Kelly discusses her work in Equivalents.

Kelly is a Fredericton-based photographer, videographer, and university professor, whose work explores the magic in what can often appear mundane. Through her portrait, wedding, and commercial work, she invites clients to imagine their own lives as works of art as she interweaves the micro moments of everyday human connection with the wonder of our natural environment.

Much of her work often emerges out of an intimate conversation between artist and subject, exposing the rough edges of a deeper reality not always readily visible. Her creative work is slow and hand-crafted, using alternative processes of analog photography and cyanotype to explore the themes of place, belonging, and home that interest her academic and personal pursuits. Aiming to capture “photos you can feel,” she wishes to inspire viewers to view their inner worlds and the world around them with greater curiosity.

Artist statement

Image title: Glacial Residual

In the original Equivalents series, Steiglitz abstracted the cloud from its meaning and spatial context, offering instead their shape and form as expressions of human emotion. Speaking on the seasons of emotional struggle humans inevitably experience from time to time, writer Katherine May reframes these as a process she calls “wintering,” a dormancy similar to that required by nature to grow. She ponders: “Perhaps I need to feel the true cold before I can warm up again” (May, 2020, p.51).

My hand-printed cyanotypes explore ice as metaphor for emotional pain and growth. Ice becomes water as it thaws – as we thaw, we too become more flexible and fluid. We may even feel parts of us changing and notice little glimpses of ourselves becoming somebody else.

To explore this process, I manually pieced together landscapes out of visual fragments made by ice, captured last winter on the Wolastoq River. A local waterway becomes transformed into the unfamiliar topography of a mountainscape, reflecting the ways we do not yet know who we will become.

Yet these are not whole landscapes; there are edges and fissures and layers that don’t always line up in these landscapes just as there are in our selves. Negatives created from digital images were used to hand-print cyanotypes, which, like ice becoming water, were exposed by the sun, and like life itself, contain an element of surrender that is full of surprise and wonder.

Peter discusses his work in Equivalents.

Peter lives on the Wolastoq in Fredericton with a wonderful wife and son, and was an illustrator/graphic designer/photographer in works for silviculture, environment, children’s stories, aviation, advertising, public education and promoting post-secondary education.

A second career in property investing/management crossed over this continuous 35-year art career in 2012, and he happily became Mr. Fixit full-time in 2018 to present.

Peter’s photography draws from adventures with family and friends, time in nature, travel; motorcycling, instructing and safety. Playing bass in a band keeps the rhythms of life flowing.

BFA from Mount Allison in 1985 photography/drawing/sculpture.
SilverFish Photography Collective member since 2001.

Artist statement

Squadron, 2024

My photography usually tends to take note of the small stories that happen as life happens. These days I am not intentionally creative, rather I allow intuition to point the lens.

Integrated situations intrigue me. Intuition says something is there, although I may only determine the details afterward, so the image tells those small stories. A title intends to give my reference point but all are welcomed to take away their own meaning. Art creates dialogue, and I try to do that with images that are also aesthetic with careful composition.

Equivalents

So, why do we take a photograph? Perhaps it is our intuition that recognizes a scene as an equivalent to a feeling, and this feeling wants us to realize it through an image? My images are equivalents to a state of mind.

Rob discusses his work in Equivalents.

Rob is a professional photographer with more than 30 years of experience behind the lens. A Graduate of the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design, where he earned his diploma in Fine Craft.

Rob has dedicated his career to capturing both the beauty of everyday life and the extraordinary moments found around the world.

Much of his artistic work is created while traveling with his wife Betty, whose companionship and shared sense of adventure continue to inspire his photography. Through Silverfish, Rob brings a thoughtful and experienced eye to every image, drawing on decades of technical skill and creative exploration.

He is the proud father of two children and grandfather to one grandson.

Artist statement

For this show I wanted to combine my travel photography with the awareness that we are rarely alone.

What I mean by “rarely alone” is that we have special people in our lives, be that a partner, friend, parent, child, sibling, etc.

