Through the Lens: A Stoney Perspective

Through the Lens: A Stoney Perspective showcases images from Morley students who represent the Bearspaw, Chiniki and Wesley bands; the images have been selected from the Whyte Museum's vast Through the Lens collection, curated by photographer Craig Richards.

A Stoney Perspective runs to April 21 at the Three Sisters Gallery (located on the second floor of Elevation Place) at 700 Railway Avenue, Canmore.

The exhibit currently at Elevation Place is a small selection of 22 photographs from Morley students that have been taken over the last 18 years as part of Through the Lens.

There are over 1,600 photographs in the photo collection and Richards figures there are about 800 from Morley students.

“This is just a little snippet but I just thought it would be so nice to give them a visual voice in Canmore,” Richards said.

Grade 11 Canmore Collegiate High School student Chevine Holloway took part in this year's Through the Lens with her photograph entitled, Jayda Reflecting which is of her friend Jayda.

Her brother Andrew had also previously taken part in the Through the Lens program. “He did some incredibly good work and I think it's just a wonderful story that Chevine is now taking part,” Richards said. “He was an incredible photographer and the photograph he took was of his mother holding a newborn baby in a little papoose sitting on their porch was wonderful.

“What happens is 15 years later I get a phone call from a girl out in Morley asking how she can get into Through the Lens and it ends up that it's Chevine, the little baby from Andrew's photograph and I couldn't believe this. I said ‘your brother took a photograph of you' and she said, ‘it's hanging up in the house.'”

Chevine's piece was being exhibited at The Whyte Museum and Richards says he would like to take a couple of photographs from the exhibit and put them up with the exhibit in Canmore's Elevation Place.

Chevine knew she wanted to take part in Through the Lens after talking with a Lawrence Grassi School councillor and her older brother Andrew. “He told me about Through the Lens and he explained to me what it was, he told me to keep taking as many pictures as I could because you don't know what it's going to look like when it's done,” Chevine said.

She busied herself with landscape pictures and portrait photos, and has been bitten hard enough by the shutterbug to want to continue her education in photography.

“I like how you can take something that's really simple and make it beautiful,” Chevine said. “It's a great learning experience to be able to work in the darkroom at our school and the portraits we printed that are at the museum printed in Calgary.”

“I have been told so many times by people who visit the exhibit that they can no longer drive between Banff and Calgary without looking at Morley and seeing something different,” Richards said. “A lot of these photographs could only be done by people who are brothers, daughters, sisters, sons and nieces in the community – and the Morley work that these kids do gives us a look inside of their community.”