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In case you missed our CALGARY 2020 PHOTO INSPIRATION NIGHT Pecha Kucha Event at the CALGARY CENTRAL LIBRARY - check out our video quick flick of the Vivian Maier exhibition @ Glenbow by Jennah Turpin. The accidental discovery of Vivian Maier’s collection of photographs has become a tale of international intrigue. Find out how this curious nanny’s work has rocked the art world. If you are not familiar - Pecha Kucha is a format where speakers only have 20 slides X 20 secs/ slide to share their story. It's TOUGH. But really, really worth it. #womeninphotography Thank you GLENBOW for supporting Jennah & this event! WANT TO SEE MORE?! Check out the more videos from our PHOTO INSPIRATION nights HERE.

In case you missed our CALGARY 2020 PHOTO INSPIRATION NIGHT Pecha Kucha Event at the CALGARY CENTRAL LIBRARY - check out our video of Katherine Calnan in action! Katherine Calnan has mad skills. From her black belt in Shotokan karate, to Business & Economics degrees from @ucalgary to shooting celebrities and high fashion around the world... is there anything she can't do?! #canadianfashionphotographer #womeninphotography #fashionphotographer #broncolor If you are not familiar - Pecha Kucha is a format where speakers only have 20 slides X 20 secs/ slide to share their story. It's TOUGH. But really, really worth it. Thank you BRONCOLOR for supporting Katherine & this event! WANT TO SEE MORE?! Check out the more videos from our PHOTO INSPIRATION nights HERE.

When the weather outside is frightful… fire up the movie watching technology. In searching for movie picks to recommend to you dear readers, we came across the work of director Charles Wilkinson. We found a source that streams his amazing films online, for FREE, across Canada. So you can enjoy fine Canadian film making, without leaving your front door. Oil Sands Karaoke www.knowledge.ca/program/oil-sands-karaoke Fort McMurray is at the centre of a new gold rush. Thousands of men and women have been drawn to the northern boomtown with the promise of high-paying jobs in one of the most controversial industries in the world - the oil sands. They work hard for the money: under arduous physical conditions, for long hours and extended periods, knowing that a lot of people object strenuously to what they do for a living. But when they need to let loose, there’s always karaoke. Vancouver: No Fixed Address https://www.knowledge.ca/program/vancouver-no-fixed-address From Toronto to Sydney and from San Francisco to London, the cost of housing in cities around the world is skyrocketing. Vancouver: No Fixed Address takes an uncompromising look at the drama unfolding in one such city, where multi-ethnic citizens fight to preserve homes as living spaces instead of global financial commodities. It is a story about the very idea of home, what promotes or destroys one’s sense of belonging, and struggling to cope with the strange and often threatening economic and social forces at the start of the 21st century. Haida Gwaii: On the Edge of the World https://www.knowledge.ca/program/haida-gwaii-edge-world The story of Haida Gwaii is one of a place and a people who have experienced the ravages of unsustainable exploitation. They’ve fought back, reclaimed control of their lands, and have begun the process of rebuilding both their natural world and a sustainable modern community; a community free from corporate control, one where whole food is accessible to everyone, a community with no shopping malls. But wouldn’t you know it - all of that is now under the threat of daily fossil-fuel laden super-tanker traffic wanting to pass through their treacherous waters. The film features insights from former Haida Nation president Guujaaw, activist Severn Suzuki, Haida carver Jaalen Edenshaw, International Rediscovery founder Thom ‘Huck’ Henley, Haida Chief Allan Wilson, ex-loggers, business and cultural leaders, troublemakers, biologists, curmudgeons, scientists, and alternative energy experts. #Canadianfilm #MoviestoWatch #Documentary #Vancouver

Mani Singh is a recent graduate from the photography program at Georgian College. PhotoED Magazine asked him some questions about his creative process and how he tackles the issue of confidence when photographing people. How did you get started in photography? I was on an excursion with my classmates and professor while completing my Bachelor’s Degree in Animation and Multimedia. During the trip, my professor handed me a DSLR camera and asked me to take some photos. That was my first time using a DSLR and I immediately fell in love with the process. I loved it. I had finally found a tool through which I was able to express my thoughts and feelings in a concrete way, and I had the power to “capture the moment.” Soon after, I bought my first camera, a Canon 600D, and have been shooting since. Did you study any other photographers work as a way to grow your confidence? I always check social media for new work from other photographers. It helps me to learn new techniques for future shoots and motivates me to get out and