There is a curious feeling in the anticipation of visiting a new place for the first time, be it foreign and remote or just around the corner from your house. It’s two parts excitement with a dash of fear. These deep-seated feelings are tied to a sense of self-discovery. When you arrive in a new environment, you also arrive at a new place within yourself. It brings to mind the popular Chuck Palahniuk quote, “If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?”
In a Place, the second exhibition in Gallery 44’s new Production Gallery space, brings together work by three artists whose photographs portray places of deep personal significance. Eric Garsonnin’s images of the Gaspésie picture the less-observed hibernal landscape to reveal the austerity of this favorite Québécois summer vacation-spot. Through these barren landscapes, Garsonnin investigates how people have come to live on the forbidding, narrow swath of land created as the Appalachians plunge into the Atlantic. Similarly, Sylvia Galbraith explores Bonavista, Newfoundland, a place she was recently immersed in during a summer residency. Her images document the quirky, optimistic and humourous reactions to the communal process of making a home in a difficult place. This feeling of home is also central to the work of Robert Caspary. The polygonal forms of his collages points to what exists is beyond the camera, and brings an awareness to the potency of memory as he explores moments in his house, neighbourhood and the lower east side in Manhattan, in search of capturing a feeling of home.
Though documenting these intimate locations, the artists reveal things about themselves through their connection to place. Observing the different environments they explore we can’t help but imagine what it would be like to visit those places and what part of ourselves we would find there.