other types of cameras that you may be tempted to buy because they look really cool… find out what kind of film the camera takes. 35mm and 120mm film are available and in production, and can still be reasonably easy to get developed. Other types of film, such as disc film or APS are difficult to find and have to be developed at specialty labs, which can become expensive. Looking for more ANALOG INSPIRATION?! Our Amazing Analog edition is SOLD OUT in print - but check out the digital replica - HERE. Enjoyed this free read?! Consider supporting us! As the ONLY independent editorial photography publication on Canadian newsstands we'd love to continue producing great content for you to enjoy! JOIN US AS A PATRON • SUBSCRIBE FOR PRINT DELIVERY • GET DIGITAL ISSUUS

" Samra Habib stands at the crossroads of queerness and her religion with a camera in her hand" By: Joshua Cameron Growing up queer in the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Canada left Samra feeling like an outsider. In early 2014, the writer and activist set out on a search for others like her, Muslim people who are not necessarily accepted by mainstream Islam. Samra began travelling across North America and Europe to find other queer Muslim people with stories of being between the worlds of Islam and the LGBTQ community. The photographs from her trips became her series, Just Me and Allah: A Queer Muslim Photo Project Samra explains, “A lot has been written about queer Muslims in academia, but unfortunately it’s not very accessible.” With work experience in fashion journalism, she knew photography was the perfect way to document the stories she found in a universally accessible way. Historically, photography hasn’t been allowed in Islam, so there is very little photographic archival evidence of the existence of queer, Islamic people. The need to see herself within a community fuels Samra’s work. The Just Me and Allah project combines photographs of her subjects and written accounts of their stories, in a first-person interview format, on her website. It tells the stories of queer Muslim people that would ordinarily be marginalized in an approachable and beautiful way, something Samra wishes she had access to growing up. “I think everyone has an emotional reaction to photography,” says Samra. “I like that people are drawn in because of imagery and then can go down a rabbit hole of exploration. I do that, too, when I’m intrigued by an image. I want to know the story behind the subject, who photographed them, where they were photographed, everything.” “I’m inspired by the spirit of my subjects, and how they carry themselves,” says Samra about her creative process. “Before photographing, I like to spend some time with them so I can understand some of their life story, their strengths and their vulnerabilities. I like to ask them to take me to spaces they feel comfortable in. This way, before I start photographing them, I have a sense of who they might be. I like to try to capture their essence instead of projecting my idea of who I think they might be.” Samra travels to meet her subjects so she can best capture them in their own element, and as a result her photographs are usually street-style and naturally lit. “I think natural light lends itself well to a photo documentary project where I am trying to represent who the person is in an authentic way,” she says. “I don’t want my photographs to look staged, and studio photography can often look that way.” Samra’s work has been exhibited at the Contact Photography Festival in Toronto, the International Center of Photography in New York, SOMArts in San Francisco, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The Just Me and Allah: A Queer Muslim Project series is part of Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives’ permanent collection. A book detailing Samra’s stories is slated for publication in 2019. queermuslimproject.tumblr.com Find this story and lots more in our CANADIANS ABROAD - ISSUE #53 Enjoyed this free read?! Consider supporting us! As the ONLY independent editorial photography publication on Canadian newsstands we'd love to continue producing great content for you to enjoy! JOIN US AS A PATRON • SUBSCRIBE FOR PRINT DELIVERY • GET DIGITAL ISSUUS

RMB / Rocky Mountain Books Fine art photo book lover Alan Bulley gets the scoop from photo book publishers across Canada in our new series of interviews with book publishers, starting with Don Gorman of Rocky Mountain Books. Publisher: Don Gorman How do you choose what projects you publish? How far in advance do you work? Like all publishers, I try to choose projects that I believe RMB can support and produce in the best ways possible, along with ensuring that we have the infrastructure to sell and promote the book and author successfully. Most of the time things work out very well! There are always challenges that may negatively impact any given project, but these are almost never "life or death" scenarios. At this time, I'm trying to work on projections at least one year in advance of publication, but more often than not it's looking like 1-1/2 to 2 or more years in advance is going to be the new normal. What has been the most commercially successful book you have published? (Why did it do well?) The