create more and more. Are there any photographers that have influenced your art? Joseph Cartwright, Renee Robyn, and Steve Richards. My teachers at Georgian College have also inspired my creativity as a photographer. What do you think is the best way to gain confidence in yourself as an artist/photographer? I believe the best way to gain confidence is to believe in yourself, even from the moment you’re starting out. Don’t be afraid to share your work and ask people to critique it. Listen to the feedback and apply those suggestions to your future work. The most important thing I learned during my two years at Georgian was to get out of my comfort zone. By only doing one small thing everyday, you can definitely create results. How did you gain your confidence? I used to be a very shy person who didn’t talk to many people, but my teachers always encouraged their students to be brave and use creativity as a means of overcoming that shyness. I slowly began engaging with peers and asking them to model for me. I also showed my work to my classmates and asked them to critique it, which helped me see what aspects of my work I needed to concentrate on improving. Did you have any difficult experiences or setbacks? I used to get discouraged when my photo shoots didn’t go well or I didn’t get the results I was looking for, but I never gave up on pursuing my art. Instead, I would rework my plan, such as keeping the same concept but using a different technique, and try again. I also find that if I am having trouble coming up with a creative idea, I give myself a week’s break before revisiting that concept. Do you have any areas you’d like to improve on? There is always room for improvement and to learn new techniques. Right now I’m concentrating on improving the poses for my models, which I think are a vital part of my photography. Do you ever review your old photos and feel like you've grown since that time? How does that process affect how you see yourself? I love to review my old photos. Being able to see my progress helps me gain confidence and encourages me to keep shooting. It’s a great idea to look at your previous work when you feel discouraged, it helps to keep you motivated. How did you create the “Running Girl” image? There were a lot of challenges that I had to overcome to finally get this image right. I planned the shoot two weeks in advance, as it was taken in a parking lot and relied on the weather. I used a three-light setup: two lights with grids and one light with a medium soft box. I also grated sidewalk chalk to make a powder, which I used in the background. Finally, I had two assistants throwing different coloured powders while I took the shot. It was very challenging to get the model into focus while she was running, so I had to take about 200 shots to get the perfect one. What are your aspirations for the future? My hope is to continue developing my skills, learning more techniques, and producing creative and exceptional photographs through which people can become inspired. maniphotography.ca #commercialphotographers #studentphotographer #confidence #OntarioPhotographer #emergingcanadianartists

Virtually every minute of our waking hours we are inundated with photographs. Think of all the photographs that you saw in the last 24 hours: on your cellphone, computer, or iPad; in newspapers, magazines, books, advertising on food and other products; and even in your family’s photo albums. Now think of how many of these images depicted workers, at work. Think of all the photographs that you saw in the last 24 hours: on your cellphone, computer, or iPad; in newspapers, magazines, books, advertising on food and other products; and even in your family’s photo albums. Now think of how many of these images depicted workers at work. In all probability, very few, and possibly none. That’s astonishing when you think that most working people spend more time at work than at home or with family or friends. Growing up in a working class family, I was fascinated by the notion of work from an early age. When I became a documentary photographer, I quickly developed an interest in recording workers and their culture. I photographed immigrant workers on construction sites and garment factories, foreign migrant farm workers who come to Canada annually on temporary permits, and child workers. In 1999 I was invited to undertake one of the most important projects in my career. The Canadian Auto Workers union (which has since merged with another union and become Unifor) asked me produce a book on workers across Canada as a way of marking the millennium. I travelled from coast to coast, documenting work life in over 100 locations in the 13 provinces and territories. Working in 35mm with black and white film, I shot some 575 rolls of film. Of these, from self-made contact sheets, I selected about 1500 shots and had a professional lab make them into 8 × 10 inch work prints, which I slowly reduced to the 200 images that make up the book, Canadians at Work. A separate edition, Canadiens au travail, was published simultaneously in French. It was printed