Susan Lapides: St. George: Ebb and Flow

Susan Lapides: St. George: Ebb and Flow by Aline SmithsonSeptember 3, 2024

@Susan Lapides, Cover of St.George: Ebb and Flow

Susan Lapides brings a lifetime of deep seeing to her photographs, straddling the editorial and fine art arenas with finesse and humanity. Her multi-year project of territory close to home, St. George: Ebb and Flow, opened as an exhibition at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery on August 2nd and will run through November 17th with an opening on Friday, September 6, 2024. The work is also on exhibition at Gallery 78 in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and both exhibitions will be accompanied by a monograph under the same title, published by Goose Lane Editions.

John Leroux, Manager of Collections and Exhibitions & Director of the Marion McCain Institute for Atlantic Canadian Art, Beaverbrook Art Gallery shares these insights on the work:

New Brunswick’s Fundy coast has always been a place of movement. The massive tides are so ubiquitous to the region’s identity that words pale in comparison. The tides simply are. They always were and always will be.

A constant ebb and flow surrounds the resilient community of St. George. People have thrived here for millennia by harvesting the sea — catching the silver schools of fish that move in nimble swells and gathering the salty seaweed that clings to the rocks. A few traditional herring weirs remain, with modern nets and shallow boats maintained by fishers who try not to focus on their fading catches. Salmon aquaculture is the new industry, and in another hundred years, there will likely be a new focus. Like so much of Canada’s North Atlantic, St. George has seen more than its fair share of the ebb and flow of people and prospects. Two centuries ago, the area bustled with shipping, lumbering, and granite quarrying, but it never managed to keep up with the rapidly changing world. It is a classic tale: an influx of trade and riches followed by dwindling opportunities that caused families to leave in search of new prospects. But recently St. George has gained noticeable attention, fuelled by a post-pandemic appreciation for non-urban locales of stark natural beauty, affordability, and down-to-earth people.

Boston-based photographer Susan Lapides has felt St. George’s attraction for decades, as she has spent her summers in the community since 1998. Her deep commitment to capturing character and place is brilliantly matched by her innate sense of composition and colour. Like the photography of Stephen Shore, Susan’s work testifies to the fact that the everyday can be mesmerizing if we are lucky enough to have the right exponent behind the lens. Through Susan’s eyes and camera, the dusky cobalt blues of the ocean and sky become symphonic; a neoprene-clad swimmer floats like a spent superhero; three wet-haired girls beside a bonfire evoke the deepest musings and tensions of youth; a rural preacher becomes Moses in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments; and the image of a windswept cliff with a lighthouse, dog, lacrosse player, and tree is as powerful and enigmatic as an Edward Hopper painting.

Susan Lapides has the intuition and courage to give St. George and its inhabitants an honest visual record of themselves to spectacular effect. Her photographs transport us to that polished blue horizon, those fishers, and the humanity of the citizens, all ebbing and flowing as they always will.

©Susan Lapides, Beaverbrook Install

All Events in NEW BRUNSWICK, CANADA

Opening & Book Launch; St. George: Ebb and Flow
Beaverbrook Art Gallery and Gallery 78
Friday, September 6
4-6 pm at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery
6-8 pm Gallery 78

Exhibition, St. George: Ebb and Flow
Beaverbrook Art Gallery
August 3rd – November 17
703 Queen St. Fredericton, N.B.
The Beaverbrook Art Gallery focuses primarily on Canadian artists, including photographer Edward Burtynsky.

Exhibition, St. George: Ebb and Flow
Gallery 78
September 6th – 26th
796 Queen St. Fredericton, N.B.
Gallery 78 is representing my photographs which are in the Beaverbrook, just a block away.

Book Release: St. George: Ebb ans Flow
A Goose Lane Edition Book
Available on the Goose Lane website and in bookstores.

Artist Talk & Book Signing
The Hub, St. Mark’s Anglican Church
11-12:30, September 14
28 Main Street, St George, New Brunswick, CA

©Susan Lapides, Shift Over

©Susan Lapides, Working the Weir

St George: Ebb and Flow

St George: Ebb & Flow is my tribute to the residents of a rural community on the Bay of Fundy, home to the highest tides in the world. St. George, New Brunswick in Eastern Canada still has no traffic light. The age-old fishing industries of sardines and lobster and the newer farm raised salmon rapidly reinvent themselves to keep pace with climate change and global demand.

The short maritime summers with long evenings are cherished as they have been for generations. Light bends, time slows, families and friends gather around bonfires as the sun sets, and the stars alight. These are the moments between the memories that feel iconic to the maritime experience: the deep connection to the natural world, the rhythmic dance of the tides, and the mesmerizing, shifting beauty.

I extend my deepest gratitude to the residents of St. George for opening your doors and sharing your stories. You made it possible for me to be a chronicler of the ebb and flow of your hometown.

Susan Lapides is a photographic artist who creates time-based projects focusing on adolescence and place. She employs landscape and portraiture as a means to examine social, cultural and community issues.

She received a BA in Art History from Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts. As a professional editorial photographer known for her versatility, Susan was assigned to photograph travel stories, documentary style journalism and portraits of people from all walks of life, from luminaries like President Barack Obama to dairy farmers. She worked for many clients, such as Smithsonian Magazine, Life, Time, Forbes, Yankee, and the New York Times, as well as non-profits like the Trust for Public Land, UNICEF, Harvard University’s American Repertory Theater, and the Worcester Art Museum. She received many awards from ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers) and Studio Magazine.

Lapides has exhibited her fine art photography in numerous solo exhibitions nationally and internationally including Sunbury Shores, the Saint John Art Centre and Beaverbrook Gallery (all in New Brunswick, Canada), The Curated Fridge, Griffin Museum, (both in Boston MA) and Fraction Magazine. Her work is also in group exhibits including Foley Gallery (NYC), Newport Art Museum (Rhode Island), Brand Library and Art Center (Los Angeles), and Oceanside Museum (San Diego), as well as a variety of juried shows.

She is a 2024 Critical Mass Top 200 Finalist, a 2019 Critical Mass Top 200 Finalist, the 2018 Beth Block Juried Membership Honoraria from the Houston Center for Photography and was featured on the 2020 Fence in Winchester, MA. Lapides is a member of Memory as a Verb, a collective of eleven women photographers.

Her award-winning photographs are in the Fidelity Corporate Art Collection, Boston, MA and Cooke Aquaculture, in New Brunswick, Canada as well as other private and public collections. She resides in Boston, Massachusetts, USA and St. George, New Brunswick, Canada.

Instagram: @susanlapides