Jon Stuart: Stillwater

NOTE: A version of this article was originally published on the PhotoED blog at JON STUART: Stillwater.

Wetlands. As the name suggests, they’re not water but they’re not completely land, either. In fact, they’re the places you often drive past while you’re on your way somewhere else. A lot of Canadians only ever see wetlands through a car window. Or not at all.

Fortunately for us, Ottawa photographer Jon Stuart slowed down long enough on his daily mid-pandemic bike ride to take a closer look at an elm tree growing where it shouldn’t – in the middle of a wet field. And he went back again and again with a large format camera. His exhibition at the Shenkman Arts Centre is the result.

Stuart learned that the elm, a local landmark, was sitting in the middle of land that had originally been drained for farmland but is now part of the flood zone around Ottawa’s light rail line. Conservation groups are working with local government agencies to encourage recovery of the wetland which is now showing signs of new plant and animal life.

A graduate of the School of the Photographic Arts: Ottawa, Stuart used a 4”x5” view camera – at times paired with a 6x17cm film back for panoramas – to allow for the creation of the large, highly-detailed vinyl and framed prints on display in the gallery. Prints this large have a push- pull effect on viewers: you need to stand back to take them all in, but you’ll want to get up close to appreciate everything that is going on. (Do it. It’s very satisfying.)

Jon Stuart

On display until October 31, Stillwater is a chance to learn more about the delicate ecology of suburban spaces and to take in beautiful landscape photography with a purpose.

Stillwater by Jon Stuart
LaLande + Doyle exhibition space at the Shenkman Arts Centre
245 Centrum Boulevard
Ottawa, ON K1E 0A1

Until October 31, 2023
Artist talk 17 October 2023, 6 pm

Three exhibits at the National Gallery of Canada: land and landscape

On November 5 I visited three new photography exhibits at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. In one way or another, all three were tied to the Canadian landscape whether in the past or currently.

For Canadians who were old enough to read books in 1976, the exhibit Between Friends is a reminder of a book of the same name published as a gift from Canada to the U.S. on the occasion of that country’s bicentennial. For this exhibit, photographer Andreas Rutkauskas revisited many of the locations along the 8,891 km border between the two countries. While much of the geography has not changed, the exhibit contains reminders that crossing the border has become more difficult and formal in recent years because of the rise of protectionism and isolationism in the U.S., and the new geopolitical reality throughout the world. The pictures are subtle and often beautiful and the boundary they point to can seem an artificial and arbitrary one. Why should the living situation of people leaving a couple of hundred metres apart be so different?

A similar theme is evoked in Frontera, a drone’s-eye view of the U.S.’s southern border with Mexico. These pictures, however, do not contain the open spaces and lightly-patrolled woodlands seen in Between Friends. The Mexican border is lined by a steel scar that runs across the landscape for many hundreds of miles through inhospitable wild places, sometimes broken by poor settlements on one side and wealthier communities on the other. More often, though, it is difficult—if not impossible—to tell which side of the frontier is which: the land is the same and it is a political negotiation that has traced a line through it. Looking at many of the pictures by Mexicans Pablo López Luz and Alejandro Cartagena, Canadians Mark Ruwedel and Geoffrey James, Swiss Adrien Missika, American Kirsten Luce and German Daniel Schwarz, it is easy to imagine that one day the land will absorb the border and all human traces will be forgotten.

The third exhibit, Gold and Silver: Images and Illusions of the Gold Rush, provides a photographic record of the stampede for California and Yukon gold in the late 19th century. While we cannot help but wonder at the bravery and greed that drove men and women to seek their fortunes in unforgiving locations, it is impossible to miss the impact on the environment that was the result of unchecked exploitation. Many of the worst cases—deforestation, slag heaps and diverted watercourses—are still there to be seen. The collection is a fascinating set of posters, daguerrotypes and tiny, vintage contact prints but, while image-making technology has moved on, it seems our care for the land has not evolved at the same pace.