in Toronto on heavy gloss stock, in duotone. I oversaw the printing and signed off on each sheet at the printing press. From start to finish, the project took 18 months to complete. The introductory essay is by Sam Gindin. I commissioned a small number of pictures from other photographers: Denyse Gérin-Lajoie and Iva Zimová in Quebec, Schuster Gindin in Ontario, George Webber in Alberta, and Ursula Heller in British Columbia. The book was produced at arm’s length; that is, I made artistic decisions independently of the sponsor. A copy was sent to everyone whose picture appeared in the book, to main libraries across the country, and also to the library of every town represented. This book has been a voyage of photography, an exploration into the hidden landscape of workplaces and workers’ faces that defines Canada as much as anything could. One of the misconceptions that I had about the modern workplace is that workers worked together. Despite great advances in technology, most workers end up working alone, with minimal or no possibility of conversation or interaction with others. The nature of most industrial work is that an individual is merely a cog in an elaborate setup, such as a worker’s role in a football field–sized auto plant where her every move has been predetermined by an efficiency plan or the preset speed of a conveyor belt. In most cases, workers have no time to talk to anyone, for they must concentrate on their specific task, whether it is selecting herring fillets in Marystown, Newfoundland; inspecting freshly blown glass bottles in suburban Toronto; wiring cars in Oshawa, Ontario; or mucking ore at 975 metres below ground in a nickel mine in Vancouver. Workers are usually alone with their machines. Being photographed seemed to validate the workers. They had always seen “the other” in camera images. Now it would be their turn to be witnessed by the camera. Some could not contain the sheer glee they felt in that moment and reacted in curiously bizarre ways. They would self-mockingly make derisive comments, such as “Good luck finding any one of us actually working around here!” or “What makes you think we work here?” Their comments were ironic because moments later they would be back at their conveyor belt, or in their truck, or inside an airplane engine, or another work station, digging, packaging, sorting, cooking, sweeping, washing, welding, painting, sewing, bolting, cutting, loading, driving, boring into bedrock, producing, working … working. The experience of photographing someone in a collaborative way — with the consent of the worker (or other person in front of the camera) — becomes an act of solidarity between two humans. If the conditions are right and there is honest rapport between the person in front of the camera and the person behind the camera, I believe that the picture already exists, as if it were a gift, and the photographer merely has to receive it. The power of a photograph is that the moment it captures outlasts the passage of time. One day, I had focused my camera on James Cave, a welder working in an auto parts factory. He was wearing a bubble mask that completely covered his face and neck. A flexible hose connected the mask to an overhead pipe that carried a supply of oxygen. As a result, he was completely tethered to his workstation, unable to talk to anyone or relate to anything except production. He looked as if he were from outer space. I managed to make eye contact with him through his bubble, and putting his welding gun down and removing his gloves and mask, he revealed a satisfied, youthful face. He understood the nature of the project well. With pride, he said, “You are a worker too. Let me take your picture.” No greater compliment could have been offered me. I handed him my camera, and the tables were turned, with me being the one standing in front of the camera. See more of Vince's long-form documentary photography projects at: vincepietropaolo.com #VincenzoPietropaolo #blackandwhite #analogfilm #canadianphotography #photobook #visualstorytelling #canadianphotography #OntarioPhotographer

Check out some Canadian photographers whose series work over the course of YEARS has culminated into these truly special results. For these artists, the presentation quality of their images is paramount. The stories they tell in this compact, high-quality form are worth every penny. Bathers by Ruth Kaplan, $65 Text by Marni Jackson and Larry Fink. Bathers, by Toronto-based photographer Ruth Kaplan, explores the social theatre of communal bathing. Ruth’s journey began in the nudist hot springs of California in 1991. She then travelled to Eastern Europe, seeking a more traditional form of the practice in the bath towns of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Romania. The unique display of individual body types and ages became a component of the work, as did the decaying architecture of the interiors. Later, she travelled to higher-tech spas in Germany, France, Italy, and Denmark, completing the series in 2002 in Moroccan hammams and Icelandic hot springs. Hedonism, sensuality, innocence, and