SOME ARTISTS LOVE TO TALK ABOUT THEMSELVES. WE PREFER TALKING ABOUT THE WEATHER.
It’s a very Canadian thing to talk about the weather. It’s usually too cold, too hot, too rainy, too flooded, too burning…
We turned to photography in 2022 to best experience a world that we thought could disappear into a great big mushroom cloud at any moment. In that first year of picture-taking, we probably went through more rolls of 35mm film than we did bags of candy in our entire childhood (and we were candy devourers).
The film got processed quickly enough, but our processing of what photography means to us is an ongoing thing. We trained as an artist in a fancy, highfalutin, art institution many years ago and practised art-making for many more years in a non-photography art form — and while that was happening, we landed in this polarized, increasingly perilous, world we’re all dealing with now.
It’s nowadays a popular belief among artsy folks that art is the stuff that can save us from our predicament as a species. Maybe they’re right. Maybe someone’s song, novel, film, painting, or poem is exactly that one thing that can bridge all the great divides we’re experiencing and lead us to eternal bliss on earth. If that is indeed the case, one thing I know for sure: it won’t be a work I’ve created.
Why I know this is because I know of greater art and artists than I could ever aspire towards, let alone meet partway. Some of these artists are alive, most are dead. Among those still alive, few are creating much anymore. Has their work changed us? Of course it has. Some of us, at least. Will it stop us from clobbering ourselves to death? Maybe some, definitely not many, most certainly not all.
If the arc of human history is akin to a tiny cabin in a dark forest with the oil lamps burning bright, dimming, then burning bright again, brighter even, until they’re nearly out again, and over and over all over again — it’s maybe the role of the artist to keep any trace of light burning at all. The fact that you’re reading this, dear internet friend, probably means that the lights haven’t gone completely dim. If so, I’m probably spending my waking hours art-making right now to feed the flame. If you can, I hope you’re also doing the same.
With that said, the weather is quite seasonal today in Toronto — a mix of freezing rain and toxic air quality with a 50% probability of hurricane force winds from the south.