SUNDAY, APRIL 29, 2007 Η TORONTO STAR Η G9
PHOTO FINISH
Collaborating with nature
LEE DAVIS CREAL LOOKS FOR DRAMA AND WHIMSY IN NATURE, SAYS DONNA YAWCHING
Sitting in a bright sunroom in her Danforth home, Lee Davis Creal is surrounded by what she calls “nature’s art.”
Old Mother Nature may not actually have snapped the neatly matted photographs lying on the couch, but she is certainly responsible for the subject mat- ter: surreal whorls of ice, with glistening striations, formed in sheets along the edge of a river in the wilderness.
“Isn’t this amazing? I was just blown away,” exclaims Creal, with infectious enthusiasm. “I was just fascinated by the for- mations. I’d never seen anything like it.”
Creal, 61, doesn’t consider herself an artist, but she’s always had a “strong interest” in art, and this is not the first time her love of nature has taken her in artistic directions.
Her little Sony digital camera is her constant companion. In the past, she has done series of photographs on frogs, sheep, starfish and ancient Scottish stones. “I’ve always taken pho- tos,” she says, “whenever I’m just caught by something.” Most of her past efforts have been turned into cards, or framed for gifts; but the “ice” series is destined for bigger things
— literally.“I’m going to be working with them for awhile,” she says. “I want to explore how big I can make them. I think these could be spectacular framed photo- graphs.”
AARON LYNETT/TORONTO STAR
Lee Davis Creal creates her own décor with nature photography, much of it taken around Sanctuary North, a rustic holiday escape for refugees in cottage country. Her latest project is a series of photos of ice formations during spring thaw on the lake, top.
| There’s little doubt that, even- | world is nurtured by a property | started six years ago. | Canadian wilderness” — during |
| tually,theywillbeastrikingwall | called Sanctuary North, which | Situated along the York River, | the summer, obviously. |
| adornment in her home, amidst | she and her husband, retired | near Bancroft, Ont., the small | Small groups of refugees and |
| her | humanities professor Michael | cottage on 40 hectares offers | volunteers from five different |
| lection. | Creal, manage on behalf of a | new refugees to Canada the op- | refugee communities reserve |
| Creal’s affinity for the natural | portunity to “experience the | days to visit the cottage, and |
help to maintain and develop it. “It’s
Not surprisingly, Creal follows through with her love for natural art even in the midst of the wilderness. She has decorated the cottage walls with a series of framed photographs, taken by a friend, of the wildflowers found in the area.
“It’s a way of educating (the visitors) about the environ- ment.”She thinks homemade art is easy to achieve these days — digital cameras offer
For Creal, the crucial ingredient to this kind of art is spontaneity — an openness to the beauty that surrounds us every- where.
“Nature is just full of surpris- es,” she says. “I guess you can create your own images, but when you think of so much that’s already there. . .I think if you actually go out looking for photographs, you don’t get them. It just happens.
“It’s just about being alert, vi- sually, to what’s around you.”Frame work
PHOTOS ARE NOW A FOCAL POINT FOR HOME DÉCOR,WRITES CHRISTOPHER HUME
Until 20 years ago, when artists started trading in their paintbrushes for cameras, photography wasn’t considered art. Now it’s the stuff of curators, critics, collectors and dealers around the world.
“I think it’s exciting on a number of fronts,” says one of those dealers, Toronto’s Stephen Bul- ger. “The surge of activity started when contemporary artists started using photography as a means of delivery. But then people grew interested in other photographers, like Diane Ar- bus and Robert Frank.
“After that they started to look at work done by European experimental photographers be-
The critical factor is the date of the print; generally speaking, the earlier the better. Consider that an unlimited number of copies can be made from one negative, and you can see why connoisseurs prefer vintage. “A vintage print is a photograph made at the same time the negative was made,” Bulger says. “A lot of people are interested in the very first photograph. It has more historical significance. Andre Kertesz’s vintage prints sell for $1 million, prints from the 1950s and ’60s are $80,000 and prints around 1980 are
These pictures, by the late Canadian photographer Richard Harrington, documented Inuit life in the 1950s. With the interest in the printed image growing, collectors of art are giving the brush to paintings while keeping a keen focus on the photography market.
tween the two world wars. Now the market is huge.” Though prices for photographs can’tmatchthoseforOld Masters, Impressionists and
But as Bulger explains, there’s more to the printed image than meets the eye. For example, the same piece by, say, the late American landscape photogra-
worth about $40,000. But because of its reproducibility, you can always buy an original.
“Vintage prints have an authenticity to them, a patina. But if you’re just starting, or working with a lower budget, you can still buy an original photograph. Each is worth its price.”
And as demand grows, so does interest in photographers who never thought of themselves as artists. Arbus, for example, took picturesforbooksandformagazine articles, some of which she also wrote.
“Though vintage Arbus works are very hard to find – and very expensive — posthumous prints are now being made in editions of 75.
“It’s a much more global market place now,” Bulger contin- ues. “When I go to art fairs, 90 per cent of the material I put on the wall in places like New York is Canadian. Fifteen years ago, I wouldonlyhaveputupprintsby famous photographers, such as Ansel Adams and
“As for Jeff Wall, whom I don’t even consider a photographer, demand for his work is unbe- lievable. There are people aroundtheworldwhothinkhe’s the best.”
The
Canadian photographers is Richard Harrington. Though not as celebrated as some, Har- rington was one of a handful of practitioners hired by the National Film Board’s Still Division to document Canada.
Bulger rightly calls him “one of the great figures of Canadian photography.”When he died in 2005, he was best known for a series of portraits he produced in the 1950s that depicted native life in the Canadian Arctic. The pictures, which showed starving Inuit,
caused a national scandal. Half a century later, they have lost none of their power to enlight- en, engage, as well as to disturb. “He was a humanist, and also interested in culture,” Bulger says. “He wasn’t just a journalist but a social documentarian.” Bulger has organized a retrospective of Harrington’s work that will run at his gallery, 1026 Queen St. W., from June 14 to July 21. It will include some of the photographer’s famous Arctic pictures, as well as others taken in China and the Far East.