Many of the images in this series will be somewhat familiar to many of you. What may be unfamiliar however is the context around them, and the thought process that evolved while taking them.
Beginnings
“White Skies” began with several disjointed images taken over the span of a year.
After moving to Halifax in July of 2017, I quickly became accustomed to fully overcast days.
These overcast days were unlike the thick fog of my hometown on the Bay of Fundy - Saint John, NB. At first I viewed these days as simply days with perfectly soft light. As time went on, I began to think about the thick white clouds as canvases themselves.
an unguided discovery
In the winter of 2018 I found myself back at my alma mater, St. Francis Xavier University.
Under construction at the time was the Brian Mulroney Center Institute of Government - at this stage still just beams and bricks.
The site was previously home to Nicholson Hall - completely demolished and started anew.
I didn’t know it at the time, but this image would spark an interest in emptiness.. in what it meant for there to be nothing.
I find that the juxtaposition between the steel frame and the white sky describes the scale at which we occupy the universe. A building can feel so massively large when we’re inside, but when seen through a wider frame, it appears appear miniscule.
This effect is magnified when the ground is removed altogether - leaving only the subject and the white sky of nothing.
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To be quite honest, this photo was one of the first that actually sparked something in me after a long period of time away from photography. My camera had been tied up in a repair shop for most of fall, and winter sort of dampened the will to get out and shoot.
A series is forming?
As the spring/summer of 2018 rolled around, I began experimenting with the concept further.
While on a walk with a friend to Point Pleasant Park, I was struck by the grandeur that emanated from the Halifax Grain Elevator complex. A relic of times gone by (still partially used, as I understand) that towers over the South End of Halifax.
I thought about what this complex might have looked like in its heyday, and also about all of the the amount of material that flowed through its conveyors and silos.
“The Wall” - as some describe it - commands a presence over one of the least industrial areas of the Halifax Peninsula.
However, its presence is diminished with the introduction of something stronger - the endless sky of white.
In these images, I limited the size of the subjects so that they would only occupy corners or the very bottom of the frame.
The usual reference point of a base landscape is removed altogether, and instead the subjects are suspended on a large canvas of nothing.
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I feel that this can be a metaphor for what many of us feel at times - the emptiness that stems from ignoring our own hopes and dreams in order to fall in with the rest of society and the realities of the world we live in.
Sometimes I feel as though I’m suspended in the air, drifting along until something my foot catches.
Lift, Kind of.
Further along this 2018 walk, I captured an image that would set the base for a long lasting interest in the movement of things, and the scale at which we’ve developed over our natural world.
I find the flow of goods, and the lengths at which we as a society go to facilitate the transfer of goods to be fascinating.
Ships carry hundreds of containers that are so large that people are now using them to make homes out of.
Cranes - the size of large buildings - pick up these containers and send them and their contents away for consumption by the masses.
The contents end up on store shelves, in warehouses, and ultimately, in landfills.
Consumption for the sake of consumption has led to a rampant increase in the amount of “stuff” - stuff we’ll never be able escape, at least not in our lifetime.
All of this stuff will outlast us, and at what benefit?
The right moment
In June of 2019 I caught an opportunity that I had been waiting several months for.
I frequent the Halifax Seaport Market, and I had previously “framed” an image in my mind to take should lighting, and positioning happen to align.
Walking towards the Cunard Center from the market, one is struck by the scale of the port’s container cranes towering over the landscape.
With their booms raised, the cranes reach high into the sky.
These twins are representative of the scale at which our industries have been developed - an impressive, yet unsustainable scale.
In the previous image, the cranes are visible with context - the foreground gives the eye a reference point. In the next few images, the cranes are free of foreground and suspended in the white sky. No reference point exists with which to determine their size.
I find that this suspension in the sky can simultaneously reduce and highlight their grand scale.
The white sky outweighs the cranes in the frame and makes them appear small, though a closer look reveals human sized features, and the scale of the machine becomes apparent.
During the same shoot, I was lucky enough to encounter a bit of fog. The fog softened the line between the crane and the sky - suggesting a connection between the two.
We’ve become accustomed to large man made structures dominating our skylines, so much so that these massive structures simply blend into the sky and become familiar.
It wasn’t always like this, and I think we sometimes forget this.
Industry ⟶ Urbanism
I began to think more and more about these images becoming but a small piece of larger project.
At first, I thought about focusing on heavy industry in Halifax and across the maritimes - my home town of Saint John has similar cranes, and between the two cities I was sure to find many more examples of industrial subjects.
However, as time went on, I began to think about this series more and more as a reflection on the skyline, and what lies above us.
Cranes, industrial complexes, buildings - all of these obscure our connection with the sky, and nature.
These structures in the sky are our homes, but also our places of work and leisure.
We’ve built up instead of out to bring the core facets of our life in closer proximity to one another.
Building Up
As we build up, we must also think about the land that we’re building above.
Taller and taller buildings further and further remove their occupants from the bustling streets below, and result in large shadows, blocking out sunlight and a connection to the sky for those unfortunate enough to be caught below.
That’s not to say that tall buildings are inherently bad - just that we must consider their effects on the surrounding area.
This crane fell down. I published a series on that. Go check it out here.
Before
I believe that to chart a path to where we’re going, we must also consider where we have come from.
Before we had skyscrapers of glass and concrete, we had smaller, cosier buildings that maintained a connection between themselves and the streetscape below.
Ornate features atop some buildings acted as landmarks and guided us through our urban terrain.
What guides us now?
Before there were cranes, before there were skyscrapers, before there were humble brick abodes, there was just the natural landscape.
Nature is still with us, though we have forgotten it, and betrayed it, and irreparably hurt it.
Skies become whiter with every passing storm - storms that appear at an accelerating rate brought on by the negative side effects of our actions on our tiny planet.
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We are but the subject in the corner of a much larger frame, yet we have caused the entire frame to become unbalanced.
How will you help balance the frame?
