Feb.27,2025
Location
Barrie Southshore Centre
Parking is FREE on Meeting Nights!
Doors open @6:30
Guest Speaker Nicholas x Brent
Presentation Topic
Boundaries Unknown
Presentattion Description
A presentation outside the boundaries of traditional photography. finding self - out of control.
Bent explores photography not as a fixed discipline but rather a part of an exploration into creating a visual soul.
By describing techniques, influences and providing examples from photographic artists from around the world, x bent pushes the usual into the unusual.
Bio
Raised in a northern mining town in ontario, canada, nicholas experienced the contrast of stark landscapes stripped by mine operations and pristine old growth forests, of eerie blue lakes deadened by acid rain fallout from mine smelter stacks and green lakes filled with the promise of dinner.
the land was heaved up from the earth’s core and settled by sediment – islands of red granite shot through with veins of black granite and gleaming quartz in streams of pocked limestone. spruce, cedar, and junipers – hundreds of years old and perched on cliffs with only a promise of tomorrow’s rain. the land’s ghosts travel on the wind and lodge in the valleys, gorges, and crevasses, revealing history to those with eyes to see it.
as a child, he was taught about the living rocks and the expressions of trees, that their energies are a collection of stories presented over time. if one can be still enough the stories will reveal themselves.
movement and contrasting light have always been of interest to him: “riding in the back seat of my parent’s car as a child, forehead against the window, i would drift into a trance and watch light collide with trees or squint through tears to create optical illusions. i found that the ability to bend the subject or alter contrasting dynamics was a hook”.
today he lives on a farm hundreds of kilometres to the south. human altered landscapes and the remnants of those who came before are his subject matter.
the narrative attributes of his technique lend possibilities to landscape, figurative, or street photography which can transcend traditional interpretations.