I spend a lot of time looking at screens - my computer, my television and magazines. I am beguiled by the gorgeous depictions of life I find there. When I turn off the screen, or close the magazine, everything around me looks drab. I think I’ve become addicted to viewing these vibrant images of life. I suspect I’m not alone. The photographs in this exhibit represent the refocusing of my gaze upon what is around me, the unenhanced reality that I encounter in “ordinary life”. I pay tribute to the mundane by presenting familiar places. Each image reveals a private or remote place found here in Nova Scotia. Some of the locations are used several times on a single several-day visit (View of the Bay, Conversation, and Staircase). Others I have visited many times over many years (Afternoon Walk, Sunset, Wreck Glass, and You are Here). There are people in these images; most show more than one person each doing something separately. In First Mow, the woman is pushing a hand mower through the still new grass and the man is busily poking around in the trunk of the car, the clipping and dandelion digging abandoned momentarily. In Rain, the woman is seated at the end of the bed on a small bench in the far room. She has removed her shoes and is gazing out of a window in front of her; the man seated on the sofa and reading the newspaper. Where there is a single figure, such as in View of Trees, the woman is concentrating on playing a tile in her word tile game. We see the trees reflected in the glasses in the foreground on the table. In all these photographs the subjects are engaged in what they are doing and do not notice the presence of the photographer. I want my photographs to look like they could have been snapshots. I want them to appear unplanned and impromptu. But they're not. The camera was on a tripod, I'm using multiple captures for each image, and I'm in most of them. You are the unseen observer. You are here.
You Are Here was exhibited at ViewPoint Gallery in Halifax Nova Scotia during the month of April 2017