Sylvia Galbraith (Fergus, ON)
Print #1, edition of 10, 2024. Archival pigment print, from a unique silver-gelatin photograph modified using the mordencage process, 8 x 10 in.
Bio
Sylvia Galbraith is a photographic artist working in digital and analogue photographic processes. Her photographs demonstrate a deep connection with the landscapes and people found in Canada’s loneliest places. Galbraith has participated in residencies in Newfoundland, Banff, Northern Ontario, and Iceland and has an extensive exhibition record.
Galbraith is active in the arts community; she has served on the Board of the Elora Centre for the Arts (ON) and is currently their exhibition curator. She is a member of several Arts Councils, and Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography in Toronto. She arranges exhibitions for various venues throughout the GTA and is involved with the Contact Photography Festival in Toronto, both as an artist and a curator. Galbraith has taught photography courses throughout Canada, including for the University of Toronto, University of Brandon (MB) and Humber College, and was an Associate Faculty Member for Conestoga College’s Photography Certificate Program for 12 years.
Artist Statement
As a child of immigrants, I have often felt out of place; questioning inherited ideas of belonging within the context of immigration and settlement. I am drawn to remote communities where people have lived for generations, demonstrating a bond with their environment which keeps them firmly in place. What it is about these hard places that brings out this loyalty and refusal to move somewhere easier? Why are they so rooted, and I am not? I consider the emotional layers that shape our sense of belonging, and my own connections to the landscape - the physicality of the ground beneath me, the stability and constancy of rocks that are millions of years old, the reassurance of things remaining in place.
Recently we have experienced a worldwide shift in many ways; our commonly-held beliefs in political, societal and environmental systems have been shaken, leaving behind a sense of instability and disquiet in a world we can no longer trust. My artistic practice has experienced a major shift as well; returning to the darkroom, I have a renewed interest in the analogue processes that informed my earliest work. These methods demonstrate the physical and tactile nature of a photograph - a reflection of physically being in the landscape. The ephemeral quality of these processes complements the nature of my subject, in that light, landscape and human situations are transitory and will not last.