by Rhiannon Herbert
Thomas Gardiner’s photographs of Western Canada are as sure to resonate with anyone familiar with that part of the country as they are to linger in the imaginations of those who aren’t. Born in the Rocky Mountains and raised in Saskatchewan, Gardiner’s childhood in Regina and frequent trips to visit family in British Columbia are both retraced in his photographs of small-town community life.
Following an eye-opening trip to see the Ramones play their final tour in New York City, Gardiner has since alternately lived, worked and studied in Regina, Montreal, New York City, and Vancouver. He began photographing Western Canada during the summer of 2005 while visiting from New York, shooting with a used 4×5 camera. He has been working in 8×10 since 2011.
As any prairie expat can attest to, moving away from hometown turf and experiencing life in bigger cities (and other countries) yields any number of comparative insights. Gardiner has cited his experience of living in New York City as a major influence on his understanding of “hinterland” communities, and how they relate economically, culturally, and geographically to large metropolitan centers. These relationships and insights are mirrored at a personal level, as well: “Once you are removed from such an environment,” he says, speaking of Western Canada, “you become aware of how a (certain) sense of spatial orientation has been engrained in you when you try to relate to a new environment.”
In looking at Gardiner’s photographs, this awareness of a culturally and geographically learned spatiality feels apparent. They can be read as a visual account of landscape where the exercises of looking and documenting are part of a process of spatialized self-portraiture.
To my eyes, Gardiner’s photographs are brimming with the look and feel of small town life that one is only vaguely aware of while growing up, but which later sharpens into a very specific visual experience; a neotourist gaze on the imagined geography(ies) of home. In this way, what was formerly unremarkable, even disdained, can become weighted with a value beyond nostalgia. The banal grows authentic and beautiful when framed as elements in one’s own personal mythology, those origin stories that we tend to build after moving away and pursuing lives and careers elsewhere. “I think you realize the things that you might have disdained, for better or worse, are very much a part of your experience,” he explains, in responding to the phenomenon of the “ex-pat gaze.” “As far as approaching photography, I would say that I depend on all these aspects at any given time. Often a photograph for me is an exercise of remembrance, in that I may have an image of something that has been resonating with me as early as childhood. Or, sometimes I make a particular photograph because I am disappointed that I did not take a photograph of something I should have in the past, and so am constantly trying to recreate it in some way. Conversely, at times it is not about memory at all, but I am merely reacting to something in the moment and curious to see how it photographs.”
This curiosity has resulted in a collection of work that serves as an archive of Gardiner’s travels home, as well as a particular era and aesthetic of small community life. In the midst of Saskatchewan’s current economic transformation, the processes of urban development and gentrification are already visibly changing the physical and cultural landscape; the familiar iconography of grain elevators and small-town Main Street are giving way to new, often gentrified streetscapes, or simply disappearing altogether. “I almost never think of my images in this way,” Gardiner said when asked if he ever considers his role as a record keeper. “I still personally relate to most of the work that I’ve done in the past as something that is present, because it is something that is always ongoing and changing to me.”
What Gardiner does express is a keen awareness of issues such as racism and poverty, much of which I found to be evident in his work, as they are embedded into the Canadian landscape: glimpses of reservation life, racism in small towns, and the various visual signifiers locals decipher as implying open, closed, or contested spaces. “Race and class are something I’ve definitely spent a lot of time thinking
about going back and forth from Regina and New York,” says Gardiner, “but conveying the abstract complexities of how we talk about such issues within the medium of photography can be very tricky […] there is cultural baggage that is going to be there whether one tries to avoid it or not. The danger, I feel, is having the image reduced to a mere flagstick or placeholder within the framework of some abstract set of arguments. I think one should never completely trust the appearance of so-called visual cues, just as they should never judge a person based on the color of his or her skin.”
While interested in elements of history and geography in his photographic practice, Gardiner professes his greatest attraction is in elements of light and composition, and in the discovery of “what it is for me to make a satisfying image.”
“In the end,” Gardiner explains, “it is the sensory experience given by the (photographic) medium which motivates me.” So too does the possibility of meeting new people and making new friends: “I definitely do take deliberate steps to interact while out taking photographs ,” says Gardiner. “I think people are always curious to get to know other people and find ways to meet each other. Like sharing a cigarette outside the doorway of a building is an excuse for two people to kick up a conversation, my camera sometimes acts as a catalyst in a similar way […] I guess if I had to say anything about how this might inform my photographs, it is that the people I meet, whether in Waterbury, Connecticut, or somewhere in Pennsylvania or Alberta and Saskatchewan, to me they are familiar and accessible because I feel I have known them before.”
Rhiannon Herbert was born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. She studied Urban Planning, Human Geography, and Information Science at Universities of Calgary, Concordia, and McGill. She currently works as an archivist in Montreal, Quebec.
This article was originally featured in BlackFlash Issue 31.3.
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