social bonding are some of the underlying themes that have emerged. ruthkaplanphoto.com Registered The Japanese Canadian Experience During World War II by Leslie Hossack, $125 Leslie Hossack’s images in Registered are accompanied by her thoroughly researched and carefully crafted observations about the experience of Japanese Canadians in British Columbia during World War II when they were registered, rounded up, and removed. Registered consists of three installations: Vancouver newspaper clippings from the 1940s; individual registration cards issued by the RCMP; and interpretive photographs of buildings in British Columbia where the story played out. lesliehossack.com Ritual by Vincenzo Pietropaolo, $39.95 Documentary photographer Vincenzo Pietropaolo has made it his life’s mission to photograph the immigrant experience, working-class culture, and social justice issues. In Ritual, Pietropaolo brings together a retrospective collection of 150 photographs spanning 46 years. The book is an historic documentation of the Good Friday procession — an elaborate event that takes place annually in the streets of Toronto’s Little Italy, the largest Italian immigrant community in the world. vincepietropaolo.com Looking for Marshall McLuhan in Afghanistan by Rita Leistner, $43 In 2011, conflict photographer and critical theorist Rita Leistner embedded with U.S. Marines in Afghanistan as a team member of the experimental social media initiative Basetrack. What resulted is Looking for Marshall McLuhan in Afghanistan. Rita uses iPhone photographs she took during a military embed to apply the pioneering Canadian media theorist’s ideas on language and technology to contemporary warfare. An homage to McLuhan, this is a new kind of photo book. ritaleistner.com Yes Yes We’re Magicians by Jonah Samson, $34.95 Yes Yes We’re Magicians, co-published by Figure One Publishing and Presentation House Gallery, is a compilation of anonymous, vintage black-and-white photographs mostly found on eBay from the personal collection of the Canadian artist and writer Jonah Samson. Titled after a line from Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, the book reflects on the absurdity of life through slapstick and dark humour, and a warm-hearted affection for the mysteries of human gestures. Jonah has created a carefully orchestrated narrative flow between various kinds of vernacular photographs. Whether a blurry snapshot or a formal portrait, the images draw out the uncanny and magical qualities of photographs. Free of any description, the compelling pictures are allowed to speak for themselves. thepolygon.ca #photobooks #womeninphotography #documentaryphotography #blackandwhite

Canada’s landscapes are as varied as the photographers that they attract. Some artists capture pristine expanses of Earth, while others see the landscape for its rugged details. Then there are those who photograph the landscape as a holding place of history and memory - capturing the interaction between the land and human emotion. Christine Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Siegfried are two such artists. Both of these Ontario-based photographers create images that centre upon the relationship between the land and memory, while beautifully employing historical processes to capture the interaction of our species with nature. We wanted to connect with both of these artists, and felt that their work shared some common threads. We took a closer look at what went on behind their individual aesthetics in order to explore a collaboration that may not exist in a physical realm, but could be created digitally. Above: Christine Fitzgerald, "Burial Ground, Canoe Lake" Below: Elizabeth Siegfried, "Off Season" What does “landscape photography” mean to you? Christine: That’s a tough question. I remember visiting, a few years ago with my older brother, a favourite swimming hole under a small bridge that stretched over a sleepy rock-laden river where my family would go during the summer. We would play, splash in the water and howl with laughter. To reach this special place, our father would drive along a rolling, dipping dirt road that darted around dark shady woods and past farm fields. My brother and I both had wonderful memories of playing there as kids. When we got there, we discovered that the river had essentially dried up. The small bridge was now surrounded by derelict houses and rusting cars, with graffiti covering the bridge’s foundation. We felt a profound sadness to see our beloved swimming hole transformed beyond recognition, the fond memories dissipated by an ugly present-day reality. We wondered if what we remembered had ever actually existed. Our sense of place and identity had been eroded, the landscape having become a jarring reminder that we too had changed over time. I think that for me, landscape photography provides a connection between our past and who we are today. Elizabeth: For me, landscape photography is not simply the shooting of traditional photographs of beautiful scenes of nature. It is a personal reflection of my feelings, mood