“And light has no weight, Yet one is lifted on its flood, Swept high, Running up white-golden light-shafts, As if one were as weightless as light itself, All gold and white and light.”
-Lawren Harris.
Few architectural building types are as intrinsically knit into Ontario's cultural identity as the cottage. Cottages aren’t uniquely Canadian, but they do hold a special place in our hearts and minds. From Castle Frank, the 1790s summer residence of Upper Canada's first Lieutenant Governor John Grave Simcoe, to the proliferation of summer cabins in Ontario's cottage country throughout the 1900s, these wilderness retreats have become synonymous with Ontario and our vision of the Canadian landscape – part of our collective identity and a yearly tradition for many Ontarians. “Cabin in the Woods” is a collection of images that captures the light, texture, and atmosphere of a traditional cottage built on the shore of Georgian Bay in the Canadian Shield dating from 1918 when the first cabin was constructed.
This project is part of the tradition of landscape, documentary, and fine art photography exemplified by the Group f64 (Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham) in the 1950s. The images in “Cabin in the Woods” are influenced by Walker Evan’s book “Message From the Interior”, Mario Giacomelli’s book “The Black Is Waiting for the White”, and Mona Kuhn’s monograph “ Private”. These works all point to the importance of place, of memory, of light, and the spaces we inhabit. Everywhere you look there is a painting by the Group of Seven, but what you notice most is the light, filtered through the whispering pines, warmed by the pine boards of the cottage interior.