most commercially successful books that we've published have all been hyper-local titles, which sell extremely well locally, but also garner sales internationally due to the beauty and grandeur of western Canada as shown in many of our guidebooks and works of photography. Successful books sell well because of the stories they tell, which can be told using words, images, or sometimes both. In RMB's case, the stories being told about outdoor landscapes using words and images seem to attract the most attention. What makes an effective proposal from an artist? First and foremost would be sending along as wide of a range of images and words to be used in any proposed book as possible. Given the access to produce books of photography (paper or digital) using Apple, Google, or even London Drugs, it's vital for visual artists and writers to present work that transcends what others are doing either in print or online. The work has to do something that will stand out in the crowd, as well as tell a story that people will want to engage with, talk about, and share. As well, a good understanding of the artist's market, online presence, and future plans will also go a long way in terms of helping convince a publisher to take on an art or photography project. What sort of financial arrangements do you have with artists (dealing with up-front costs, revenues, etc.)? RMB pays for all editorial, design, proofreading, printing, sales, advertising, and distribution costs (there are no upfront costs charged to the author). Revenues on book sales are split between the publisher and the artists based on a traditional royalty system (artists are paid a portion of the proceeds from all books sold). How involved is the artist in book design? We consult with the artist in all aspects of the book's production: editorial, design, sales, and marketing. That being said, we are also responsible for ensuring that we satisfy the needs and aesthetics of our retail partners and consumers, so there are lots of things to consider when designing a book. The artist's vision and the needs of the publisher are both part of the equation. If an artist is looking to control all aspects of a book's design, the only real option is to self publish, as partnering with a publisher may mean that there needs to be a give and take scenario at play. How do you market and distribute the books you publish? Where do they go? How many copies do you print on average? In Canada, we work with Heritage Group Distribution, which handles Canadian sales and distribution to traditional booksellers (indie bookstores, Indigo, and Amazon.ca), non-traditional book retailers (outdoor retailers, gift shops, museums, grocery stores, seasonal accounts, etc.). For the US and international markets, we work with Publishers Group West / Ingram to fulfill the needs of traditional booksellers and library wholesalers. Our print runs vary wildly depending on the type of book. What is your view of the publishing market in Canada? I think the book publishing market in Canada is changing very quickly, though I'm not entirely sure where it's going. Likely due to the pandemic, many Canadian publishers are looking closely at their publishing strategies as every aspect of the industry has changed dramatically during the past two years. Unprecedented increases in production costs, printer capacity limitatio ns, year-round shipping disruptions, limited book media, and a shifting retail landscape will impact all companies now and for many years to come. This isn't to suggest "trouble on the horizon", but perhaps more of an opportunity to re-imagine how things are done and what our expectations should be. What one message would you give photographers who want to publish their work? The one message I would give photographers would be to ensure that they research the market for similar books being published. If there are too many books of a similar style, content, or aesthetic it will make it difficult to stand out in the crowd. Highlight what makes your work different in order to give potential publishers the information they need in order to see the potential in publishing your work. What's your dream publishing project? My dream publishing project would be one that defies expectations and shows people something new in terms of the story being told, the artist being profiled, and the way in which the book itself is produced and packaged. What's one thing that would surprise our readers about your work behind the scenes? Most of my day revolves around manipulating data in Google Sheets and juggling dozens of schedules in Google Calendar! Is there anything else that our readers should know about your company or the work you do? I think we can all agree that there's no more important time to hear stories from traditionally underrepresented communities. At RMB we are always looking for opportunities to support artists from different backgrounds and underrepresented communities and to help them to tell their story in their own authentic voice, through their own unique lens. We know there are important stories out there from BIPOC artists, LGBTQ artists, and more, and we want to help support those artists. We'd love to see more submissions and portfolios from these communities so if you have a story to tell check out our Submission Guidelines at rmbooks.com. Photography books are such an excellent way to see the world through someone else's eyes and to learn from their stories and experience. photos by by Grace Gorman courtesy RMB Website: rmbooks.com Enjoyed this free read?! Consider supporting us! As the ONLY independent editorial photography publication on Canadian newsstands we'd love to continue producing great content for you to enjoy! JOIN US AS A PATRON • SUBSCRIBE FOR PRINT DELIVERY • GET DIGITAL ISSUUS