and psyche. It is self-portraiture. The landscape images that I capture are most often taken in places where I am deeply rooted and connected. They can be statements on my relationship to the land or the fragility of the environment itself but always there is some significant bond between the land that I photograph and myself. You create images using both digital and historical processes. What factors lead you to photograph one landscape differently from the next? Christine: My vision for an image usually determines what camera, lenses and processes I will use to capture it. Also, time typically plays an important role in much of my work and influences the process that I will use. For example, I spent two years shooting a series of photographs in Algonquin Park, using the 19th century wet plate collodion process, large format cameras, vintage lenses and a portable dark room. At first, I experimented a lot with digital and large format film. But it wasn’t until I moved to the wet plate collodion process that I finally felt that my images expressed what I was seeing, where the past and the present co-exist. Elizabeth: I spent thirty years working in platinum and I still believe there is nothing more beautiful than a platinum print. (Wet plate is close!) Working with a historical process, I was able to capture the subtlety and layered beauty of the landscape. There is also a certain melancholy that can be captured with historical processes that is not always possible with digital. That said, in my work with both historical and digital processes, I find that my personal vision and sense of melancholy subconsciously attract images where there is a strong presence of the Japanese aesthetic concept called mono no aware. In the simplest of terms, this aesthetic is defined as “beauty tinged with sadness”. It is prevalent in my work, and although the platinum print is able to beautifully enhance this concept, sometimes certain landscape images need to be expressed in colour. In my case that means digital. My colour palette is routinely de-saturated, looking more like a historical process, yet that slight use of colour every so often adds a magical spark or mood to the image that makes it more successful. Above: Christine Fitzgerald, "Fallen Canoe, Found Lake" Below: Elizabeth Siegfried, "Cradle" Your work often illustrates a human interaction with the natural landscape. Why? Christine: Today, it’s pretty hard to find a landscape that has not been touched by humans. Just think of the impact of climate change, for example. Its adverse effects are everywhere. Signs of human activity can be found in every seemingly pristine landscape. At the same time, humanity has become increasingly removed from the natural world. More people are living in urban centers today than at any other time in our history. Yet we are intricately connected to the natural environment through our actions. In my work, I try to express how nature shapes who we are and how we impact our natural environment. I believe that landscapes reflect who we are. I am particularly interested in how human artifacts and other objects in a landscape can trigger memories and show the passage of time and the transience of life. Elizabeth: I often use human interaction (either myself or someone else) with the natural landscape to tell a narrative. My work is about family, the passage of time, and our relationship to the natural world around us. In my book, LifeLines, self-portraits were incorporated into nature to reflect those similarities that we as humans share with everything in nature - including life cycles and lifelines. The human interaction with the natural landscape underscores the idea that nature is extremely fragile and needs to be treated with reverence and respect. We are all connected. What is it about Ontario landscapes, nature, and the outdoors that inspires you creatively? Christine: I have a long-standing love affair with nature and much of my work reflects this. My fascination began when I was a child growing up in a small rural town in the Eastern Townships of Québec, and has never abated. I recall exploring the woodlands on the other side of the road in front of our house. Even as a young girl, I was aware that woodlands had their own plants, animals and ecosystem. Today, every time I explore the outdoors, I am reminded of how astonishing nature really is and that we are such a small part of a complex and interconnected world. It’s no surprise to me that I draw much of my inspiration from nature. Through my work, I also want to engage others and create an opportunity for them to experience the mystery, the beauty and the sense of wonder that nature has to offer. At the same time, I am deeply distressed by how humanity is impacting our planet. In a way, I think that’s why I use historical photographic processes in much of my work. They enable me to better reflect the imperfections of humans and the impermanence of life. Elizabeth: I am inspired by the Ontario landscape, nature and the outdoors because my heart is there. There is some land just outside of Algonquin