©Sylvia Galbraith

Today, we are continuing to look at the work of artists from the 2024 Review Santa Fe portfolio review event. Up next, we have What Time Is This Place? by Sylvia Galbraith.

Sylvia Galbraith, based in Fergus, ON, Canada is a photographic artist whose traditional methods of image creation are joined with a contemporary practice of using video and installation as well as alternate photographic processes. Mostly self-taught, Galbraith has worked with several art forms over the years including oils, charcoal and clay, but found that the restrictions inherent to the camera inspired and challenged her more than any other art form. Her current practice demonstrates a deep connection with the landscapes and people found in some of Canada’s loneliest places. Galbraith has participated in residencies in Newfoundland, Banff and Northern Ontario, and most recently, Iceland. She has exhibited her work in solo shows as well as in numerous group exhibitions, has photographs in corporate, public and private collections throughout Canada and internationally, and has received many awards and bursaries for her work.

In addition to her artistic practice, Galbraith is actively involved in the arts community; she has been a photographer for the Bonavista Biennale (2017 & 2019, Newfoundland), served a two-year term on the Board of Directors for the Elora Centre for the Arts (ON) and is currently their exhibition curator. She is a member of The Elora Arts Council, The Guelph Arts Council, CARFAC, and Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography in Toronto. She arranges exhibitions for various venues throughout the GTA and locally and is involved with the annual Contact Photography Festival in Toronto, both as an artist and a curator.

Galbraith has taught photography courses throughout Canada, including for the University of Toronto, University of Brandon, MB and Humber College, and was an Associate Faculty Member for Conestoga College’s Photography Certificate Program for 12 years. She currently teaches workshops from her studio in Fergus and as a guest instructor at various art centres across Canada, including Sunbury Shores Art Centre in New Brunswick, Union House Arts in Port Union, NL, and the Wellington County Museum & Archives in Elora.

Follow on Instagram: @sylviagalbraith

©Sylvia Galbraith

What Time Is This Place?

People who have lived for generations in coastal villages have a bond with their environment that keeps them rooted to a place forever. Their homes perched close to the sea that sustains them, they draw the horizon close, never wanting to be anywhere else. Theirs’ is a precarious existence, always at risk of being shifted, yet this fact simply strengthens their bond. What it is about these hard places that brings out this loyalty and refusal to move somewhere easier? As a child of immigrants, I envy them, for when I look at that same horizon, I feel dislocation; of being steadily drawn towards “somewhere else” just beyond my view. Why are they so rooted, and I am not?

I am fascinated by early photographic processes, and have recently been using camera obscura and pinhole techniques to document exterior scenes as projected within historic buildings. When darkening individual rooms to allow only a tiny quantity of light into a space, exterior scenes appear, wandering across inside walls; the sun rising over the sea reflects above a bookshelf, or buildings are duplicated inside neighbouring structures. By recording these views over extended periods of time – throughout the day, and in varying weather and lighting conditions – I visually connect the built environment with exterior views that have remained constant, conceptualizing the notion of within/without, terms that are inseparable in the minds of those who depend on the land and sea for sustenance, regardless of what village or country they might live in.

Working in small houses, churches, a luxury resort and others, my images describe how a building, while often reflecting social differences or human history, also witnesses the incremental situational changes brought about by the relentless progression of time within a location.

Today’s emphasis on digital technology has made the use of basic photographic processes almost obsolete; the ephemeral quality of these processes complements the nature of my subject, in that light, landscape and human situations are transitory, and will not last; a sentiment that has become even more relevant in recent years. By choosing these methods rather than a more contemporary approach, I also celebrate the origins of the medium and remind viewers of new/old ways of contemplating the inherent principles of photography.

Ultimately, I strive to make work that connects us to uncommon places; to develop a language for ideas that are difficult to describe using conventional words.

©Sylvia Galbraith

Daniel George: What brought these coastal villages and lifestyles to your attention, leading you to begin making this work? Anything else you’d like to share about how this all began?