Figure 5, Marcie Kindred, Chapel, 2021 As technology continues to connect the world, it seemed only natural that a digital photographic collective could emerge. Spanning across Canada and the U.S, technology was the bridge that brought us together. Silver Water Collective was not initiated with a hug or a handshake. In fact we had only ever met virtually during online classes via Zoom while pursuing our MFA degrees at the Savannah College of Art and Design. We started off supporting each other through the hurdles of grad school but as time progressed, we found ourselves wanting to be a part of something larger than just being classmates. Presently, the collective is a group of ten female photographers who are connected in fostering a sense of community that is not bound by region, background, or philosophy, and serve as a springboard for ideas that stimulate and encourage one another in our creative endeavours. Figure 3, Christina Leslie, Sugar Coat: Hope and Present, 2022 Our debut exhibition titled Sterling Presence is part of the Toronto, Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival, 2022. The exhibition explores themes of history, memory, identity, time, decolonization, and perception. Each artist represented approaches her work with a distinct process and technique that pushes the boundaries of traditional photography. Even though each artist comes from a different background and mindset, the process of photography allows them to express their collective internal struggles as women in modern society. The work spans a variety of material and photographic processes, but it finds commonality as it cross-references between themes in process-based contemporary art. Figure 4, Emma Creighton Hopson, Total Recall, 2021 Silver Water Collective: Sterling Presence exhibition artists include: Stephanie Bauer Brianna Dowd Emma Hopson Megan Kelly Marcie Kindred Christina Leslie Q Lin Mara Magyarosi-Laytner Cat Simmons Gallery 1313 1313 Queen St West May 11-22, 2022 Opening reception: May 12 6:30-9:30pm

Atia Pokorny, "Silent House", 2021 Atia Pokorny + Janne Reuss CONTACT Festival of photography - 2022 REMOTE Gallery, Toronto May 1 – May 15, 2022. 568 Richmond Street West (between Portland and Bathurst) 11 am – 6 pm, daily. The title of this exhibition comes from the first line in Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space, a book that inspired two artists to explore personal experiences of belonging. Atia Pokorny and Janne Reuss share a similar trajectory. Both are immigrants to this country and both are also daughters of immigrants to their native countries. They met as members of Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, and have exhibited together in the past, sharing a love of photography, poetry and philosophy. In WHO WILL COME KNOCKING?, Atia Pokorny revisits the loss of the ancestral house, destroyed during the Greek Civil War. In the destructive fire, all the family possessions, including family photographs, vanished. Her photographs of staged images placed inside an old cabinet, and her video create an intimate narrative which suggests the tension between memory and fiction. Some 30 years after the Greek Civil War ended, when she visited the village together with her father for the first time, she took one photograph of the house's abandoned ruins. Now, many years later, inspired by readings of Gaston Bachelard's book, she has animated this house in her imagination as it was before its destruction: a place of protection, a shelter for daydreams. “I have placed my imaginary house inside an old cabinet. Like in Bachelard’s writings, the enclosed space provides an intimate room for family history and memories. Of course, in my fictive house, the memories are a fiction, a personal mythology of the past. I use the motif of blue - blue as the colour of memory and forgetting. Blue is the face of my Yaya, my paternal grandmother, whose image I never knew. Blue are the family members I had never chance to meet; blue is the house that fell silent.“ Atia Pokorny, "Yaya," 2022 Janne Reuss , "Portal," 2021 Janne Reuss’s inner landscapes are like photographic x-rays that explore a complex map of human existence. Through the metaphor of the tree she inquires how experiences of home and place are stored and imprinted inside of us. She began exploring this concept of home and the idea of the family tree as a portal to a personal cosmos in her art: How do we access our inner memories? How do we try to hold on to, erase or reinvent them? Which events are so profound that they define us for the rest of our lives? “The process of remembering is like traversing through a dense forest in search of insight. Through the overlapping, layering and overpainting of my fragmented images, I’m trying to recreate this intricate experience”. The resulting imaginary landscapes express Reuss’s recurring childhood dream of escaping into a secret garden to find solace. They are intimate and personal meditations of life; a silent retreat outside becomes inside and inside becomes outside. Janne Reuss , "Tree within," 2022

