I am a 7th/2nd generation settler of mixed English, French and Hungarian descent, and the place I am privileged to call my home and have lived on my whole life, in Treaty 7 territory, is on the traditional territory of the Blackfoot Confederacy that includes the Kainai (GAI-nah), the Siksika (SIX-ih-gah), and Piikani (Bee-GUN-nee) nations. It is the traditional territory of the Îethka (Ee-IITH-kah) Stoney Nakoda Nations which is made up of the Bearspaw First Nation, Chiniki First Nation and Goodstoney First Nation. It is the traditional territory of the Tsuut’ina (Sue-TIN-ah) Nation. also homeland to the historic Northwest Métis and to the Otipemisiwak (Oh-tay-PEM-soo-wak) Métis Government, Métis Nation Battle River Territory, Nose Hill Métis District 5, and Elbow Métis District 6.  I live and work at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers, called Moh’kinstsis (Moh-GIHN-s-tis) by the Blackfoot, Wîcîspa (Win-CHEESE-pah) by the Îethka Nakoda, Guts’ists’i (goo-TIST-see) by the Tsuut’ina nation and Otos-kwunee by The Métis, named Calgary by Scottish settlers.

As an artist making work about the more-than-human, I recognize that there is much I can learn from the First Peoples of this territory, caretakers and stewards who have been engaging in creative acts and living alongside and learning about our non-human kin here since time immemorial. I am grateful that this deep cultural knowledge was not entirely lost, despite the past and ongoing best efforts of colonial institutions through residential schools, forced displacement, the Sixties Scoop and more. In my work, I commit to not perpetuating the erasure of this important knowledge.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My practice in photography is deeply rooted in study and research in fields such as biology and botany, and a desire to engage in art-as-activism, to make work that draws attention to important social and environmental issues. Seeking to create photographs that would stand in opposition to historical botanical illustration, where isolated specimens were placed out of context on a white background, instead my images include ecological cues, speaking to the relationships among species in an ecosystem. Where traditional still lives, of the Dutch Golden Age for instance, imagined fantastical bouquets of flowers, built from improbable (and impossible) assemblages of plants that would never grow or even bloom together, my work offers a window into the life cycle of an ecosystem, a reminder that none of these species exists in isolation. Works in this historical artistic tradition also operated as a show of wealth gleaned through colonial empire-building, displaying specimens collected from colonies, reproduced in paintings that, in a way, functioned as a sort of trophy . My works offers an alternative interpretation of wealth, one that exists in the reciprocal and equitable relations we can build with our more-than-human kin. 

The Western scientific method has long held up its so-called objectivity as the gold standard for knowledge acquisition, but as a photographer one doesn’t need to think about this for long before realizing that of course, in science as in picture-taking, the place I stand, the things I am interested in looking at, the tools I use, and the way I present my findings are all dictated and deeply influenced by my personal values and cultural biases. These considerations, and my interest in critically interrogating the Western way of interacting and working with the more-than-human, are guiding my current research. 

In 2017 I built my tiny teardrop trailer, a combination camper and workspace, the Mobile Natural History Collection Laboratory (affectionately nicknamed the Alfresco Science Machine). Since then, Alfresco and I have travelled around Canada, studying and documenting the varied ecosystems from places like Haida Gwaii to Pacific Rim, Wood Buffalo and Grasslands National Parks and everywhere in between. These extended periods of being in nature have become the foundation of my practice, which centres around the idea of fieldwork; of being present to see and learn from the more-than-human on their home turf. The places that I visit are easy to reach, often well-worn trails, campgrounds, or day-use areas in national or provincial parks. I choose these places to study for their very mundanity, their accessibility, and their character as zones of overlap, even friction — where human ideas about nature play out in the form of tourism or conservation work. Instead of attacking the trails looking to match the recommended walking time however, my methodology is one of slow looking, of attending to the small, rarely remarked upon life forms that are essential components of all ecological systems. In the field I often return to the same locations day after day, year after year in different seasons, making observations and slowly mapping, in my head, the plants, fungi, and animals that I encounter on my walks. 

