Biography
Biography
As the world changes, an immigrant culture must write its own new stories of relationship to place…
Robin Wall Kimmerer
I am a Canadian photographer creating images that speak to the relationship between humans and the natural world. I focus on themes of climate, deforestation, and biodiversity loss while drawing upon relationship to place.
I maintain a varied practice of which intersections form the foundation – intersections of observer and participant, documentary photography and contemporary art, archivist and surrealist. Working within a restless medium, I utilize a wide range of technical processes across the projects, motivated by an investigation of the craft. From wet-plate tintypes to large-format film to contemporary digital tools, the work draws from the history of photography while remaining united by subject.
My photographs are exhibited internationally and are part of the permanent collections of the Chinese Museum of Photography, South Korea's Datz Museum of Art and Canada's Beaty Biodiversity Museum. They have been shortlisted for Photolucida's Critical Mass Book Award, appeared with National Geographic, and awarded First Place at the Prix de la Photographie Paris and the International Photography Awards.
In 2000 I began my career as a freelance assignment photographer, eventually working with clients such as the New York Times Magazine, Business Development Bank of Canada, Canadian Medical Association, Oprah Winfrey Network, People magazine and CBC Radio Canada. Simultaneously, I was exhibiting personal work in private and public galleries. I continued this hybrid path for 12 years and then, in 2013, focused fully on my artistic practice.
I live and make my work in the Pacific Northwest, moving between my home in Victoria and the island of Cortes, where I was raised, 150 miles to the north. Since arriving as the island’s first immigrant settlers in 1887, my family has continued residence on these traditional, unceded territories of the Klahoose, Tla’amin and Homalco First Nations.