Park where my great-grandparents built a camp at the turn of the 20th century - it is where I spent my summers as a child, and where I live now. It was there I learned to love and appreciate and respect the wilderness. There is a profound and spiritual connection to Nature there – it is a place where you can’t help but be a part of the natural world. It makes its way into the cabins, and you must move through it to get from place to place. My Ontario landscapes are my self-portraits. Above: Christine Fitzgerald, "The Turtle Club" Below: Elizabeth Siegfried, "The Big House Porch" Christine, if you were to pair one of your images with one of Elizabeth’s in an exhibition context, which would you select and why? Christine: I chose my image titled “The Turtle Club” from my Algonquin Park: Natural Histories series and Elizabeth’s image titled “The Big House Porch” from her series A Sense of Place. The J.R. Booth family built a private lodge called “The Turtle Club” deep in Algonquin Park. Eventually, it became a private fishing club with different owners over the years. It then fell into disrepair and was dismantled. Five fireplaces from the original lodge still stand today. For me, these fireplaces are poignant gravestones that mark the passage of time and evoke all kinds of nostalgic memories. Elizabeth’s intimate image, “The Big House Porch”, was captured at a family camp in Northern Ontario built over a hundred years ago. The empty old rocking chair on the porch triggered similar feelings of nostalgia for bygone times, transporting me back, in my memory and imagination, to a vanishing past. As with “The Turtle Club”, “The Big House Porch” is a reminder that our sense of self and place are not what they once were and underscores the passage of time in a contemporary reality. Elizabeth, if you were to pair one of your images with one of Christine’s in an exhibition context, which would you select and why? Elizabeth: That’s a difficult question because I see such a strong similar sensibility in our work, not only in landscape, but also in Christine’s Threatened images with her use of specimens from the natural world such as bones, shells and insects. Both Christine’s “Burial Ground, Canoe Lake”, and “Remains, Highland Inn” could be paired with my “Copland Steps”. Although Christine’s images are wet plate and mine is a Holga image, there are similar sensibilities in all three. All depict a reverence for a place, a quiet meditation. Each place has been neglected to a certain degree and there is the sense of time passed. The concept of mono no aware is in all three images – beauty tinged with sadness. Above: Elizabeth Siegfried, "Copland Steps" Below: Christine Fitzgerald, "Remains, Highland Inn" To view more work by Christine Fitzgerald, visit christinefitzgeraldphotography.com To view more work by Elizabeth Siegfried, visit elizabethsiegfried.com #womeninphotography #photobooks #ChristineFitzgerald #ElizabethSiegfried #canadianphotography #fineartphotography #landscape #landscapephotography #Algonquin #HistoricalProcess

My journey and eventual obsession with photography first started with our annual family road trips around Canada. The enjoyment grew when I took a photography class in high school, and got to experiment in the darkroom. I was hooked! After high school I filled my time with anything and everything photography related. I shot weddings and portraits, I did events and dabbled in baby photography, but my real passion and inspiration has always been with landscape photography, specifically the Canadian Landscape. One thing you learn when shooting landscape photography is that it can be risky. The most dramatic photos usually happen during bad weather and when most people are inside staying warm and dry. I am driven by the challenge of being outdoors and capturing the elements at work to craft a perfect photograph. I have contended with -45C while shooting ice cracks, dangled over the edge of a cliff looking down to bird colonies above the Atlantic Ocean, and successfully avoided getting run over by vehicles on a road while trying to take a self portrait with the northern lights. A few years ago, I took the plunge towards really living my passion and moved to the Canadian Rockies. I wanted to be inspired by the scenery around me, and work within it. I contemplated what “job” I wanted to do in the landscape photography field: write for magazines, sell prints, do commercial work, or teach. I always enjoyed helping others with their photography, so teaching was a natural progression. For the last five years, I have been teaching and guiding visitors around Banff National Park through my own photo tour business. It hasn’t always been easy, and not everything always goes to plan, but my passion for creating images and sharing the joy of the experience has been worth the risk. www.danilefrancois.com We featured Dani's work in our Winter 2017/ 18 issue: Landscapes, Real and Imagined. Get it in print HERE. #landscape #landscapephotography #womeninphotography #DaniLefrancois #photographycanada #canadianphotography #Canadianlandscape #AlbertaPhotographer