Chad Coombs is a photographer living in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. He grew up with a camera always in hand, and he used this ever-present camera to document daily events. In 2001, he watched the documentary Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light, and his photographic life changed forever. He states, “I experienced something I still cannot explain. From that day I have not been able to not think, shoot, or dream up a photo every single day. From that point my work has been hugely inspired by Avedon. I am inspired by Avedon’s response to the statement that his images are offensive to some viewers: ‘That’s the arena of a work of art — it’s to disturb, it’s to make you think, it’s to make you feel.’ Coombs tries to look at the places other people might judge as unworthy of their attention: the “scenery we all take for granted and see each day.” Coombs notes, “It’s always important to try and look at the local scenery in different ways.” Coombs credits his home province of Saskatchewan for providing both his inspiration and material: “It is an amazing place that always has something to provide. With the land being so flat the skies are always wild, even at night.” And it is at night that Coombs effectively transforms the province’s many abandoned farming structures into bold and stunning monuments. Coombs explores the textures, forms, and architecture that he states are “just itching for some flashlight attention to come out from [their] slumber.” Coombs’ lighting choices give the rural setting a fresh face. Whether he is reviving an old farmhouse by way of “light painting” or capturing a ghost town by way of prolonged exposure, Coombs photographs the land he inhabits by using his own unique vision — a vision he is excited to develop further. As Coombs enthuses, “Photography has already taken me on a road I could not have ever imagined, and I’m only getting started.” #landscapephotography #ChadCoombs #Saskatoon #paintingwithlight #prairiephotographer

Are you sending out or posting your images online without proper metadata? If so, you may have a lot more to lose than the few minutes it takes to add the information. Attach your name, copyright status, and caption information to every one of your images that go public/ online. This is easily done in programs such as Photoshop in the menu bar under File > File Info. Or in Bridge under the super secret section called "METADATA" menu. If you set it up right in Photoshop & Lightroom, this can be done automatically, or in large batches in Bridge. Be sure to include your contact info, email address, and webpage + note yourself as the copyright owner- if it's your photo. WHY bother? well, it IS possible that an Art Director/ Photo Editor will come across one of your images online, and wanting to use it for a project, they can’t or won’t if there is no information at hand about the source of the photo. If you have not provided contact details in the metadata, another photographer’s work will be chosen over yours. Or worse, your image gets used in the project with no credit or compensation to you. Take ownership of your images by making the time to enter metadata. #photographygoodpractice #photoshoptechnique #HowTo

Natalia Osmolovskaya masterfully merges magical concepts with sentimental childhood memories to create compositions and scenarios that take viewers to places that are familiar yet fantastic. By: Natalia Osmolovskaya “I want to bring the viewer into a new world and help them see connections between ordinary scenarios and magical circumstances.” Natalia's skills set is used in her role as a post-production artist and photographer for an architectural visualization company based in Toronto. The studio works with architects to create 3D images of up-and-coming condominiums, public buildings, and city proposals. She creates visual stories in Adobe Photoshop that depict the mood of future neighbourhoods. The images that Natalia posts online are personal creative explorations. She is inspired by fantasy movies such as the Harry Potter series, Interstellar, and The Martian. Clearly, her speciality lies in creating conceptual yet realistic imagery with a hint of magic. Natalia says, "The ideas behind my surrealistic images are connected to my yearning for my past, mixed with my present life. Being a sentimental person, I always find myself reliving memories from my childhood that have shaped me into the person I am today. A big part of those recollections comes from memories of family trips I took as a kid. Seeing the places I've travelled to as an adult always bring backs to melancholy feeling. My overall vision is to create worlds you see as a child but often forget as you grow older. "Although my work does not depict the real world, it provides an outlet to express the beauty in the serious and non-stop lifestyle of an average city dweller." www.natosmo.com Our PRINT EDITION - SOLD OUT! But you can still find this story and more photo manipulations in our DIGITAL EDITION - on ISSUU. #womeninphotograhy #canadiancreatives #yyz #nataliaosmolovskaya #photoedmagazine #igerscanada #creativecommunity

