I get excited when I see something in an entirely new way. I get almost as excited (and a little envious) when someone shows me something through new eyes – when they grab my viewpoint and shift it.

After reading David Campion’s text and reading Sandra Shields’ words, I’ll never look at the Calgary Stampede the same way again. Sandra’s article and David’s images, titled Cowboy Wild in the July 2009 issue of SWERVE Magazine combine to create an amazing piece of cultural anthropology – dissecting the mythic cowboy and the reality behind the legends that fuel Calgary’s annual festival. Unfortunately the web link to SWERVE only takes you to Shield’s text. For the images you’ll have to visit davidcampion.ca. Happily Shields’ words can stand entirely on their own as can Campion’s images. Together they have a chemistry where one plus one equals more than two.The images of Cowboy Wild were the subject of a major exhibition at the Art Gallery of Calgary during the fall and winter of 2008. Seeing the SWERVE article I was pleased by how well David’s images held up on the thin newsprint pages – even after seeing them at 20″x30″ in the exhibition.

SWERVE’s Editor-in-Chief, Shelley Youngblut, has taken a typical “what’s-on-in-town” newspaper supplement and injected a series of telling and reflective articles that sit at the junction among finely crafted literature, social commentary, fine art photography and documentary photography. In an age when thoughtful publications seem to be rarer and rarer – especially coming from a popular newspaper press, to see where Youngblut is taking SWERVE is an encouraging delight. It is worth picking up the Friday Calgary Herald just to get SWERVE – though this summer only July and August issues are being produced.

Both Sandra and David have an ease about them that makes everyone around them comfortable. This is so evident in the photography and the writing. David’s images speak with great force – at the same time they are not forced. The same can be said of Sandra’s words, words that speak with a truth and essence of people places and events that perfectly compliment David’s images. They make us look and think about familiar things in new ways and compell us to open our eyes to parts of society that, perhaps subconsciously, we didn’t want to see. More about Sandra Shields’ writing and the Shields/Campion collaboration is at fieldnotes.ca.

Tags: Art Gallery of Calgary, Campion, Shields, SWERVE

This entry was posted on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 12:20 pm and is filed under Art, Photographers, Writers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.