Apparitions

The Apparitions project is now officially underway.  The project description explains... An Exhibition of Black and White Silver Gelatin Prints Depicting Scenes that Conjure a Human Presence from the Past.

My friend Arturo and I are working jointly on the project.  It is a major undertaking and will take us a number of years to complete.  In fact we have already been shooting images for the project for the past couple of years, and will continue for a couple more.  But, the other aspects of the project are now officially underway.

We will shoot over a thousand images for the project and perhaps as many as two thousand.  From those we will select what we feel are the strongest 30 to 40 images and put together a travelling gallery exhibition.  All of the images will be taken on film and printed on silver gelatin paper by traditional analog methods.  These images will be professionally framed for presentation at gallery exhibitions.  

We hope to see the show tour to eight or more galleries throughout Western Canada.  We have a publisher lined up who is going to print a Fine Art Photography book containing around 100 of the images from the project.  The book is scheduled to go to press in late 2025.  The gallery exhibitions are intended to take place in conjunction with the release of the book, although some shows may be initiated a little in advance.

We have an agreement in place with a small but prestigious publisher of Fine Art Photography books, based in South America.  In fact we have already purchased the paper on which the books will be printed.

In addition to that we have commenced making some gallery submissions so that we can begin the touring exhibition for our show.  The galleries that we have submitted to so far are looking to book exhibitions for 2024 and 2025.  We have also just completed some grant applications in the hope that we can secure some funding for this ambitious project.  The overall budget will be five figures, so this is significant.  There will be some revenue in the form of gallery exhibition fees paid to artists, hopefully some print sales, maybe some donations, and eventually book sales.  But that will not be enough to fully fund the project so some expenses will be paid out of pocket by us as artists.  Hopefully some funding will minimize the out of pocket expenses.  If we are successful in our grant applications we may attempt to send the exhibition to galleries in other parts of Canada and the world.

This is all very exciting and I'm thrilled to be working on a project of such significance.  In the short term I'm really itching to see winter come to an end so that I can get out and shoot more images for the project.  Arturo and I have a trip to the West Coast planned for late 2023, and at some point this spring we hope to travel to southern Alberta.

The images below are examples of the type of subject matter will be included in the project.  Some of these date back to before the project officially began, while others are being considered for inclusion.