I noticed things I was photographing in pairs and related these images to bonds we hold with others.

What I saw to be my strongest image was the trees in the Fanal Forest, Madeira. I thought of the roots intertwined deep underground with the trees standing above, together.

Oliver discusses his work in Equivalents.

Growing up on the edges of the industrial city of Saint John, New Brunswick, Oliver spent his youth exploring, hiking, and fishing with a backdrop of steam stacks, polluted waters, and clear-cutting. Sensitive to the natural world, he watched the landscape being transformed by industry and felt his ideals taking shape. At the time, this manifested in angsty teen poetry as the creativity inside him was trying to find a way out.

Fast-forward several years, and Oliver found himself at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design, studying art and photography. During this time, Oliver was still trying to work out how to use his creative voice to show others what he saw was happening to the world around us.

Artist statement

Image title: Lines Are Language, 2026, 86.36 x 55.88 cm, inkjet print

Image making is a way for humans to convey meaning and share experiences. We take pictures of events and moments that are meaningful to us. We want to freeze that moment to remember it, celebrate it, or share it with others.

The image itself is not necessarily the thing that we are capturing. In the early art photography movement, photographers recognized this and sought to create images that still froze a moment in time but abstracted the meaning; an image of clouds became a conveyance of how the creator was feeling that day.

This meaning-making fluctuates for each viewer and becomes personal to their own lived experience, state of mind, and how they approach the image. What that image means to its creator is not necessarily the meaning that a viewer will take from it, and both meanings are equally correct and valuable.

The liminal spaces I have presented here hold meaning to me in the circumstances that led to their creation in the days – weeks before. How you view these images and the meaning you derive from them will reflect your own experience up to the moment that you’ve found yourself in front of them. These are not pictures of human-made spaces; they are reflections of your subconscious.

Peter discusses his work in Equivalents.

Peter first came to New Brunswick from Montreal to work with Freeman Patterson 40 years ago.

He subsequently taught photography at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design for over 35 years.

Over his career, Peter has had several solo shows including Gallery 78, Gallery Connexion, and the UNB Art Centre in Fredericton, and the Viewpoint Gallery in Halifax. He has received grants from both the Canada Council and ArtsNB. His work can be found in private collections as well as the New Brunswick Art Bank and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. He has served on many ArtsNB juries.

For the last 15 years he has participated in several group shows with the SilverFish Photography Collective based in Fredericton.

Artist statement

For a while now I have been taking afternoon naps. When I wake up my mind is relaxed and somewhat blank.

One afternoon in this vacant state, I raised my arm and watched how the light from the window played with my hand as I moved it around. It looked so different with different angles. It no longer looked just like my hand. My imagination took off and I saw all kind of other things.

So, I went out to find some of those other things that thee views suggested. And combined them in the video I am presenting.

What these images suggest to me at a deeper level, is that who I am, my self , is not separate from the world around me. That we are all inextricably connected to all the wonderful elements that surround us.

Lori discusses her work in Equivalents.

Lori is an image-based, creative solution seeker who was born on the picturesque island of Grand Manan. She moved to Fredericton to study photography at the New Brunswick College of Craft & Design where she earned a Diploma in Fine Art Photography in 2003.

The “Craft College” is where she was also introduced to a range of creative disciplines which she incorporates in her art practice. She went on to complete a Bachelor of Applied Arts at the University of New Brunswick in 2005.

Since 2005, Lori has worked at the UNB Art Centre, where she supports artists through exhibitions, manages the UNB Permanent Collection, and facilitates ArtZone. Through ArtZone, she encourages students to discover art as a non-judgmental space for healing, self-expression, and exploration of self and the world.

A member of the SilverFish Photography Collective for more than 20 years, Lori continues to create and exhibit work that explores clarity, empathy, and human connection. She lives in New Maryland, N.B. with her husband, son, daughter, and 2 cats.

