Ann Piché is intrigued by everyday life. Taking inspiration from things around her, she reconfigures these ideas using questions that are always present – why? what if?  In doing this, Ann gives us a glimpse into her perception of reality. 

building lights is a reconfiguration of a structural object into an abstracted form.  Using an interior light fixture, Ann plays with our sense of perception.  What if you look deeper?  Do you see differently?  

At first glance, this work can be construed as a nighttime image of a building with all is its lights on.  Look closely though and the lines on the wall behind become noticeable. The “building” seems to be hanging in space. Its surroundings are foreign. This contradicts our initial perception.  We may not be able to completely reconcile that we are looking at a light fixture, but we know that our initial perception is no longer valid.

Ann uses camera movement to reimagine the light fixture as a visual representation of a building.  Black and white processing helps to emphasize the image’s graphical nature; re-enforcing the initial perception of a building.

building lights serves as a visual reminder that not everything is as it seems. A quick glance is often of no value.  We do not really “see,” and we definitely do not understand. Different realities open up when we take the time needed to look deeper.

Ann Piché is a photographer based in Ottawa, Canada, with a technology background. Intrigued by everyday life, inspiration comes from the things around her.  Reconfiguring these ideas, Ann provides a glimpse into her perception of reality.   As a result, Ann’s work sits at the intersection of the familiar and the unusual.  She uses in-camera techniques and post production to bring her ideas to life.  Her photographic processes include digital, film and scanography. Ann’s images have been published in Canadian and American magazines and exhibited locally. Her work can be found in private collections in Canada and the United States.

I ask myself: What am I waiting for? Sitting in a puddle, motionless, I am like a rag; nowhere to go in a deadlock of its own time. Seeing the world go by, people coming into my life, just to leave me behind, I reach out for help but I feel like I am drowning in the sorrow of my mind. There is nowhere to go, trapped on this road within this picture of mine. 

Looking to the past and reminiscing about the good times, I am brought back to the hard reality of current times. Being locked up and kept out of the world of which I wish to see, but the little bit I do get to see out of my dead eyes is filled with fake people deceiving me and playing with my concussed weak mind -- telling lies as if there were no consequence to the people who hear them. 

My depression spirals into the abyss. So I sit in this puddle of mine, waiting for life to move on, or to be forgotten like this rag.

Kai Poirier-Feraud is from Ottawa, Canada, He is a photography based artist, primarily shooting with analog film cameras, and processing his work by scanning negatives or silver prints. Kai focuses on portraits, landscape, and architecture because he is interested in trying to capture the feeling of people he sees, and of the world around him. Most of the time, his work is untitled or does not have an artist statement to it because he wants his audience to engage with his photographs on their own terms, as well as the expressions and feelings depicted in the images. Currently, Kai is studying at SPAO and is in his second year of the program. 

With two feet on the ground and a camera in the sky, Justin M Millar brings his unique view of the world  into his art as both a pilot and photographer. 

Stepping away from the often oversaturated, more commercial look of popular drone images, (that is,  not depicting beaches and all-inclusive resorts) instead Millar is interested in the darker and sometimes  gritty scenes from above. He uses his work to show the simple, and at times complicated beauty of the  environment he finds himself in. Millar strives to push his artistic photography to new heights by  bridging the ethereal and the somber. His dark and mysterious aesthetic reiterates how views and  angles are never fully known. 

Millar is interested in the portrayal of human activity nestled within the vastness of nature. Confronting  nature’s sublime awe through symmetry and balance, his photographs challenge viewers to reconsider  what they always thought was familiar.  

His images are balanced and structured, almost symmetrical, which instills in the mind this idea that  everything is where it is meant to be. 

Justin M Millar is a professional drone pilot and photographer residing in Ottawa, Ontario. He was  awarded bronze at the Prix de Photographie de Paris (PX3), an honourable mention from the  International Photography Awards, shortlisted twice as Amateur Photographer of the Year, and holds an  Advanced Operations RPAS (remotely piloted aircrafts system) license. Millar dedicates most of his days  to advancing his craft. As a young single parent, Millar’s true objective is to provide a better life for his  son, and to remind him that no matter the difficulties one faces, there is no obstacle high enough to  stop him from achieving his dreams.

Creating art can be a powerful way to explore profound philosophical, intellectual, or sociopolitical ideas and everything in between. It can also be a means of navigating the inner recesses of the mind. No matter the intention, it's an invitation into the artist's world and point of view, which becomes whole and is represented completely once the work has been produced.

