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BLAIR KETCHESON : Photography
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Blair Ketcheson received his visual arts training at the Banff Centre School of Fine Arts in Banff, Canada, graduating in 1974 with a Diploma in Visual Communications. This school, with its formal but progressive cirriculum, is set in the heart of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, known throughout the world for their spectacular natural beauty.
After graduating, he was awarded a Canada Council Explorations Grant to spend a year travelling and documenting historic architecture throughout western Canada. Following this, he pursued a twenty-year career as a commercial architectural photographer. Through this period he worked with many of Canada's top architects, designers and landscape planners, developing his eye for documenting and interpreting the structured formalism of the built world as well as the contextualism of the urban landscape.
He has developed his creative black and white work within the framework of an eclectic amalgam of influences and interests. The photographers Eugène Atget, Edward Weston and Jerry Ullesman have informed his visual sensibilities. The classical forms and traditions of landscape, the figure and architecture are all evident in his work. He has lived in London and Paris, and travelled extensively in Europe, contributing to his style and perspective.
His preoccupation is with creating timeless images that are not bound to a particular era or place - challenging the 'literal' in photography. Travelling to both famous and obscure parks and gardens to shoot, he searches for the opportunity to witness and interpret scenes of profound beauty, and to create structured abstractions from the remnants of human endeavour. The classical notion of Paradise being a walled garden has led him to explore and work within these places.
Using a combination of film and digital techniques and processes, the images are formal but unconventional, in keeping with the traditions of black and white photography but at the same time remaining slightly off-balance. The ebb and flow of tension and repose threads its way throughout the work.
Blair Ketcheson lives in the south of France.