Artist statement

Image title: Playing House: Washing the Dishes (detail), 2026
Portrait credit: Oliver Flecknell

Children often ‘play house’ with excitement and hope about their future. They pretend to cook, clean, and care for others and imagine adulthood as something full of possibility. And it is, but it is also a fact that these ongoing necessities can become repetitive and exhausting: folding laundry, washing dishes, making lunches, dusting, vacuuming, and managing the endless demands of a household. It is so easy to lose perspective with lack of reprieve.

During different periods of health crises in my life, I experienced what it was like to have a “broken propeller”. I was forced into stillness and unable to do even the most ordinary tasks. During those times, I found frustration and despair over not being able to scrub a pot, sweep the floor, or simply be able to contribute to the life of my household. When I was finally able do these things again, I experienced them with a renewed sense of gratitude.

Playing House is an attempt to hold onto that child-like perspective. Through sequential photographs and handmade flip books, the mundane acts of household chores are reinvented with gratitude, and playfulness, inviting a childlike sense of wonder and awe.

Photographing the flip books in use introduces a dreamlike quality, drawing attention to the simple gift of being able to perform these everyday acts. Playing House shifts the perspective from monotony and exhaustion to the gift it is to actually live out what was once imagined as a dream through childhood make-believe.

Denise discusses her work in Equivalents.

Denise graduated from the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design in 2002. She runs a small photography business from her home on picturesque Harvey Lake, where she lives with her husband and their large, hairy golden retriever.

Denise joined SilverFish school in 2011, and has participated in over 20 SilverFish exhibitions since joining. Denise has work in private collections as well as the University of New Brunswick permanent collection. Denise’s love runs deep for the natural beauty of our world.

Artist statement

Image title: Today, 2026 (detail), digital colour prints woven together

My way of making sense of this messy beautiful world. Knitting, weaving, fibre arts have a kind of quiet strength that holds me together. Flowers speak to me of resilience and transformation and that there is strength in softness and that growing takes time.

In the unexpected places, beauty can take root, even with the worry and uncertainty of my days. With every stitch woven I create quiet from chaos. A quiet act of devotion and love. My work is a reflection of this balance. The delicate, the durable, the planned and the unravelled parts of my world.

Karen discusses her work in Equivalents.

Karen is a photographer who resides in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Her roots reach deep into her home province, and her photographic roots trace back to her father.

Trained in an old-school darkroom at 17, she developed a passion for black-and-white photography that carried into her formal training and led to a career in teaching photography at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design.

She expresses herself through subjects she finds poetic and elegant, telling stories through her environment and with people at home or away. She is particularly enamoured with the emotion a photograph can evoke.

Artist statement

Image title: Ethereal
Portrait credit: Denise Rowe

Like Alfred Steiglitz, I believe that everything I make now is a culmination of everything I have learned about photography. Like Steiglitz, I hope that what I felt when I made these photographs will resonate with a viewer. Unlike Steiglitz, my work is not a response to a criticism that I have a mesmerizing power or charisma over my subjects and that charisma is what gives my work its power. (I wish I had that power!) He reacted to that criticism by photographing abstract subjects without a context. Each of my photographs has a recognizable subject, but like the clouds so far away from him, I could not control my subjects. I could only photograph what I was feeling.

What I felt when I recognized a particular light flooding through the trees, travelling on rays of sunshine along a woodsy trail was awe. The same sense of awe came to me when I stopped to photograph a white pine tree and found an eagle.

Thinking about these photographs made me think about other things that invoke a sense of wonder. Things that are bigger than me. Sandpipers. How do they fly in tight formations in the thousands during migration rituals without colliding? It is a miracle. I sought out the sandpipers. Together, these photographs celebrate the wonder of The Creation for me. I wonder what you see?

Roger discusses his work in Equivalents.

Roger was born and raised in Fredericton, where he attended FHS and obtained a B.Sc. in Biology and M.Sc. in Plant Pathology from UNB. While working on his M.Sc., he started taking photographs for the UNB Biology Department, and he soon realized that photography was a more interesting pursuit than his research on potato blight. For over 35 years he was the scientific photographer for the UNB Biology Department, retiring in 2011.

