Correspondences, a new exhibit at the Shenkman Arts Centre until April 18, 2025, is truly a product of community building in almost every way possible. The exhibit, presented by members of the Kinship Photography Collective, invites viewers to rethink their relationship to the world around them—whether that’s the natural world, or their communities.
The Kinship Photography Collective is a global community that invites photographers to deepen their connections to the natural world and each other through community collaboration, according to their website. Ten artists across Canada, all part of the collective, focused on their relationship to place and space to create this exhibit.
Jon Stuart, a local photographer featured in the exhibit, says the work draws upon the book, Correspondences by Tim Ingold, and is an invitation to cultivate a deeper connection with the more-than-human world.
“As we’re in the environment, we see things and react, and the environment reacts to us. Each of our pieces are a story of that type of interaction—a correspondence between us and the world,” he says. “We recognize that this land has been stewarded by the Algonquin people for millennia, and we feel that this idea of stewardship and correspondences are quite connected, in that stewardship requires an understanding and response to the land with respect and listening.”
Correspondences at the Lalande+Doyle exhibition space at Shenkman Arts Centre. Photo provided by Jon Stuart.
Stuart photographed a local hydro corridor in Craig Henry, where community members had taken the time to open up gardens and cultivate the green space together.
“It was kind of audacious in that it wasn’t done with disrespect, but it was done knowing that Hydro Ottawa could come in and say, ‘Well, we better move some towers, so all of this has to go.’ People did it anyway, and as they did that, there were also some wild areas that developed, either on purpose or by accident, as gardens extended out into it,” he says. “I felt there was a pride in how people were using it, but also a very organic sense of belonging to no particular organization. There was a community that was just rubbing elbows and getting on.”
Jon Stuart’s work in Correspondences. Photo provided by Jon Stuart.
Stuart says the theme of Correspondences also meant community-building during the photography process with other artists.
“As we went down the path of talking about our ideas and each other’s work, I saw a lot of changes in how people were approaching subjects and points of view. So throughout it, everybody’s work developed,” he says. “There’s been a lot of relationship-building out of it. We don’t have an intent to necessarily stay as a group, for group’s sake, but we will absolutely build on those relationships, and maybe another show will emerge.”
Other artists featured in the exhibit are Sasha Chapman, Valerie Chartrand, Jim Lamont, Victoria Laube, Leah Mowers, Kim Manley Ort, Richard Robesco, Vera Saltzman, and Ruth Steinberg. Together, they photographed everything from the expansive landscape of Alaska’s pipelines to how the trees and rocks wrap around each other along the Niagara River.
“The driving force has been the exhibition, rather than being a group, and I think that’s strong, because I’ve seen a lot of photography groups that are together in order to have that group feeling,” Stuart says. “I think having an exhibition at the centre of it, rather than the idea of group, has meant that the exhibition is a lot stronger, because as decisions needed to be made, it was about, how do we exhibit together, rather than just how we all get along.”
The work has become a correspondence to the world in which it is presented, after having to work around minor vandalism, according to Stuart. He says the group hopes the work will further “encourage some conversations–some correspondence–between the artists and the viewers that might help spur some conversations outside the gallery about the land. And if we can do that, I think that would be a success.”
“The photographer, when they point a camera, is really saying, ‘Look at this.’ And in some cases, it’s an opportunity to present the everyday in a different light. In some cases, it’s an opportunity to present a very different part of the world and bring an experience to somebody that they might not have had,” he says. “What we’re hoping to do in this show is to provide a range of experiences of the landscape … and show viewers some different ways of seeing it. I would hope that in doing so, that gives people an opportunity to think about their relationship with the land, just as the photographers have thought about theirs.”
Correspondences is featured in the Lalande+Doyle exhibition space in Shenkman Arts Centre (245 Centrum Blvd., Orleans) until April 18, 2025. There will be a reception tonight, March 5, at 6pm. Admission is free and for everyone.
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