Growing up in Cape Breton, where relocation is a given, I moved many times. Each move was challenging, and often left me feeling uprooted. I turned to my photography to forge new connections and develop a sense of belonging. In later research I learned of the idea of a “primal landscape” – the notion that we form attachments to objects, traits and people in our childhood environment that we carry with us into adulthood. In our adult years, this “primal landscape” informs our feeling of belonging and rootedness, or sense of place. This theme forms the underpinning for much of my work. The impetus for this particular series, O Human Child, came out of a desire to better understand the place that I currently find myself, rural Saskatchewan. I turned to the writings of W.O. Mitchell, who is praised for establishing the literary geography of the prairies, in hopes that his words would help me gain a sense of the Saskatchewan identity. In his seminal book Who Has Seen the Wind, Mitchell depicts life as a child in rural Saskatchewan in the 1930s. Through stories of everyday events of a young boy trying to make sense of life, death, and God, he addresses universal themes in an authentic Canadian prairie voice. As I read, I began to question what life is like for children living in small prairie communities today. How do community and landscape shape their personal identity and sense of place? In a time when the online world has opened up for communication, learning, and entertainment, when family farms morph into commercial operations and rural communities shrink with migration to urban areas, how will their primal landscape impact them as adults? In this series, “O Human Child”, I take a contemporary look at children growing up in rural Saskatchewan and consider how the tensions and complexities of childhood today both contrast and mirror those of Mitchell’s time. In Who Has Seen The Wind, Mitchell’s young protagonist searches for the patterns and significance underlying the human experience as he learns about his world through the local people, animals, and natural forces. Though the theme of inevitable death is ever present, this novel is also a celebration of innocence, spontaneity, and natural freedom. This series invites the viewer to reflect on issues today’s youth grapple with in rural Saskatchewan. Are children today, as in Mitchell’s depiction, still learning about their world through story, animals, and physical exploration of nature? to ask “Siri” or “Google”? How does spontaneity and play (or lack thereof) impact their sense of place and identity? O Human Child showcases 18 black and white portraits of children of a similar age to those in Who Has Seen the Wind (between age 4 and 11 years) who live in rural Saskatchewan. The children are photographed in their own environments: in small towns or rural communities, on First Nations Territory and farms. Danna Lee stands fiercely in front of the lake as if protecting the water; Samuel poses with a goose after a morning hunt with his father; wearing her fashionable New York City t-shirt, Kaida tightly grasps the leash of her dog; Kennedy crosses her arms, intently staring into my lens with the town school that has been closed because of low enrollment in the background; and Nathan, who moved with his family two years ago from Korea, proudly poses with his soccer ball. See more at: verasaltzman.com #womeninphotography #fineartphotography #blackandwhite #Documentary #portraitphotography

I was born in Pakistan and have an Afghan background. My family moved to Canada when war made living in Pakistan impossible. After moving to safety in Canada, my parents’ expectations for academic achievement was high . Although my family is filled with doctors, engineers, businessmen, and math majors, pursuing the arts and photography was my career choice. Conceptual photography has become the perfect visual outlet for me to express my personal struggles and experiences. The New Worlds series echos a part of my personality and personal experience. I aim to illustrate the idea of isolation: a feeling of seclusion from the world, but a world transformed into a surreal environment filled with curiosities. In these worlds, imagined shapes added to existing places create a feeling of wonder. My colour palette reflects institutional structure: white, clean, simple, yet complex. My conservative background is portrayed through mood using colour, and the curious shapes and architectural elements reflect my experiences exploring Canada. The composition in each image in this series intends for viewers to experience wonder, as well as tension. I wanted to share my own experience visually, the struggle of adapting and understanding: a feeling of living in a box, yet being exposed to the outside world. We featured Adisa's work in our Winter 2017/ 18 issue: Landscapes, Real and Imagined. Get it in print HERE. www.adisasadaf.com #AdisaSadafRawi #womeninphotography #fineartphotography #canadianphotography #emergingartists #studentphotographer #OntarioPhotographer #photoshoptechnique