Roger is a member of the SilverFish Photo Collective and Photo Fredericton camera club. He became a juried member of the NB Crafts Council in 2001. He has shown work in over 40 shows with SilverFish and had a 40-year retrospective show at the Fredericton Charlotte St. Arts Centre in 2007. He showed work in the group show Endless Summer at the Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University, in 2023.

A background combining photography and plant pathology has prepared him to observe subtleties in nature that might otherwise escape notice. He delights in revealing an interesting side to subjects that most people would consider uninteresting - for example the stubborn beauty still present in dead and dying plants - subjects that reward a closer look.

Artist statement

Image title: Light Through a Curtain of Tears, 2025

With my three images in Equivalents I have tried to examine different ways of modifying the original concept introduced by Alfred Stieglitz in 1925, while maintaining his idea of freeing the subject matter from literal interpretation by the viewer.

In Light Through a Curtain of Tears, the sun shining through water drops running down a window could be considered a metaphor for the hope of a happier outcome to sad times. With Inner Turmoil, which is the closest in concept to the work of Stieglitz, the exaggerated angry clouds evoke a sense of rage and perhaps doom, regrettably a common theme in these times.

Stone Face is different, in the sense that the completely natural arrangement of stone in a rugged cliff gives the appearance of a face peering down at the viewer, with ghostly, dark figures lurking in the background. It doesn’t require as much interpretation as the other images, but is still in a sense a metaphor.

Christina discusses her work in Equivalents.

Christina is a photographer and art educator dedicated to serving community creativity. The camera deepens her engagement with the present moment. She recently rejoined the Silverfish collective with a very fishy series.

Christina has a Diploma in Photography from the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design, a Bachelor of Applied Arts from UNB, and a Masters in Art Education from Concordia University. She is head of the Drawing Studio at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design.

Artist statement

Image title: Littoral 3, 2025
Portrait credit (detail): Chris Giles

Christina Thomson dove into underwater photography in 2025. The playful process of dipping in and out to frame/reframe is a dance preserved by unpredictable images of the aquatic realm: glittery, gritty, ghostly. This set of images juggle subject and abstraction, rhythm and texture, and seek movement in the submerged world to evoke emotional equivalencies.

Mandy discusses her work in Equivalents.

Mandy is a photo-based artist, designer, and educator, who was raised in Fredericton, New Brunswick. She obtained a Bachelor of Fine Art in photography and a Bachelor of Visual Communications in Design from the Nova Scotia College of Art and design in 1995.

She is an NB Arts award recipient and has received scholarships from RCS Netherwood, NSCAD, and the Simon Chang/Phyllis Levine Foundation. Mandy has taught Design at the University of New Brunswick, NBCCD, NSCC, and NSCAD, and in international schools in Asia and Europe.

A member of the SilverFish Photography Collective since 2007, Mandy has also shown work independently in Fredericton, Saint John and Halifax. Mandy currently roams the beaches, forests, and cultural climes of Nova Scotia with her husband and daughter.

Artist statement

Image title: Imperial Yellow Huế, 01/01/2024

Archival colour print on deckled cotton rag 22”x 30”, 8’ x 12’ wall graphic sticker, multi-image screen slide loop, polymer pixels, and digital tablet scalable gallery.

A century ago, Alfred Stieglitz claimed the empty sky as a pure mirror for the human soul. My sensor-mirror has intercepted a crumbling garden wall inside the Imperial City of Hué in Vietnam. Over eras, sacred Imperial Yellow paint has been actively reauthored by multiple forces, besides that of an interested tourist in 2025; dynastic ambition, violent scars of warfare, and damp erasure by tropical decay.

Here I attempt to recreate a layered labyrinth of many reflections on image meaning-making. The hope is that viewers will step into the play of objects in a negative space to question the authority of a single photographic truth, either enjoying only formalities, or finding a shattered field where deep historical memory and digital grunge endlessly loop and collide.