This piece, Untitled, for me, represents the ongoing process of obscuring oneself and in turn the surrounding world. This process involves our self-view, which is intrinsically linked to our view of others, and dictates how much of our being becomes free to be outwardly expressed. The process of being truly honest with ourselves and seeing our own authentic face is a lifelong journey with no end – only continual transitions. Our life and our expressions are a way to make sense of that. 

I welcome and encourage the viewer to experience the work with their senses, and to draw their own conclusions about what it means and portrays for them.

Julien Fontil, also known as ‘jules filmhouse’, is a multidisciplinary artist based out of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, whose practice flows seamlessly through the arenas of photography, writing, music and sound engineering. Entangled mainly in a world of surrealist exploration, his work is a reflection of a love for cinema, intellectually challenging art, as well as a deep demonstrating a respect for the auteurs who inspire his work, such as David Lynch and Edward Yang. Fontil’s impetus is to create within philosophical complexities between meaning/non-meaning, artistic intention versus viewer interpretation, and the power of emotionally-driven work.

This work is part of a personal exploration and reading of a changed and changing landscape. At the western edge of Ottawa, squeezed between the new DND campus, the 417, a chip manufacturer and a new LRT station, a debilitated wetland is being brought back to life.  This is a next generation landscape – inherently man-made yet wild and generative, supporting both the local ecology and the health of the water flowing across the city. 

It struck me as odd from my very first encounter with it.  It piqued my curiosity. Why is there a mature elm tree in the middle of a wetland?  Why do the ponds contain piles of branches – yet there are no trees nearby?  The landscape looked wrong – not in a bad way, it was clearly thriving, but in a way that suggested this place had a long history of interventions.   

After Ruskin, after Burtynsky, after the Anthropocene - what role can the landscape artist perform for society?  Do we lean into the horrors of climate change? Or do we escape to corners of the world that we can portray as untouched?

I choose to learn how to read the land, to understand its history, its value, and my place in it. I believe that when that connection is made, we can start to truly care for where we live. My role as an artist is to communicate my understanding and so foster connection with place.  While academics and scientists such as Tom Wessels and Oliver Rackham explain through their research and books how to read their landscapes; I aim to make the experience a visceral one. 

My work throws the new discontinuities in the landscape into relief.

Jon Stuart uses photography to collect and process delicate evidence which he uses to reveal meaning and sublimity in the apparently mundane. He captures images in Canada’s bitterly cold winters and the intense heat of its summers, creating rich portrayals of events that played out before the photographer arrived. Each scene contains clues to existence, presence, and place, not merely documenting physical locations, but places charged with significance.

Jon’s detailed photographs, whether landscape or portrait, seek to draw the viewer’s eye from object to subject, shifting their view from a “space on the ground” to a “place in the mind.”

Jon was formerly an accident investigator, and he employs these skills to inform and guide his practice. He presents his conclusions using a range of printing techniques, from the subtle gradations of silver-gelatin and pigment-ink to post-processed video stills.

With glamour photography the aim is always incitement and awe, attraction and the unorthodox.  Ultimately, the image is successful if it can fascinate the viewer and transport their spirit to a place of enchantment.  With its simple ambience and penetrating gaze, the image that I have chosen to present is far more sublime than visceral and strives to capture the “it” factor that so many fashion images possess.

I seldom am influenced by a solitary image, but rather from the collective inspiration of fashion photography as a whole and cohesive force.

The model was my wife in the studio in our Ottawa apartment in 2015.  As part of a practice for an upcoming shoot, I decided to try out a Hasselblad 500 series camera that I had borrowed from work.  The image derives from a 6x6 Kodak TMY-2 400 negative scan.  Being a predominantly digital shooter, I hoped that 12 frames in a roll of 120 would suffice.

The ideas were fun, and gradually the practice became a full-blown shoot.  The dress had a 50s ballgown quality to it’s design, and the hair and make-up ultimately delivered the punk styling that sought to pin the conservative against the rebellious. 

When I got the 12 images back from the processing lab, most of them were rubbish, with a few being passable, and only one possessing a little something special.  This image deserved further engagement, and inevitably a title, 50s Punk.

Anwar Massoud is a photographer and filmmaker.  He was on tour in Kabul, Afghanistan with the Canadian Armed Forces in 2005.  He graduated from Carleton University in 2006, with a Bachelor of Arts in Film Studies, and in 2009 with a Master of Arts in Film Studies. He also graduated from Sheridan Institute`s Advanced Television and Film Production program in 2009.  Massoud spent six years with the Defence Public Affairs Learning Centre (DPALC) instructing soldiers, officers, and Government of Canada communication’s personnel on audio/video production, digital photography, and graphic design.  Anwar is the lead photographer for MASLO Studios, and the founder of The LIPhE Project.

