BYLAND ANDSEA Pp r @es Sp ecye an d@#@€@fu ge by Michelle Doucette By Land and Sea: Prospect and Refuge is showing at Presentation House Gallery From November sixth till December nineteenth @ During the summer of 1997 Marian, accompanied by her sister Sydney, travelled through Ukraine from Kiev to Odessa along the Dnipper River in search of her father's birthplace. During the fall of 1998 she explored her moth- er’s origins in Scotland, and a year later these experiences, in photographic form, have come together to produce Marian’s most recent exhibition. The show is divided into three sections. The cen- tre room contains maps of Scotland and Ukraine, family portraits and other images from her family album, selected rephotographed and included within the context of this show. The other two rooms divide the images of Scotland and Ukraine. Scotland with one blue wall and Ukraine with one brown. Both rooms feature large, conventionally framed color prints of rich, aesthetically pleasing land- scapes that document Marian's travelling experiences and family research. My personal interest in this show reflects my own curiosity in the process of exploring one's family history through the visual, photographic document of the family album. By viewing and researching our own past we are able to create a sense of where we have come from and our place in the present family context. The results of this search often depend on what is available to us in the form of photographs, stories, and first person accounts. Like Marian, some people are fortunate to have acquired well documented family albums. Marian explained that in her father's family, “photos were really valued, and when they left Ukraine, or South Russia as it was called then, they- brought with them very little, but they did bring the photos.” Some of these images, these faces, rephotographed and reprinted as individual por- traits, are included in the show. Marian explained the significance of incorporating these portraits with the land- scapes: “l wanted to include some sense of the people. . . if | wanted to know what the landscape looked like, | wanted to know what the people looked like who came from those places ... the faces to me are kind of like another terrain that you can appreciate for the contours and the beauty and the starkness. “What | was interested in putting out was an examination of the landscape and the family in a way where you could see them as. . . kind of equal in certain ways and that there's some kind of dialogue that has occurred between the people and the places where they lived. I'm very curious also about how the landscape has been represented, and the history of that kind of depiction of the places where we live, the idealizing that has gone on, and how the notions of the picturesque, the romantic, and the sublime have evolved through art and through his- tory that isn't just to visualize but through writing, through literature, poetry and also music of the time.” These concepts of family and landscape are recur- rent through much of Marian's past and present photo- graphic work. In the seventies she began to focus on fam- ily members in her photographs, particularly her sister Susan. She created a series of twenty-five black and white images, titled For Dennis and Susan; Running Arms to Civil War, documenting her sister and her family during the time that her sister's husband was struggling with leukemia. A 11°06 curated by Karen Henry, Presentation House Gallery I 7 ® i 9 Lanentaremnn geen BYLAND ANDSEA Pp. Ges. p €-c-t andrefuge by Michelle Doucette During the summer of 1997 Marian, accompanied by her sister Sydney, travelled through Ukraine from Kiev to Odessa along the Dnipper River in search of her father’s birthplace. During the fall of 1998 she explored her moth- ers origins in Scotland, and a year later these experiences, in photographic form, have come together to produce Marian’s most recent exhibition. The show is divided into three sections. The cen- tre room contains maps of Scotland and Ukraine, family Portraits and other images from her family album, selected, rephotographed and included within the context of this show. The other two rooms divide the images of Scotland and Ukraine. Scotland with one blue wall and Ukraine with ‘one brown. Both rooms feature large, conventionally framed color prints of rich, aesthetically pleasing land- scapes that document Marian’ travelling experiences and family research. My personal interest in this show reflects my own curiosity in the process of exploring one's family history through the visual, photographic document of the family album. By viewing and researching our own past we are able to create a sense of where we have come from and ‘our place in the present family context. The results of this search often depend on what is available to us in the form of photographs, stories, and first person accounts. Like ‘Marian, some people are fortunate to have acquired well documented family albums. Marian explained that in her father’s family, “photos were really valued, and when they left Ukraine, or South Russia as it was called then, they- brought with them very little, but they did bring the photos.” Some of these images, these faces, rephotographed and reprinted as individual por- traits, are included in the show. Marian explained the significance of incorporating these portraits with the land- scapes: “I wanted to include some sense of the people. if | wanted to know what the landscape looked like, | wanted to know what the people looked like who came from those places... the faces to me are kind of like another terrain that you can appreciate for the contours and the beauty and the starkness. “What | was interested in putting out was an examination of the landscape and the family in a way where you could see them as. . . kind of equal in certain ways and that there's some kind of dialogue that has, ‘occurred between the people and the places where they lived. I'm very curious also about how the landscape has been represented, and the history of that kind of depiction of the places where we live, the idealizing that has gone on, and how the notions of the picturesque, the romantic, and the sublime have evolved through art and through his- tory that isn’t just to visualize but through writing, through literature, poetry and also music of the time.” These concepts of family and landscape are recur- rent through much of Marian's past and present photo- graphic work. In the seventies she began to focus on fam- ily members in her photographs, particularly her sister Susan. She created a series of twenty-five black and white images, titled For Dennis and Susan; Running Arms to Civil War, documenting her sister and her family during the time that her sister's husband was struggling with leukemia. A By Land and Sea: Prospect and Refuge is showing at Presentation House Gallery e From November sixth till December nineteenth curated by Karem Henry, Presentation House Gallery i 2 e | 9