The SIAST Applied Photography program ran for 25 years, and in that time has produced many graduates who work in different parts of the photography industry. While the program was closed on the 25th anniversary, the legacy lives on in the images the students captured, both while at the school and in their professional and personal lives after. A Fading Light, 25 years of Photography at SIAST collects 28 images from 25 different program graduates, and is at the Godfrey Dean Art Gallery until Feburary 12.
The show stretches from work by the very first students in 1986 to work from the last students in the program. In the process, it also shows examples of different techniques, processes and ideas that have developed since the program began.
"We wanted to gather together a visual history of the program," explains Gary Robins, curator of the exhibition.
The juried exhibition saw 204 images submitted, and Robins explains that the criteria was left wide open to allow a wide variety of disciplines and work in the show.
"A lot of stuff here is work people are doing in their professional lives, or the kind of personal work that people enjoy that's an add on to the careers they have... People end up with a diversity of paths, and all of that is encompassed in what we have here," Robins says.
The show also reflects the many changes in technology that have occurred since the program began, and the different ways which photos could be taken and manipulated.
"You couldn't float hay bales in the late 1980s... We were always reinventing the curriculum, we were always trying new tools, the whole works, Artistevery year was different," Robins says.
There is also a book celebrating the program which features 74 artists and over 300 images from the past 25 years.
Robins says that while the program is gone, the demand is still there for a photography school in the province, and this show is a demonstration of the impact it has made for photographers across the province.
"There's still a huge demand for it, I get calls at home from parents who are saying their kids want to study photography... Now they have to go out of province, this was the only school for the study of professional photography in the province," he notes.
The original sources for the images came from a variety of formats, including film, slides and digital, and Robins says a great deal of work went into getting everything presented in a consistent manner to tie it all together.
"It wasn't until we first hung the show in the gallery at SIAST in the beginning of June of last year that we had a sense of how it was going to be as a body of work... When we saw it, it was breathtaking," Robins concludes.
