View Roger Smith's Video (Youtube)
Roger Smith obtained a B.Sc. in Biology and M.Sc. in Plant Pathology from UNB. While working on his M.Sc., he began taking photographs for UNB's Department of Biology, and soon realized that photography was a more interesting pursuit than his research on potato blight. He was the scientific photographer for the UNB's Department of Biology for 35 years, retiring in 2011. Roger is a member of the SilverFish Photography Collective, Photo Fredericton camera club, and became a juried member of the NB Crafts Council in 2001. He has shown work in multiple shows with SilverFish and had a 40-year retrospective at the Charlotte St. Arts Centre in 2007.
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 simply overlook.
It is only after careful observation that the images of miniature inverted worlds, refracted in raindrops, hanging from flowers after a gentle rain, become visible. Photographing these worlds in all their tiny detail is a challenging proposition. As anyone who has tried it soon realizes, one of the difficulties of macro photography is getting enough of your subject in sharp focus from front to back - what photographers call depth of field. Modern digital technology has provided an elegant solution, known as focus stacking. This process involves taking several photographs of your subject, each focused at a slightly different point from front to back. The result is a series of photographs, each containing a small section of the subject in sharp focus. Specialized focus stacking software analyzes these images, selecting the sharpest portion of each one and combining them into one photograph, which is in sharp focus from front to back.
The six images included in Raindrop Worlds represent my continuing attempts to perfect this technique. Each one is a combination of 8-10 separate photos, stacked as described above. At the size they are printed, either 19x13 or 26x12 inches, (48x33 or 66x30 cm), the tiny raindrops are enlarged to a magnification of anywhere from 20x to 30x their original size, enabling the viewer to catch a glimpse of the worlds within.
View Mandy Wright's Video (Youtube)
Mandy Wright is an artist, designer, and teacher who was born in Prince Edward Island and grew up in Fredericton, New Brunswick. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art in Fine Art Studio (photography) and a Bachelor of Visual Communications in Design from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1995. She is an artsnb award recipient and a City of Fredericton Arts Achievement Award recipient (with SilverFish). Her work is in the University of New Brunswick’s Permanent Collection. A member of the SilverFish Photography Collective since 2007, Mandy has also shown work independently in Fredericton, Saint John, and Halifax. Currently Mandy lives with her husband, teenage daughter, and two cats in Jinan, Shandong, China where she teaches art and English and is on a very big adventure.
Memento Mori In N Dimensions
"All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt." — Susan Sontag
This quote from Susan Sontag resonates with me. At the heart of it is what I personally think photography really is: light, time, love held still in an embrace. This work has repeating, reverberating, echoing elements - they are persistent but never exactly the same. They move through time with me. I hope something of them and their impetus will resonate with you. I hope you will have afterimages too.
After my mother passed away in 2016, I began waking up significantly more often during the night. Upon these frequent wakings, I strangely found that very often a "triple digit" time was showing when I checked the time on my phone or tablet. Surely only coincidence, but still it happened so often that I started to screen capture each occurrence. I decided to make use of these fleeting triple moments, telling myself that each time it happened it meant that "somewhere, somehow, my mother was thinking of me." It has become a comfort to me - like a way to remember and forget at the same time. These moments still happen all the time and I continue to record my momento mori.
My mother once told me she often dreamed of opening the door to find a huge menacing moose or buck confronting her. I told her I'd had dreams about "saving her" from natural dangers like tornadoes, or fires. About six months after my mom died, in the early hours of the night, the security light in our backyard switched on and woke me up. I looked at the clock: 1:11. I went to the window and saw a small doe standing in the floodlight. I felt like this was an animal reincarnation of my mother visiting me in the night. By then, I had decided to make a move overseas (where I am now). I needed to leave our familiar house and the small town that was the last place my mother ever lived. I took it as a sign that our move would be okay. It's not the first time such visions have come to me, but this one persists - an ethereal snapshot of love from memory.
View Peter Gross' Video (Youtube)
Peter Gross first came to New Brunswick from Montreal to work with Freeman Patterson 45 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, the UNB Art Centre in Fredericton, and the Viewpoint Gallery in Halifax. He has received grants from both the Canada Council and artsnb and has served on many art juries. His work can be found in private collections as well as the New Brunswick Art Bank and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. For the last 8 years, he has participated in several group shows with the SilverFish Photography Collective based in Fredericton.
In these photos, I am exploring how the eye might see before the raw data from the optic nerve is processed in the brain. The retina at the back of the eye is spherical and, at any given instant, only one part of the image is sharp. I found that photographing through a crystal ball replicated this effect. I've used this technique as a new way to envision landscapes.
View Mike Meade's Video (Youtube)
Mike Meade has been a photographer for over 25 years, a member of the SilverFish Photography Collective for 19 years, and has taught 2 years of beginner's photography. He currently works as the Digital Imaging Coordinator at UNB's Harriet Irving Library, a role he has enjoyed for the past 20 years. He earned a Diploma of Photography from the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design, and has worked for the Daily Gleaner, Harvey Studios, and UNB as a photographer. He is a freelance graphic designer, and a proud councillor for the Town of Nackawic.
My vision for these photographs was two-fold. First, I wanted to explore the phenomenon of pareidolia; the innate ability to recognize pattern or shape amongst randomness. Classic examples of this are seeing a face on the moon, or shapes in the clouds. I have always been aware of, and amused by, my own tendency to perceive the ephemeral within the actual.
Secondly, I wanted to take relatively flat mundane images and treat them as a blank canvas—a canvas upon which I would create my own vision by drawing out and enhancing characteristics without adding anything that wasn't already there. I aim to lead the eye and bring a dynamic robustness to a simple photograph of dirt, roots, and fallen leaves.
I set out to create a visual environment that could lend itself to interpretation by imagination. If you really take the time, what does your mind see?
View Oliver Flecknell's Video (Youtube)
Born in Saint John and now based out of Fredericton, Oliver Flecknell is a mixed media artist, practicing primarily in alternative photographic processes. Oliver enjoys the forgotten places, discarded things, and the quiet that this brings to his artistic practice. Rooted in the darkroom, he attempts to reach beyond the swirl of chemicals to play with our perception of photography today.
Oliver is widely involved in the arts, having worked as an instructor, designer, curator, and through participation in artist residencies. Oliver has been a member of various art collectives, including SilverFish Photography Collective since 2008. His work has been featured in group and solo exhibitions, and in publications.
Change is in the air; you can smell it from behind your mask. Children are pushing politics, the government is selling weed, winter is getting warmer while summer's heat is killing the elderly. The eternal flame now burns in the Amazon, California, and British Columbia. Lethal flooding is common around the world. But climate change is fake news. Change is coming but the super-rich resist, rebelling against the science, profiting on the laziness of humans, putting their faith in the dollars they've stashed on the islands. Like pirates, they stash their stolen bounty, while their workers visit food banks. The children skip school on Fridays, you won't find them at the mall though. They’re in the streets. They're at the legislatures. They're trying to teach science to the clueless politicians who only listen to the super-rich pirates that need bailout money in a "crisis." Little do they know, not even the super-rich will survive the end of the human era. These child scientists, these activists/rebels/protesters/watchers, are the only true visionaries of our future. Their intentions are pure. Their future is unwritten.
