Meditations on Place

Photographs by Patrick Close

Patrick Close is one of the senior photographers working in Saskatchewan. His panoramic prints describe a still and silent place. On the surface, they record the Great Plains landscape in astonishing variety. Private, minimal and formal, they are Close's exhaustive notation of the parkland aspen bluffs of Central Saskatchewan and the spare, stark grasslands of the extreme south. The technology used by Close re-activates the equipment and methodology of another time: he carries a large banquet-style camera equipped with 8" x 20" negatives into the landscape, then carefully sites his view. In the darkroom, he re-enacts the alchemy and the appearance of historical photographs. His materials and techniques align his work with the Pictorialists of the last century and the work of early Saskatchewan photographers William James and Leslie Saunders. The nostalgic effect is disrupted by Close's unorthodox 'views' of an ungorgeous, unphotogenic landscape, marked by the geometric tracks of agricultural equipment on the land or natural gas pipeline markers or a flattened, in-your-face pattern of foliage. By interjecting uncertainty into what appear to be straightforward panoramic photographs of the land, Close's meticulously crafted panoramas issue an effective, if covert, critique of the dominant landscape construct of the region's historically based visual art practices. 

Organized and circulated by the Dunlop Art Gallery.