Poster photo of the Dempster Highway for Library Horizons Exhibit. Sylvie has also just published a photography book, Emotions. With over 170 images in colour, it depicts a year in the life of Nature along the TransCanada Trail in the west of Ottawa (Stittsville)
HORIZONS
A Photographic Voyage
Horizon: visual limit beyond which the eye can no longer see and the imagination takes over to create worlds to discover, hopes, fears and emotions to experience; landmark, close or far, that allows us to situate an object, to have an idea of time by looking at the sun, to know where are the here and there. It is a moving limit never to be reached, a line that backs up with every one of our steps forward, defying us, inviting us to take one more step, always.
The horizon conjures images of landscapes with sky and Earth to which are added an infinity of elements, lines, shapes and colours. The horizon is the open sea, the barely visible forest in the far distance, the cityscape at the end of a vast meadow or the high, snow covered peaks of a mountain range. It means the adventure born from the unknown with all its appeal, its attraction and the worries it creates. It is, for me, an irresistible call to travel; a call to go further, to explore, to take one more step, then another one. For the photographer that I am, it is a promise of thousands of images, of things to look at, of angles under which to capture the infinite beauty of a place, the perfect moment when the sky and the Earth and all it bears are in perfect harmony before the eye and the soul. There is then this possibility of sharing with the viewer, the renewed hope with each photograph to banish indifference.
I put an “s” in Horizons because my invitation to this photographic voyage is not limited to geographic travel, not limited to images taken here and there, not limited to the representation of the line separating sky and Earth. Rather, this exhibit invites you to voyage past the limits of the traditional landscape, of the physical destination, of the representation of the horizon as a line. These images of century old stones, near horizon that surrounds a closed universe represent a profound spirituality.
This is a totally different voyage. These are totally different horizons born in an enclosed space that opens upon an infinite world, contains it, calls it and suggests it through immense vaults, stained glass windows, the fragile sparkle of a candle or the splash of coloured light on the stones, indications of the deep faith of the hundreds who built these sanctuaries. And this horizon, it is in you that you’ll find it.
May my images, be they of landscapes or of interiors, take you on this other voyage, deeper, quieter, more intimate, this venture into the world of yearnings and dreams, in the world of memories linked to these places that maybe you have visited or that you have heard about, in the world of spirituality, forgetting all else in front of beauty and serenity. The horizon of this voyage is no longer determined by a line drawn between heaven and earth but by your own yearnings and history, by your most secret and intimate world.
I wish you, my friend, from the centre of my soul, the happiest of voyages!
(0)Dislikes
(0)