“Again” a part of the series “I’m So Tired” explores the communal shame of manufactured (man-made) structures in natural habitats and the confusing feeling of accepting something as helpful, whilst also feeling guilty. Guilty for needing them, for not knowing what it is to live without them. For instance, every time I drive the scaling length of the highway from one area to the next, I stare at the large green highway signs that illuminate the way. I stare, and I cannot see past them; they block me from the view I long for, the thing behind it. Yet they attend to me, like parents, forcing me the right way. I decided the best way to showcase my conflicted feelings was to stop for them. Freeze them in the flash, when they are the brightest and most prominent object in view. I did not want them to be something easily passable anymore. They are now the only thing you can look at, no more driving faster to peek behind the aluminium and plywood. 

Naomi Kronen is a multidisciplinary artist based in Ottawa, who has been exploring lens-based projects since 2016. Kronen examines nostalgia and mortality out of necessity, whilst utilizing humour and performance strategies to exhibit the unruliness and absurdity of life. Often using themselves as their own subject as it is the easiest way to properly invite the viewer to reflect and revisit their own selves. Naomi captures some images instinctually, while others are heavily conceptualized — both undergo the same experimental process of careful minor or major post-production and manipulation.

I am an emerging photo-based artist in Ottawa, Ontario. As a recent graduate of the University of Ottawa with an Honours Bachelor of Arts for a double major in English and Theatre, I am exploring the notion of writing and theatre in photography as a way to showcase things often unseen, while maneuvering through my own disability and mental health. My art is moving towards bringing light to invisible illnesses, and a common theme of my work is the idea of reflection and memory. My practice mainly consists of both digital camera and medium format film camera images, with the written word as supplementary to most projects.  Most recently, I have been experimenting with scanning of material objects, as reflected in EWP1, from the series Memories. The goal of this project is to produce digital negatives for cyanotyping in order to create a memory quilt. As someone who suffers from a mental illness, memory has always been something difficult for me to hold onto. By scanning these found objects of my past, I am hoping to reignite these memories, while adding an understanding of cyanotyping to my photographic arts skill set. I am a kinaesthetic learner, and find that doing things, really experiencing them, helps me to retain them better; it is my hope that by crafting these memories into a quilt, they will stick with me for awhile.

Alexandria Dawn Marie was born in London, and grew up across southern Ontario. Since 2009, she has dedicated herself to the arts, with numerous theatre productions under her belt, as well as her Honours Bachelor of Arts achieved at The University of Ottawa, in June of 2020, for her double major in English and Theatre.  Having fallen in love with photography in high school, Alexandria has been determined to develop a lens based skill set and practice of her own, exploring the notion of writing and theatre in photography as a way to showcase the unseen. She is using her art to bring to light invisible illnesses, and the theme of reflection and memory is often recurrent.

 A Mycophilic Discourse: Every cell is touched by fungi residing deep within

As a child, I learned that unknown mushrooms in the woods are forbidden. They grow where the fairies dance, and some are deadly. While I was cautioned of their unrecognizable properties, mushrooms depend on a cycle of decay. For fungi to grow, fungi death is present. Memento Mori (Latin "remember you must die") is a still-life practice dating back to Medieval Europe. Meditating on the perishable qualities – symbols of death – allows me to engage with my inevitable death. I learned to respect the threat of demise fungi carries. For me, adorning the image with more reminders of annihilation is redundant. Their delicate beauty lies in the space between birth and putrefaction. 

This image of a group of Shiitake mushrooms is part of a series shot for a book that explores the culinary, medicinal, magical, and scientific properties of fungi. Shiitake flourish in warm and humid climates. In nature, they prefer to colonize decomposing wood in forests with leaf shedding trees. 

Here, the camera magnifies its physiognomy by removing the object from its natural surroundings, in nature or food packaging. The neutral background acts as a stage on which the light falls to lift the mushroom, purposely arranged as a still life. The transience of the mushroom becomes the focus. 

While this group of fungi have long disintegrated into more spores for future generations, their preserved presence remains.

S. Maria Brandt is a German-raised Croatian emerging visual artist currently based in Ottawa. It is her passion to translate seemingly ordinary items into surprising ones. When she is creating imagery, she primarily aims to build a sensual bridge between subject and audience.