A Prairie Town, 2021

The Canadian prairies have an architectural tradition of impermanence, committed pragmatism and humble resolve. These early settlements and buildings had a tenuous link to the earth, their very existence a flaunting of the distances
and the endless plains. Infused with old country visions only partially resolved, our first builders grasped the most basic of spatial and architectural means-the survey grid, the windbreak, the exaggerated facade – to tame an immense plain.

Motivated by a sense of nostalgia, I traveled the lesser roads of the Canadian plains in search of the same scenes I once photographed as a child. I was seeking remnants of the past and present them here as a catalogue of artifacts, revealing an identity shaped by a connection to the soil, ethnicity and community.

The narrative was influenced by sections of Robert Kroetsch’s long poem “Seed Catalogue” (1977). The photographs explore, as Kroetsch’s Seed Catalogue does, the construction of place and the prairie town as a new world garden where the fundamental question is: “how do you grow…” a town on the prairie landscape.

“I did this work at the height of the pandemic, at a time when the world was still struggling with the fears and anxieties posed by the sudden rupture of everyday life. All the normative practices which strung one day to the next were now subject to scrutiny. We were forced/told to stay put and fear those we didn’t live with. It was a terrible time really and I managed with most of it, but I struggled greatly with the sudden lack of mobility. Until this point I had always been able to drop what I was doing and spend a few weeks making new work when the inspiration arose. Suddenly I was unable to do so. It was very frustrating. I hadn’t taken any photographs for a year by this point and in an effort to regain some sense of normalcy I made a personal commitment to doing something closer to home. I conceived the project as part personal retreat – a quiet time to reflect on the past year and create something that would capture the spirit of this particular time in history. I was interested in exploring themes related to home, family and isolation – issues that were front and center for many others and me at that time. My point of departure was the ubiquitous lone prairie structure, floating in a sea of winter white or strung along an attenuated horizon – a typology deeply embedded in the Canadian psyche and reminiscent of the first images I made as a child outside Winnipeg”.