Conceptual nominee

Inspired by M. Oliver’s poem Wild Geese “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”, this series is about surrender.
There is a human story in an unmade bed.
The dent in the pillow, creases in the sheets, the way blankets or duvets fall across the bed or even to the floor.
Visible traces our bodies leave after the passage of our time there.
In our beds we give over to sleep.

It is the soft animal that dreams, unaware of how we move, what we look like or how we sound.

It is the high heat of mid afternoon blunted by the density of leaves; the smell of last night’s rain still clinging to the shadows and it is the sun finding its way down through openings made by shifting currents of air, visible only by the evidence of dancing branches.

It is the soft animal that yields to this wonder,
that which is without our control, something unknown to us yet inherently a part of us.

Nature is the unconscious; nature is the dream.

These images were all made on site in France using the technique of double exposure in camera.

I was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1973. My background is varied, an honours degree in History, a master’s in architecture. I never studied photography formally, but design school was a rigorous training ground. This is where I developed my belief that architecture is integral to how we feel and to the broader human experience. It conveys messages to our senses even if we are not consciously aware of the impacts. Buildings communicate. If they cut us off from nature, we are depleted spiritually. If they connect us, we are enriched and satiated.

My life has been shaped by three major events. The first was winning a research prize to study, in person, exemplary hospital design in Europe, which prompted me to leave the practice of architecture. The second, was my first public photography exhibition which examined the concept of safety in an emergency mental health unit, cementing my belief that photography was my medium for self-expression. The last event was a move to Europe. This cultural shift pushed my projects in new directions with the framework of inquiry remaining the same. Architecture has the power to negotiate our relationship to nature and ourselves.