Sylvia Galbraith: Growing up as a child of immigrants, I’ve always felt a bit out of place; my parents came from a northern European country I felt no personal connection to and had no desire to visit.   By comparison, people who have lived in remote communities for many generations demonstrate a rootedness that is unlike my own family history of displacement and change.  My father told stories about swimming and fishing in the North Sea as a child; always happiest spending time near water, he instilled a love of lakes and oceans in me and my siblings, and the desire to always climb the next hill “to see what I can see”.

The images in this series are from Newfoundland, Canada’s most easterly province, yet they really could be from any place that shares the isolation and harsh environment typical of northern coastal communities or island nations.  Initially drawn by the ancient landscapes and the geologic record evident in the rocks, I kept returning to the same locations, places where the inhabitants are resilient and firmly attached, with no desire to leave. What it is about these hard places that brings out this loyalty and refusal to move somewhere easier? Why are they so rooted, and I am not? These questions preoccupy me, informing my work as a photographic artist. Through my photographs, I seek to understand the concept of “home”, my own idea of place.

©Sylvia Galbraith

DG: You write that your intention with the camera obscura is to visualize the relationship between these individuals, and their built and natural environments—the “within/without.” Would you speak more to this connection that you’re exploring?

SG: Having spent extended periods of time in these communities, I noticed that people had a way of including the landscape and its temperamental nature in every conversation, every decision as to how to spend the day. It’s apparent that their lives are firmly intertwined with their physical environment, and their existence is wholly dependent on what’s happening “out there”.  “Going fishing?” I asked Gary.   “Not today, the waves are too high on that rock out there, it’ll be storming by lunchtime.”  “See those high clouds?  Don’t hang out your laundry.”  On a beautiful, blue-sky day I was told “Hurricane’s coming, you might want to bring that BBQ inside” and sure enough it hit during the night (side note: no BBQs were harmed!).   Ask for driving directions and you’ll get a full description of road conditions, likelihood of fog, whether the road washed out last winter or not, and advice on what to wear for the weather.

People talked about their houses and other buildings with pride, describing who built them, and how, or whether they’d moved them from another place rather than leave them behind when their village was relocated.  I heard about who was born in what room, what the rock seen out the kitchen window was called by locals, and what happened when Mom found out that Billy was climbing out the upstairs window to play on the roof.  Always, the stories came back to the structures and the people attached to them.  I imagined the land as a host and witness to these human events occurring within it.

Thinking about the visual aspects that initially attracted me, I kept coming back to this overlay of rugged land and interior lives – built structures combined with the “out there” of the distant land or seascape.  How could I connect the emotional ties of the inhabitants to their physical situations through my photographs?  Inside, outside – easy enough to illustrate separately, but challenging to connect in a single image.  At the time I was shooting exclusively with a digital camera, and briefly thought about making multiple exposures or digitally combining images, but I wasn’t happy with the idea of taking separate moments in time and blending them into one after the fact… I wanted to capture that intersection of within/without in the instant it occurred.  I kept thinking about these overlapping scenes in my mind, the play of light seen on the walls of a room at different times or weather, mulling over the principles of light, and photography, and had a eureka!! moment where I realized that a room-sized pinhole camera would allow this intersection of building and land to be seen in a single instance.  While familiar with the concept, I had never tried this and was completely amazed at how the walls in a room acted as a canvas for the outside world revealed through the pinhole.  Fast forward to now, a few years into this project and with many buildings photographed, I’m still amazed and sightly in awe of the process.

©Sylvia Galbraith

DG: You also mention that your photographs “describe how a building, while often reflecting social differences or human history, also witnesses the incremental situational changes brought about by the relentless progression of time within a location.” How would you say they accomplish this?

SG: Looking at details in the actual rooms, the furniture, and personal objects such as photographs left on a wall, even the wallpaper patterns or choice of floor coverings – reveal something about the inhabitants – clues as to their way of life, or their economic situation.  Even an empty room demands that I consider what happened to the inhabitants, what was witnessed by the landscape, and what residual essence is left behind. Those images invite more questions than they can answer.

 I spend a lot of time working in a space.  It takes hours to set up the camera room, and many days or even weeks to gather the photographs under varying light and weather conditions.  The experience is rather intimate; I get to know a lot about those who lived there simply by being in that space, and often feel as though I’ve known them for a long time.

 My photographs consider the physical structure as it relates to the original owners – why was it placed just so, with that particular view?  Did someone else subsequently make changes to the structure to better suit them?  The progression or effects of time is seen everywhere – inside there is peeling paint, faded wallpaper, dust, mold, evidence of animals, while outside we see missing boards, sagging walls, broken windows, missing gates, or rusted locks.  Even newer buildings – those that are lived in or community spaces – will reflect these changes to a lesser degree because of a dedicated effort to slow the effects of time down; by scraping off old paint and renewing the finish, cutting grass that constantly regrows, chopping back shrubs – it’s an on-going process that reflects separate timelines – the accelerated human agenda versus that of the natural world.

 Buildings, while ephemeral in the broader scale of time, can exist beyond generations, planted in landscapes whose own history (geologic, formative events, plate tectonics, volcanic action, erosion) involves tens of thousands, or millions of years, a slow progression almost impossible for us to comprehend.  These natural processes of weather or light are visible in the present-day scenes which are overlaid on the interiors I photograph; they carry on regardless of what object they might be interacting with, and whether I am there to photograph it or not. People often say, “what stories this house could tell!”   When I sit in that dark space watching the scene play out on the walls in real time, I can imagine myself as part of that history, even if just for that short period of time.

©Sylvia Galbraith

DG: Regarding your creative practice in general, what is it about the camera obscura, mordançage, or other alternative processes that you find so fascinating?

SG: I originally learned photography using analog processes and spent most of my working life as a commercial photographer, transitioning to digital cameras as the technology evolved, yet I never forgot the magic of a latent image appearing on a sheet of paper in the darkroom.

 Digital photo processes allow total control of the subject, both during capture and afterwards through postproduction, especially now that AI has entered the mix, and for me, has become too predictable and controllable, missing the tactile nature of analog photography and the hand-made print.

Aside from the satisfaction of making a physical photograph using rudimentary tools, I’m fascinated by the science of photography, intrigued by the concept of light as a physical object whose characteristics, action, and transient properties are constantly shifting and never repeated. The camera obscura or pinhole, and even straightforward analog processes draw on the physics involved in photography; they are so basic, compared to today’s digitally created images, which often seem far from reality.

 When using alternate processes, especially pinhole or camera obscura, I am reminded of the path that photography has taken to bring us to this point, and see them as a link not only to the very beginnings of photography as we know it, but before then – the simple action of light entering a tiny opening and making a picture – whether it’s an aperture in a lens, a hole in a wooden box, or even a tiny fissure shining light into a dark cave – predates human history.  We think we know it all, but there’s so much that came before us.

 Beyond the camera obscura series “What Time Is This Place?”,  I wanted to interpret popular scenes or locations in new ways…  i.e., typical “tourist” shots replicated by thousands of cameras or phones, or even the work of master photographers such Ansel Adams and others.  By photographing the same locations or subjects with pinhole cameras, or by manipulating the images through mordençage or other alternate processes after the fact, I can present fresh interpretations of highly recognizable places.

 I enjoy the unpredictability of mordençage, and the fact that each photograph is totally unique.  Although they are chemically fixed, by “destroying” the emulsion after the fact, there is an inherent ephemerality to the work, reinforcing the notion of “time and changes” outside our control, and an acceptance of those things we cannot change.

©Sylvia Galbraith

DG: In your statement, you write about these people feeling “rooted” to these locations and how this differs from your experience as a child of immigrants. After making this work, was there anything you were able to understand more about this concept, and perhaps how you/we can look differently at our places of residence?

SG: Susan Sontag stated that “to photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed” and that “photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal”.   Is this why I feel connected to places I’m not familiar with?  Through my photographs, am I adopting, albeit in a temporary way, that sense of “home’ that I think I’m missing?  Or maybe “home” can be anywhere a person feels welcome and it’s ok to settle there for a time.

©Sylvia Galbraith

©Sylvia Galbraith

©Sylvia Galbraith

©Sylvia Galbraith

©Sylvia Galbraith

©Sylvia Galbraith

©Sylvia Galbraith

©Sylvia Galbraith

©Sylvia Galbraith

©Sylvia Galbraith

©Sylvia Galbraith