I can’t seem to get a grip on the idea that I belong to any specific place, and I try to embrace the radical accident of my geographic associations. I live in Vancouver now but grew up in Calgary and lived for two decades in between those points in France, Ontario, Tokyo, Scotland, Newfoundland, and New York. My family has been in Alberta for five generations but were originally an impassive array of wanderers from a variety of Northern places and their connection to each other as well as to the place where they eventually settled seems quite random. It’s funny to think of the way you can be situated, but randomly. Maybe it’s a kind of aleatory process; I could have been anyone.

The fact that I live in Vancouver now seems to me like a kind of crazy inverse holiday; I routinely go off elsewhere and am always so happy to return. My connection to place becomes social. The border is a man in an outfit.

image: http://sperone.free.fr/

Documentary based photography of regional Festivals and Canadian Landscapes by Garett Walker.

Garett has travelled across Canada several times documenting the artifacts of regional and culteral heritage. He has an BFA in fine art photography from Ryerson University and is returning this fall 2009 to begin his MFA in Documentary Media studies. See more of his work at www.garett-walker.com