Alexis Marie: I have loved sharing the stories and inspirations of some truly interesting individuals during the InFocus 2016 show. Are you excited? Even through InFocus 2016 is already underway, it is not too early to begin preparing for InFocus 2017! In the fall, we will release the call for submissions and we would love to see your work. For now, I’m pleased to introduce one of our current and talented photographers, Hedy Bach.

Welcome Hedy!

Guest Post

As an imagemaker I study how things look and sound. I work daily with my camera and words to compose beautiful “thought things” as one way to form ideas to inspire reflection and rumination, perhaps start a conversation.

My photographs are almost all allegories about my understandings of human desire for settlement…of spaces and places in which people and things fit together. I try to negotiate my subjectivities of looking and composing my “thought things” with Scruton’s ideas of why beauty matters…to see the remedy of beauty as an instrument of peace.

On 12/6/15 I received a happy email from Alexis Marie Chute for this InFocus 2016 exhibition. I am humbled that my image entitled ‘Mason’ was chosen to be part of this years exhibit.

“Mason” 2015

Steve Butler’s apartment number movie

Sometimes BUT not always I see sounds first…when I saw this Mason jar at the Fort Edmonton…the words from Connor Zwetsch’s song “Candy Bars” came into my mind’s eye…

whisky and coke in our mason jars
to the year’s sweeter than candy bars
we crumble like the leaves

 In the room I imagined a “thought thing” for my blog post, which started conversations…here is one.

“Hi Hedy, I like the question mark that seems to follow that [Mason] image of yours for me. I felt like someone was just there. And yet it seemed deserted and it made me wonder what they were doing, and what did they do there, and was the water clean in an old jar or was it dirty water and why? Also I thought of Mason as in Stonemason, Mason bee, and of course mason jar. One definition I saw online was “to build from or strengthen with stone” and for me that was an interesting image next to the centerpiece of something made of glass. Anyway I enjoyed thinking about your photograph and all the different thoughts I had in doing so.”

“I’ve got icicles hanging” 2015

distance between Earth and the star Polaris in light years

it’s too quiet in here
and i’m beginning to freeze
i’ve got icicles hanging
from my knees
under fifteen feet of pure white snow (Nick Cave, 2001)

“Hold your breath” 2015

number of solar days in the mean tropical year

“Look carefully at the little girls you are teaching, Hedy, many will go missing or be murdered.”

These Elder’s staggering words have lingered for 10 years and continue to haunt me.

When I think of our missing and murdered Aboriginal women if not now, when? My image is part of The REdress Photography project lead by Mufty Mathewson.

“U” 2015

http://hedybach.tumblr.com/post/129449278387/u-hedybach

In celebration of St. Albert Photography Club’s 25th anniversary in 2017, my image ‘U” was selected for their submission to the ‘Art Gallery of St Albert’ art show.

“In my camera bag” 2015

http://www.streethunters.net/blog/2015/10/26/inside-hedy-bachs-camera-bag/

Hedy Bach is an award winning visual researcher, writer, and imagemaker. Hedy’s first book A Visual Narrative Concerning Curriculum, Girls, Photography Etc. was published in 1998 and explores the evaded curriculum in the lived experiences of high school girls through photography and story. Currently, she is working on a narrative nonfiction entitled Emeline which is a graphic novel being created by cutting up and reorganizing illustrations from cultural artifacts, photography, and literature.

http://sloppybuddhist.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hedybach

http://hedybach.tumblr.com/

https://500px.com/hbach