Cariboo Chilcotin portrait project
Visual Arts
Camosun College Visual Arts technician and photographic artist Bob Preston spent his June vacation creating the Cariboo Chilcotin Portrait Project in the Williams Lake area (before the fires) photographing over 300 people. He then exhibited the portraits, for the month of July at the Station House Gallery in Williams Lake.
“I enjoy photographing people and I wanted to get away from my comfortable Victoria existence and challenge myself. I knew that going somewhere unfamiliar and photographing people in a place I didn’t know and with a very strict timeline would provide the sort of sink or swim situation that makes you grow as a person and as an artist.” Using Williams Lake as his base Preston photographed people from as far west as Alexis Creek and east to Likely and Horsefly as well as Sugar Cane and Williams Lake. He covered a lot of miles, five first nations’ reservations and many assorted ranches in between. “I was literally a visiting artist,” Preston says of his time in the Williams Lake area. He also felt lucky to have received a modest Canada Council grant to pay for travel, living and supply costs for his project.
Former Camosun Visual Arts grad, Leah Selk, who now works as gallery coordinator at the Station House Gallery, provided the initial impetus for the project. “Leah emailed last fall and suggested I submit for an exhibition. I didn’t want to just send them work I had already done and shown. I wanted to do something specific to the area. I have always wanted to do a project where I go in to a community and try to create a multifaceted portrait of the area by photographing a large number of individual people. I saw this as an opportunity to possibly do that.” As it turned out, the selection committee loved the idea and saw it as an art project that could engage the whole community. And, because of the scope of the project the committee gave Preston both the main and upper gallery areas at the Station house, which they usually split between two artists.
The Exhibition opened on July 8th, Preston arrived in Williams Lake on June 11th and after photographing for two weeks, he returned to Victoria to print and mount his photographs, then went back to hang the show and be there for the opening.
“I photographed everyone with a digital camera, but in certain situations I also used the large format film cameras that I construct myself.” A situation where he used his own cameras was during the two, free, formal portrait shoots that were held in a makeshift photo studio set up in an empty storage room at the Station House. “For the most part though I wondered around and captured people in their natural environment whether it was at work, on the street, in a coffee shop or at their home.”
“I engaged a lot of people in the area, far more then I actually photographed. Through it all the staff and board of the Station House were very helpful and supportive. All the people I approached to photograph thought that what I was doing was a great idea, with numerous people expressing their interest in seeing the final show and what an outsider’s perspective of the area’s people would look like. An excerpt from the thank you letter the Station House sent me after the exhibition, I think, sums up the project’s success.”
“We were very impressed with how you managed to capture a well rounded selection of people, yet were still specific in capturing individual personalities. Many people made a point to come back for seconds and thirds, thrilled with how many faces they recognized.”
Preston says he found meeting and working with so many different people very rewarding and is looking forward to doing more of this kind of art project in the future.
Bob Preston is a CUPE employee who has worked at Camosun in the Visual Arts department for the last 10 years.