While I enjoy a sweeping scenic vista as much as the next person, you’re more likely to find me crouched down beside the trail, having made it only a few steps from the parking lot before having my walk arrested by the sight of some small scrap of lichen clinging to the base of a tree stump. This methodology of shifting perspective — even just physically but of course it’s more than that — opposes capitalist, Western ways of looking, where subject and object are clearly differentiated, assigned a role in a hierarchy. Instead I “engage in sustained and curious active and open relation with forms of more-than-human life in order to be changed by that relation” (Palmer, The Lichen Museum, 5-6). The hierarchy that Palmer refers to above, buttressed by Christian origin stories and colonial, capitalist ideas, is what has allowed Western society to assign positions of lower value to all these living organisms and landscapes, thereby justifying their exploitation as resources. Two-eyed seeing, which aims to draw on the respective strengths of Indigenous and Western sciences, is a decolonial methodology developed by Mi’kmaq Elder Albert Marshall that informs my practice, and is especially important to me as I work to unlearn and relearn ways of relating to the more-than-human. Linnean taxonomical nomenclature, for instance, can tell us a lot about the evolutionary history of a plant and its relationality within a family, while the Indigenous name for a plant might tell the story of its use as medicine, or how it relates to living beings in very different families. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Indigenous and Western-trained scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer shares the powerful potential of this methodology in bridging the divide for those of us with settler heritage, who seek nonetheless to build a positive relationship with the land and our non-human kin, we who are asking if we can “learn to live here as if we were staying? With both feet on the shore?” (Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, 207)

I work primarily with photo-based processes, often with unconventional cameras such as high resolution scanners or multi-aperture pinhole cameras that are slow and sometimes unwieldy. I typically deploy these tools only near the end of a project, after I spend time researching and exploring the ecosystem I am engaging with. My work follows seasonal rhythms, and unfolds at a sedate pace that takes its cues from plant time. For many years I have made photographs by arranging ethically gatherediii specimens on the glass of a scanner, creating intimate portraits of ecosystems. Printed at very large scale, these evoke a sense of wonder as the viewer can see incredible details normally invisible to the naked eye, but also offer the experience of being in a different relationship to these living beings, where humans are much smaller than the plants or mushrooms. More recently I’ve been building pinhole cameras to speculate on the perspectives of other organisms. Collecting samples of cast-off bark from trees infested by Mountain Pine Beetles, I use the array of holes drilled by the beetles as the template for the pattern of pinholes on my multi-aperture cameras. The abstract and kaleidoscopic images that these cameras produce offer a very different view of the forests I photograph, asking the viewer to slow down with me and consider stepping into the umwelt of another being. My cameras act as a way of further focusing my attention on the beings I’m studying, and reinforce the processes of slow looking, of attending to that are so essential to my work. In enacting this careful study of the forms and ways of life of these beings, I’m hoping to hear what they have to say. But with only my limited human senses to rely on, my translations are speculative at best, my representations inevitably biased. But I keep looking, undeterred, since looking “might then lead to imagining other ways to organize space, time, and social relations, including relations between humans and with the living earth” (Palmer, The Lichen Museum, 2). In other words, “learning from the plants, not about the plants” (Grenz).

In conservation circles, people talk about the ‘charismatic megafauna’ that get all the attention and elicit the most empathy, and therefore protective measures. I, on the other hand, am interested in what I like to call charismatic microflora. These tiny, overlooked beings build intricate communities that are the foundation of ecosystems. Mosses are a safe haven for microbiota but also the ideal nursery for tree seedlings to flourish. Lichens are inextricably entangled collaborative life forms that seem to reveal a new species involved every time a researcher puts them under a microscope. We are all learning that the notion of the individual is a human conceit, that we are all microbiomes and holobionts, that we all contain multitudes. In making work that represents these relationships, I hope to refute the reductionist, individualist myths perpetuated by historical, colonial modes of representation of plants and other life forms. Whether the work I’m making is a pinhole photograph made very slowly with a hand-built camera, or a paper sculpture made of myriad layers of painstakingly hand-cut plant silhouettes, the goal is the same: to make the ordinary extraordinary, the mundane wondrous, work I hope will be “rarely mimetic, but achingly evocative models” (Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, 13) . These are attempts to consider the environment from the perspective of another being - the unique way in which each organism perceives its surroundings, and how it might communicate about what it experiences. 

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