A collaborative showcase by four Sunshine Coast photographers revealed its thematic harmonies only after the pictures were hung. The quartet of veteran image-makers — Alan Sirulnikoff, Troch, Brian Baxter and Alanna Wood — were first united by a pragmatic vision that clicked during a chance conversation in Sechelt: to turn fleeting photos into physical prints.
“The big thing is we really wanted to create an ode to the print on the wall,” said Troch, who uses a time-honoured silver gelatin technique. “Everything today is in your phone and it’s all viewed as pixels.”
The exhibition at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery opened with a crowded public reception on Jan. 18. Its title — Unshuttered: From Lens to Print — emphasizes the physicality of photography.
“It’s a very different commitment than sending an email to someone with a [digital] print,” said Sirulnikoff. Sirulnikoff’s photographs have been a fixture at scores of local exhibitions over the last quarter-century; they have also appeared internationally in magazines and calendars.
“It’s a lot more work than just clicking for Instagram,” added Wood, a graduate of Emily Carr University of Art and Design and a former curator of the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre. She captured images with her cell phone an instant after each scene caught her attention. The final stage of printing, framing and hanging her vivid nature studies (sometimes digitally enhanced, as in crisply-coloured Tree Skin, or vaguely unearthly, like the deciduous fronds turned cerulean in Ruffles) imbues them with paradoxical permanence.
For Brian Baxter, whose work resides in collections across North America including the Bill Gates residence in Seattle, the exhibition was the first time he had printed his own work. The process itself was hyperlocal: digital images travelled centimeters from his camera to a home printer. Baxter’s process hewed to a form of Tibetan meditation called Miksang, which resulted in complementary grids of photos linked (appropriately) by their depiction of watery reflections.
“It’s basically connecting,” Baxter said. “It’s training your heart and eye together so that when you see something that catches your eye, you immediately take the photo within 30 seconds. It’s a process that helps eliminate overthinking and it’s really good at training your eye to see composition and texture and colour.”
For Troch, who wryly described herself as the Luddite of the group, an image’s full potential comes into focus through chemical processes. “My whole idea is to get enough on the film that I can do something with it in the darkroom,” she said. Her black-and-white print Forest of dreams transforms evergreen giants into chalky salvos exploding in a sable sky. A fallen wine glass and desiccated flowers carry notes of despondency in The party is over. Her pair of Haunted Hill images depict an unsteady shack under brooding clouds, demonstrating the range of hues possible in so-called monochromatic photography.
The nature prints by Sirulnikoff depict the seductive whorls of coastal ecology (like the close-up driftwood of Ancient Mariner), and stone-wreathed bark with wide-mouthed cavity evoking Edvard Munch: Beach Scream. He also captures the curious beauty of fowl and flora at the end of life. The bird in Window Kill #2 rests with its beak turned heavenward; the fungal colony of Dried Mushrooms still clings to its loamy substrate.
“Maybe there’s a nature theme somewhere for all of us,” mused Sirulnikoff, “but it’s too simplistic to say we’re drawn to nature. Ultimately, I think the most important thing is if [an image] moves me and feels important or authentic.”
The Unshuttered: From Lens to Print exhibition continues at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery until Feb. 9.
