ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The Alberta Society of Artists is pleased to present the solo exhibition “Quiet Light” featuring the work of Alberta artist Cameron Young.

The exhibition runs February 1-29, 2024, at the Calgary Public Library, 800 3 St. SE, Calgary, Alberta. 

I photograph the landscape with a pinhole camera. The process is unhurried and contemplative. Surrounded by the quiet light, I record the scene before me. 

The pinhole camera’s tiny, fixed aperture creates a soft infinite focal plane, a canvas. The minuscule amount of light entering the camera requires a lengthy exposure that pushes the images into the terrain between landscape and dreamscape. The wind blows, the clouds move, the earth turns – each image is a living record of a moment in time. 

Its allure is in its very simplicity, a box with a tiny hole in it creating an image. No lens, no viewfinder, no shutter. It is a purely optical phenomenon, unadorned by modern technology. 

I uncover the pinhole and the film receives the image, one I cannot see, slowly and silently recording the scene as I will remember it, not as it actually was. It the camera sees with the odd clarity of dreams or memory. 

These are my attempts to capture the feeling of stillness and tranquility that reside in the quiet wilderness landscape. These photographs, like memories, are sometimes sharply detailed and at other times vague.

 

– Cameron Young

The Artists

Cameron Young is a Calgary-based photographer whose artistic practice focuses on lens-less photography and alternative photographic processes. Learn more about Young’s various photographic processes on his website’s blog linked below: