Dead Rose Bud on Ice (2016) Photography by Linda Hegland

I was born in England, grew up on the prairies of Alberta, and now live on the East Coast of Canada. Also a writer and poet, my work is inspired by place and my relationship with it. I was first introduced to photography when, at the age of twelve, I was given a Brownie box camera. The camera had a partially used film in it when it was given to me, and it didn’t take me long to finish the half dozen shots left on it. There was no money to get more film so from that day onward I took pictures with an empty camera.
I was voracious, starved for images. I ‘took’ pictures of the sides of old barns, my cat, the dandelions before they turned to floss, the laundry capering on the line, dead ants, my mother’s lily-of-the valley, windows, peeling paint. Despite there being no film on which to view again the captured image when developed, the motion of ‘photographing’ allowed me to find the interstices. Those in-between places, those moments and places suspended in time – like insects in amber.

It was an opening, a beginning to my life with image – a threshold I had stepped over. I am a prize-winning photographer and my photos have been chosen for community publications and the banners that hang from lamp-posts along city streets and bridges.

I have broadened my ‘eye’ by exploring digital photo-artistry, which allows me to explore my creativity more fully in the rendering of my images; and assists in my search for the essence of place.

What I see in the viewfinder is my relationship with place and image. The less evident teachings of nature interest me the most. I like my photographs to grant the awareness of seeing a world we don’t normally see – the invocation of a ‘thin place’.
I make photos that call attention to things that other people overlook. This exploration of the overlooked helps me to engage more deeply with where I am in place. I look for the light within the shadows and the uncommon in the common. This sometimes means that the subject, be it landscape or something else, can become abstract, evocative, a reminder that I may be creating an ‘other’ place when I photograph it.

I generally go into the field without any pre-conceived plans or idea of what it is I will be photographing. Photography is a quest for me, an exploration. I will creep through forests, sit at the edge of waters where it laps at the shore. I will peer closely at dead seed pods, or the texture of a stone, or the spun glass quality of a dragonfly’s wing. I want to absorb the light, the colours, the shapes and textures like my skin absorbs sunlight. It is through this process that I can hear what the subject says to me. It is from this intimacy that I identify what needs to be photographed and what it is that I need to emphasize.

It is my hope that my imagery moves beyond the sphere of photography and embodies a painterly approach and aspect.
Ultimately I want people to see the poem in the image.

• Nationality: CANADA
• Date of birth : unknown date
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary Canadian Artists