Oregon Coast
2019
A beautiful place any time of the year, the Oregon coast really shines when the waves are high, and the weather clears just after the rain. The rock formations along the coast make it easy to imagine when the earth was young.
Oregon Coast
2019
A beautiful place any time of the year, the Oregon coast really shines when the waves are high, and the weather clears just after the rain. The rock formations along the coast make it easy to imagine when the earth was young.
Time Passages
(2012 – ongoing)
‘Time Passages’ is a continuing series of long-exposure photos split into several categories, ‘Mountains’, ‘Cities’, ‘Hulls’, ‘Trains’, and others, taken from the decks of passenger ferries, trains, and vehicles in motion as they pass along their routes; and is, in essence, painting with the camera.
The ‘Mountains’ series is compiled from a year and a half of travelling aboard the various BC Ferries. The ‘Cities’ series includes images from Istanbul, New York, Toronto and Vancouver.
‘Time Passages’ uses the technique of long-exposure photography in a way that allows an element of chance into the process. The movement of the boats I travel on, their course changes, the weather conditions and ocean swells are all beyond my control as a photographer and all affect the final image. Repeated journeys yield varying and dramatic results.
‘Time Passages’ was shot both in 4×5 slide film, and in digital format. The film and the digital media offer different results; the digital is more ‘painterly’, while the film is more sublime. Both mediums capture the passing of time and the questioning of memory and lie somewhere between a short film and a multiple exposure, capturing superimposed vistas in the ‘Mountains’ series, creating new architecture through abstraction in the ‘Cities’ series, and expressing the sensation of movement in the ‘Trains’ series.
Time Passages
(2012 – ongoing)
‘Time Passages’ is a continuing series of long-exposure photos split into several categories, ‘Mountains’, ‘Cities’, ‘Hulls’, ‘Trains’, and others, taken from the decks of passenger ferries, trains, and vehicles in motion as they pass along their routes; and is, in essence, painting with the camera.
The ‘Mountains’ series is compiled from a year and a half of travelling aboard the various BC Ferries. The ‘Cities’ series includes images from Istanbul, New York, Toronto and Vancouver.
‘Time Passages’ uses the technique of long-exposure photography in a way that allows an element of chance into the process. The movement of the boats I travel on, their course changes, the weather conditions and ocean swells are all beyond my control as a photographer and all affect the final image. Repeated journeys yield varying and dramatic results.
‘Time Passages’ was shot both in 4×5 slide film, and in digital format. The film and the digital media offer different results; the digital is more ‘painterly’, while the film is more sublime. Both mediums capture the passing of time and the questioning of memory and lie somewhere between a short film and a multiple exposure, capturing superimposed vistas in the ‘Mountains’ series, creating new architecture through abstraction in the ‘Cities’ series, and expressing the sensation of movement in the ‘Trains’ series.
‘Deconstruction’
(2016 – Ongoing)
‘Demolition’, as a term, is now outmoded. With civic governments requiring the demolition of buildings to be more sustainable and the increase in the percentage of recycled construction materials, ‘demolition’ has been reborn as, ‘deconstruction’.
In the fast-paced real estate market that is Vancouver, land assemblies and buildings with “too much air” above them are being razed at an ever-increasing rate. The photographic project, ‘Deconstruction’ captures this activity mid-stream, creating images that are both documentary and abstract. As the process of deconstruction is slower than traditional demolition, opportunities arise to capture the inner structures of buildings, and the remains of its former purpose.
‘Deconstruction’ shares many similar aspects to my previous work, ‘Pyres’, wherein, the image is but a document of what I like to consider as the, “unintended artistry of the excavator operator”. The excavator operator acts as a curator of construction debris, categorizing the valuable recyclable materials – concrete, rebar, metal, and wood – into discrete piles, while slowly picking away at the building itself. By making photographs during the deconstruction process, it is as though I have captured the building while caught in the act between being, and not being, simultaneously revealing the mysteries of its construction in its deconstruction.
The Bear Pit
2012
Growing up in Vancouver, my Mom would take me to the zoo in, Stanley Park – one of the largest urban parks in the world. Of all the animals on display, the bear pit always fascinated me. You’d wait for the polar bears to jump into the pool with baited breath, but they’d always be down in the pit pacing nervously, or asleep, dirty with filth. The brown bears would be the same, disinterested in the goings on of the humans gawking, waiting for them to ‘perform’.
Designed, and installed by Underwood McKinley Cambron Architecture, in 1961, The bear pit closed down in 1997 and has been falling into decrepitude ever since. I have always been fascinated with the architecture of the bear pit – so, modern, like the bad guy’s lair in a James Bond film. How could this be what a bear would like?
The Bear Pit is now used as a demonstration salmon spawning facility – releasing animals into the wild instead of confining them. I gained access into the bear pit and tried to get a ‘bear’s eye view’, looking out on the green and trees from behind the concrete and chain-link fencing.