By Peppa Martin Drawing on deeply personal and emotional experiences, Shira Gold’s photographs demonstrate grief, loss, identity, and change. Wellness experts around the world increasingly recognize the indisputable health benefits of spending personal time with art, to the extent of even prescribing museum visits to combat illness. A comprehensive 19-year study published by the World Health Organization (WHO) found that art has positive overall effects for mental and physical health at all stages of life. If interacting with art, even merely as an observer, has therapeutic power, what happens when an artist takes up an active practice with a conscious search for solace, healing, and equilibrium? Vancouver photographer Shira Gold discovered this important intersection of photography, mental health, and well-being during a time of personal crisis. These crucial connections would ultimately guide her healing through loss and grief. Born and raised in Vancouver, Shira spent several teenage years learning photography at Arts Umbrella, a local non-profit centre for youth arts education. It was something of an antidote to an ongoing struggle in high school where she fought hard to meet academic expectations and defy negative and discouraging early childhood messages. With her self-esteem in a fragile state as a result of these messages from teachers who didn’t see her potential, her lack of confidence could have been crippling if not for her camera. Photography offered Shira a sliver of control over something concrete and became a tool to interact with the world and express her point of view in a positive way. That involved acknowledging and purposefully connecting with feelings of discomfort and intentionally deconstructing experiences that felt overwhelming. “It’s the only time in my life when my mind and my heart feel aligned,” she said. Repetitive motion is a widely accepted behavioural therapy technique for lowering ones heart rate and blood pressure and for calming an overactive mind. On the advice of health professionals, Shira tried, among other things, running, knitting, and deep breathing exercises to achieve these goals. Results were less than satisfying and not especially effective in slowing her racing thoughts. Then came an implosion. In 2001, when Shira’s mother Melaine became seriously ill, Shira made the pivotal decision to become her primary caregiver. Mired in grief after losing Melanie in 2003, Shira desperately sought a healing mechanism to relieve the searing pain of mourning. Photography, again, came to her rescue, providing the urgent support needed to navigate this difficult period. Picking up her camera again, she says, “was like finding my breath.” What Shira discovered to be genuinely therapeutic was the simple, repetitive act of making images, regardless of the subject, the time available, or the end result. Through this process she learned to visually diarize what she couldn’t articulate. “It was visual therapy,” she said. Diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) at age 35, her camera became a tool for harnessing her distracted thinking and, along with summoning mental focus, making photographs allowed her to slow down and be, as she describes, “fully in the moment.” Shira describes the bewildering period from becoming her ailing mother’s primary caregiver, to experiencing Melanie’s death and being bereaved, to authoring and self-publishing a guidebook (titled Choosing Joy’s Empowerment Index), to becoming a mother: “It was like all the space in life between struggles and triumphs compressed and there wasn’t room to process what I had been through.” Good Grief is a series of landscape images that serve as a visual dissertation of Shira’s movement through loss. This series earned her an Honourable Mention in the Julia Margaret Cameron Awards, a nomination to the Fine Art Photography Awards, a semi-finalist spot in the Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series, and also a finalist position in the LensCulture Art Photography Awards. Shira says, “If sharing my stories makes others feel less alone in their life circumstances, then maybe that’s the most important thing I do. My work has always been driven by my life and all the crazy, wonderful, painful experiences. As one who lives my days with a busy mind, there are few things that create pause and reflection. I think that when we tap into our vulnerability and channel it in our art, we are being authentic. That helps us to better understand ourselves, and to find balance and beauty in life.” www.shiragold.com IG: @shiragoldphotography + If you're in Vancouver, check out Shira's studio/gallery space on Granville Island, at 1249 Cartwright Street, she takes studio visits by appointment. GET THIS STORY AND MORE #MentalHealth & Healing through photography stories IN PRINT! or in our DIGITAL EDITION - on ISSUU. #womeninphotograhy #canadiancreatives #MentailHealthandPhotography #PhotographyForHealing #photoedmagazine #igerscanada #creativecommunity