Resistance to Erasure
I draw on over five decades of photographic practice to explore environmental magical realism as a counter-narrative to ecological and cultural erasure. My vision is inspired by the quiet intensity of Atlantic painters Alex Colville and Christopher Pratt, situating my practice within a broader regional aesthetic lineage. Working with the modern Malde-Ware method of platinum-palladium printing, I emphasize its alchemical and poetic qualities to uncover a semiotic language that transforms representation into deeper insights about identity, livelihood, and sustainability.
Grounded in my Acadian lineage, my work bears witness to generations who resisted displacement and marginalization, making erasure not only a theme but a lived inheritance. My photographic expression parallels my doctoral research, framing sustainability as both aesthetic and systemic, where resisting erasure mirrors the challenge of overcoming barriers to sustainable practices and accelerating just transitions.
Through coastal and rural landscapes, I seek to merge the ordinary with the mystical, depicting communities at work within the vastness of ocean and sky, and situating humanity at scale. Rooted in lived ecologies, this work aligns with environmental art and eco-aesthetics, foregrounding interdependence with, and reliance on, land and sea.
My emphasis on craft, tonal precision, and the serene luminosity of monochrome resonates with modernist traditions, echoing figures such as Eugene Smith and Walker Evans. Yet my rejection of irony and superficiality in favour of “enduring presence” moves the work beyond postmodern relativism. Instead, my work aligns with post-postmodern tendencies that seek depth, sincerity, and reconnection, positioning my practice as counter-narrative photography that resists cultural erasure while affirming values-based sustainability.