“A photographer roams Canada creating portraits of ecosystems to foster greater appreciation for nature’s smaller elements”
A critical exploration of human impacts on the natural world, and how ecosystems are changing in our current era. Using the medium of photography, the work presents intimate portraits of ecosystems, challenging traditional botanical illustration by incorporating ecological cues and highlighting the interconnectedness of species while seeking to provoke questions about our seemingly insatiable drive to take, to possess, to bend the natural world into human form.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work is a critical examination of human impacts on the natural world and how ecosystems are changing in our current era, imagining and creating possible near-futures and future landscapes. Adopting and adapting the practices of scientific investigators, I collect specimens from natural environments, following ethical foraging practices. I spend time investigating ecosystems and the connections within them, particularly via site visits and consultation with scientists and lay experts. Using a high-resolution scanner as my camera, the specimens collected from each site are arranged together on the glass, composing intimate portraits of ecosystems. The photographs, printed at a very large scale on a smooth, matte paper, exhibited unframed, allow the viewer to get an unusually close look at each object. The images are elegiac, dark, mourning, representing not contemporary specimens but rather, recontextualized, some last remaining pieces of a fragmented world, floating in the void, evoking a sort of future nostalgia.
Seeking an alternative to historical botanical illustration, where isolated specimens were placed out of context on a white background, these images include ecological cues, speaking to the relationships among species in an ecosystem. Where traditional still lives imagined fantastical bouquets of flowers, built from improbable (and impossible) assemblages of plants that would never grow or even bloom together, here we find a window into the life cycle of each place, where none of these species exists in isolation, each playing an essential role in this delicately balanced web. Meanwhile, the black space surrounding the specimens is a stark reminder of the most pressing contemporary issue faced by so many species: habitat loss.
With the constant drumbeat of natural disasters, species extinctions, and climate crises going on in the background, it seems that change for the better may be out of reach. Has science failed to convince the world of the precarious balance that we now exist in? In the quest to investigate and describe the world with scientific detachment, we ignore the fact that Western science is both shaped and limited by our narrow human perspective. We have forgotten that our relationship with nature must be equitable, reciprocal. In creating these images I use photography’s singular ability to freeze time, to direct the viewer’s deep attention to the details and intricacies of natural ecosystems, but also to provoke questions about our species seemingly insatiable drive to take, to possess, to bend the natural world into human form. We are all complicit, even I, an artist who seeks to cast a most tender gaze upon the world.
BIO
Julya Hajnoczky was born in Calgary, Canada, and raised by hippie parents, surrounded by unruly houseplants, bookishness and art supplies, with CBC radio playing softly, constantly, in the background. Inevitably as a result, she grew up to be an artist. A graduate of the Alberta University for the Arts, her multidisciplinary practice includes digital and analog photography, and seeks to ask questions and inspire curiosity about the complex relationships between humans and the natural world. Julya has completed artist residencies at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum (Vancouver, BC), Terra Nova National Park (NL), Point Pelee National Park (ON), Kinnship House (Vulcan County, AB), and the Empire of Dirt (Creston, BC). Her work has been exhibited internationally, and has been acquired by public and private collections including the Canada Council Art Bank, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. Julya's most recent adventures, supported by grants from the Calgary Arts Development Authority and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, involved building a mobile natural history collection laboratory (a combination tiny camper and workspace, the Alfresco Science Machine), and exploring the many ecosystems of Western Canada, from Alberta’s Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, to the Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve in BC and Wood Buffalo National Park, NWT. If she's not in her home studio working on something tiny, she's out in the forest working on something big.
The Alfresco Science Machine
The Mobile Natural History Collection Laboratory (affectionately known as the Alfresco Science Machine) is a tiny teardrop trailer I built in 2017, funded by a Small Experiments Grant from Calgary Arts Development. A combination camper and workspace, it has since travelled to Pacific Rim National Park BC, Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve BC, Jasper National Park AB, Grasslands National Park SK, Wood Buffalo National Park NWT and many points between (with further funding assistance from Calgary Arts Development and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts). Inside there is just enough room for a queen-size bed and lots of pillows. The rear hatch opens up to reveal the workspace, where my plant press, glass vials, binoculars, field guides and plenty of sunscreen and bug repellant are all close at hand. I travel with my scanner so that I can work with specimens in situ, still immersed in the landscape, allowing me to return materials to where I found them before heading home.
Links
CTV Calgary interview, CTV News
CBC Radio 1 interview, The Calgary Eyeopener
Featureshoot: “This Photographer Lives and Works Out of a Camper, Capturing Nature’s Wonders Before They Disappear”
CBC Arts article “This Artist’s Studio is Anywhere She Can Park Her Trailer”
“Plants, Art and Rain” Interview with David Youn on My Viewfinder Podcast
“In Conversation” Artist chat with Christine Klassen, Christine Klassen Gallery
Virtual Opening and Exhibition Tour, Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies
“Fathoming Nature’s Mysteries”, review in Galleries West