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Title: |
Saskatchewan |
| Sub-title: |
Uncommon Views |
Search Result:
| Photographs by: |
John Conway By (author): Sharon Butala, David Carpenter, Helen Marzolf |
| ISBN10-13: |
088864454X : 9780888644541 |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pages: |
156 |
| Weight: |
.400 Kg. |
| Published: |
The University of Alberta Press - September 2005 |
| List Price: |
23.99 Pounds Sterling |
| Availability: |
Out of Print
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| Subjects: |
Photography & photographs : Photographs: collections : Saskatchewan |
| Decidedly quirky in their vision yet punctuated with breath-taking beauty these photographs rejoice in a Saskatchewan landscape known only to insiders. From brash to subtle, John Conway's keen eye for unusual detail, colour, and irony celebrates an unsung landscape with warm affection and brilliant light. With essays by Sharon Butala, David Carpenter, and Helen Marzolf, this fine blending of text and image will both surprise and invite wonder on the occasion of Saskatchewan's centennial. "John Conway's photos, startlingly original in their view of this province, have captured exactly what strangers have failed to see." Sharon Butala "These images speak eloquently to me of the hopes of people like my grandparents, hopes dashed and tattered and rising once again, upbeat and sassy." David Carpenter |
| Awards / Prizes: |
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AAUP Book, Jacket & Journal Show - AAUP 2005 Book, Jacket & Journal Show, Jackets & Covers
2006
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The Alcuin Society Citations for Excellence in Book Design in Canada - 2nd, Pictorial
2006
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| Reviews: |
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"John Conway's photos, startlingly original in their view of this province, have captured exactly what strangers have failed to see." -- Sharon Butala.
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"These images speak eloquently to me of the hopes of people like my grandparents, hopes dashed and tattered and rising once again, upbeat and sassy." -- David Carpenter.
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"An algae bloom on a sewage lagoon, a sign identifying 'greenleaf pubescent wheatgrass,' a golf course coloured entirely in shades of brown: the beauty in photographer John Conway's images of Saskatchewan is indisputable, but it's delivered with a hipster's taste for sly, intelligent humour and, yes, irony. If the Coen brothers had shot Who Has Seen the Wind, it would have looked something like this.” Stanley Brunst, Western Living Magazine, September 2005
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“Images of Saskatchewan invariably include sweeping grain fields and skies that go on forever, but Saskatoon photographer John Conway captures a side of the province not often seen in photographs. The result is a unique, unflinchingly intimate, look at the prairie landscape in Conway's first book Saskatchewan: Uncommon Views.” Jennifer Jacoby-Smith, Star Phoenix, October 1, 2005
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"[T]he University of Alberta Press has published John Conway's amazing collection of photographs, Saskatchewan: Uncommon Views. The fruit of 12 years of photographing the province's changing countryside, the collection is an unlikely centennial gift that grapples with the tensions between the provinces' collective imagination and the testament of the land. Conway's photographs are driven by questions: there is beauty here, yes, but it is not a pretty postcard in itself; rather, the beauty is a crowbar used to pry open our habitual way of seeing—the way we edit and ignore much of what we see around us. The result is a book that is soul-searching, ironic, invigorating, depressing, demystifying, and yet, in the end, that celebrates the enduring power of the place and the transformative potential of dreams
.Throughout, Conway records the land’s exquisite, subtle range of texture, as well as the centrality of the sky where the drama of light and clouds plays out. He captures, as few others have, the gorgeous clarity of winter light on the prairies—the pinkish-white light at the horizon dissipating to powdery cobalt—a light that moves me in ways that exceed mountains or seascapes." Christopher Wiebe, VUE Weekly, December 15, 2005
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"Don't be surprised if you find yourself chuckling as you turn the pages of Conway's Saskatchewan: Uncommon Views. His portrayal of the rural part of the province is both humourous and artistic....Conway's love for the province shows in each image. He makes an ordinary field of canola look like a shimmering golf course, and a pile of gravel in Eagle Creek a starkly beautiful landscape. An uncommonly moving portrait." The Globe and Mail, December 10, 2005
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Saskatchewan was named #13 in the Top 20 Saskatchewan Books for 2005 by McNally Robinson.
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"One of the raw photographs in John Conway's Saskatchewan: Uncommon Views is of a battered old feed grinder in a ditch along Highway 11 near Bethune. A fading '4-sale' sign is propped against the rusting machine overgrown in weeds. The relic--the result of someone's success, but more likely another's failure--is set against the uncertainty of brooding autumn clouds and an unfinished harvest. It's a piercing metaphor of what has forever been the reality of Saskatchewan. She's hard on the folks who live there. She blows nasty cold and sometimes so hot and dry that grasshoppers turn the roads to grease. There are twisters. It hails. Frosts come early. Winter stays late. The summers are glorious but short. When it rains, it's not enough or it's too much. She keeps her citizens guessing. Keeps them hopeful. You can work like a dog and still need lots of luck to make a go. It's a tough love that makes good people.... Conway's Uncommon Views is a favourite as it strikes so many familiar chords--places off even secondary highways, along dirt roads where the granaries, rock piles and rusty machinery are like little landmarks on your soul. He shot a big roadside sign along the Yellowhead Highway, in an empty lot in the Rural Municipality of Great Bent that read 'Future Home of Something.' The sign is gone. The empty lot --and the optimism--is still there. From the sodbusters until now, Saskatchewan has always been a 'next year' kind of place. It's a province that grapples with retaining its people while transforming from an economy where wheat was king to more diversified businesses. Change to the social is inevitable." Darron Kloster, The Victoria Times, Dec 4, 2005
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"We've all seen these places, but Conway gives them a weird iconic quality that is quite irresistible. Sure it's Saskatchewan, but it's cool. Text is spare but pithy, with two exceptional essays by Sharon Butala and David Carpenter." Margo Goodhand, the Winnipeg Free Press, Dec 18, 2005
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“Quirky like only Saskatchewan can be, it’s more than just a pretty coffee table picture book.” Tracy Doell, Planet S, November 24 2005
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