Illness, travel and a non-stop love of photography sum up a whirlwind year for Banffite Hana Kujawa.
The Emily Carr University of Art and Design photography student is getting ready to head into her third year of study, getting used to a daily regimen of epilepsy medication and getting ready to present a photo exhibit entitled Well Worn, currently on display at the Banff Public Library, and running to Sept. 9.
“I’m going back to school in fall and I’ve been able to have a dog this summer so I’m getting a lot better,” said Kujawa on learning to live a new life since her diagnosis. “It affects my memory more than anything – that’s one of the nice things of getting a photo degree, I get to document everything and look back.”
The optimism and work ethic that comes through in the young photographer’s outlook and 15-piece exhibit is truly a breath of inspiration. The abstract, in-depth photos show a person who is truly in touch with the world around her, not only in the Bow Valley, but also outside of Canada.
Kujawa recently took a trip to Central America with her camera in-hand, capturing foreign architecture and colour schemes not often found inside Canada; with some of the work she captured making the cut into her exhibit.
“It was amazing just looking at the buildings and walking around,” Kujawa said. “My friend I was travelling with said, ‘When everyone sees you taking a picture they think there must be something cool there, ‘That girl has a big camera and she’s taking pictures,’ but I’d just be so focused on taking a picture of these beautiful walls.”
The photography student has been shooting since her time in the local Through the Lens program, utilizing film processing skills she learned, but now takes them into Emily Carr with her Nikon film camera handed down by Brad White.
“We have the biggest dark room in the country, so I do everything in film – I don’t even use my DSLR,” Kujawa said. “I find that working in Banff, it’s so easy to just look up at the mountains and there’s just such amazing scenery that that’s what you look at, but there’s more to the world around here with the mountains and the beautiful lakes.”
The photographer started focusing on the smaller aspects of life and brought herself down closer to what was nearby instead of always focusing up.
“It carried over when we went travelling, there were just so many amazing buildings and temples, and with some of the things I didn’t know how to capture it. The buildings kind of looked rundown so I felt if I just took a photo of these amazing paint colours it wouldn’t really capture what I was seeing,” Kujawa said. “But when I focused up close they looked like these abstract paintings so I started looking at buildings differently – I loved it there.
“I just started seeing abstract paintings on every building, where it was crumbled and there was paint residue underneath and all sorts of amazing colours there that we don’t use on our buildings.”
Her honed eye is now finding abstract beauty in everything from pine beetle markings to the paint splattered flooring of The Banff Centre’s pottery studio. “I like that you can’t quite tell what you’re looking at, but the colours and everything are so intriguing,” Kujawa said.
“I found I just had to change my mindset and once I started looking in a different way – it’s just everywhere.”
