Contemporary Photographer Series - Jessica Auer

 

Skogafoss, Iceland, 2011 © Jessica Auer

Jessica Auer earned her MFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University. Her documentary-style landscape works are held in many institutions including the Musée de Beaux Arts du Québec, Canada Council Art Bank, and Cirque du Soleil. Jessica is a co-founder and board member at Galerie Les Territoires and teaches photography at Concordia University and Champlain College St. Lambert. She was recently interviewed by Megan Cottage for our ongoing Contemporary Photographer Series (CPS).

Much of your work focuses on themes that connect a particular place with the cultures you experience there. How did your interest in this subject begin?

I think it really just comes down to being a curious person - curious about exploring the world and having an interest in how people inhabit and experience certain places. There was however a defining moment for me when I was quite young that brought photography and landscape together for me. Shortly after I turned 10 years old, my parents separated, and as a consolation my father bought me a 35mm Nikon camera. He also told me to pack a bag and be ready to leave the next day - I would be traveling with him throughout the summer and all that I needed was a small bag of clothes, a book and the camera. So began my first cross-Canada road trip. Day after day, I experienced a cinematic view of this country from the front passenger seat. I witnessed the changes of the landscape as we traversed the geography of a diverse country, snapping photos of everything from roadside attractions to black spruce forests and the trains that often glided alongside the Trans Canada Highway. The further we got west, the more aware I became of the people who lived in or were visiting these places, and it was then that I learned, for the first time about the culture of nature. I think that once you look past the beauty of landscape, it becomes more interesting to look at how we people are connected to these places.

 

Hvalsey Church, Greenland, 2014 © Jessica Auer

You are from Canada, however you travel all over the world to photograph. What are some of the challenges you face as a photographer doing this type of work?

While I consider myself to be extremely fortunate to be able to travel so much, there are indeed some challenges. Firstly, there is of course the cost and I'm always struggling to raise enough money to finance these trips and find cost-efficient ways of traveling. Fortuntately there are grants available for artists, especially in Canada, as well as a lot of funded residency opportunities abroad. I spend quite a bit of time writing grant and residency applications, and that eventually pays off. In terms of being a photographer, I shoot on film so I always have the anxiety that something could go wrong and I wouldn't know about it until I got back home and processed my negatives. Airport security is also a challenge because of the danger of x-ray damage to unprocessed film. I used to ask for hand inspection of my film but airport security has often refused, especially for sheet film that is packaged in boxes. So I now put all my film in a good quality lead bag and let it go through the carry-on luggage x-ray. So far this method seems to be working fine. If I can process my film abroad as I'm traveling, I will do that, but most of the time I have to wait until I get back home to see the results. Carrying all my gear can also be quite a workout and it seems that every trip I take, I end up towing more and more stuff, especially now that I also work with video. But I learn how to be a better packer with each trip I take.

What artists have influenced you in your thinking, your photographing, and your career choices?

The first artists that had a huge impact on my practice were the German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, whose works I was introduced to and studied thoroughly during my undergraduate studies. Although I relate to their subject matter, it was their methodical process and discipline - almost to the point of obsession - that really inspired me. Like most sincere artists, I believe that they had that drive whereby they just couldn't help but make art, to some kind of point of exhaustion, and I really admire that. To address your question about career choices, I don't think there were any artists that led me to make those decisions. These are some of the decisions that are best taken with one's own intuition.

Hiking the Plain of Six Glaciers, 2013 © Jessica Auer

You often produce videos of different places and how the people there interact with these landscapes. What is your motivation behind this segment of your work and how is it different from the motivation behind your photographs?

I think you are referring to my Studies on How to View Landscape series, where I set up a video camera to record the actions of sightseers and various viewpoints in Banff National Park. I began this project while on an artist residency at the Banff Centre and I like to use residencies as an opportunity to explore new processes. In this case it was working with video. I naturally gravitated to people as the main subject because they move around, unlike so many of the landscape subjects I've been photographing. I would capture groups of tourists visiting some of the busiest viewpoints, recording for about 20 minutes at a time. Then I would go back to my studio and study the footage, selecting some of the more poignant scenes. I enjoyed this process because I got to really examine all the moments that make up a scene, something that is missing within the still photograph. There is also a more voyeuristic approach to this work so when the audience sees it, the idea of looking at someone looking is enhanced, and I like to get the viewer to consider their own habits as a tourist, sightseer and spectator. 

You just spent a few months in Europe shooting photographs. What cities did you visit and what type of work should your audience expect from this trip?

I recently came back from an epic trip that began in Iceland in January, where I was an artist in residence at the Skaftell Centre for Visual Art in a small town named Seyðisfjörður. The type of work I did there was a departure from most of my research-based, documentary work. My project was based on a structured process that involved a lot of walking. The series is certainly about the landscape but just as much about my personal experience of wandering and exploring in the low light and tough conditions of winter. 

After one month in Iceland, I travelled to Visby in Sweden and spent a week installing my exhibition Before History at the Gotland Museum of Art. Then I continued on to Lofoten, Norway where I did a second, shorter residency. I've been researching and photographing this area of Norway for a few years with a particular interest in a ship called the Hurtigruten, which brings tourists along Norway's breathtaking coast, north of the Arctic Circle. I decided to take a short journey on the ship to scout out the possibility for a more extensive project in the future. Finally, my travel itinerary ended in Berlin, which was really the only big city I visited during those two months. Berlin has become one of the most significant cities for contemporary art so I wanted to check out some of the galleries and museums. I'm really grateful to have had the time off other types of work to focus on making new work during this recent trip to Europe. Now I'm quite engaged with the editing process, and revisiting all of these places through my images.

Strandarfjall (January 19th, 2015) © Jessica Auer