Natalie Hunter Publication

February 2 – May 4, 2024

About the artist Natalie Hunter is the recipient of many Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation Grants, and Ontario Arts Council Visual Artists Creation Project Grants. She has shown her work in public art galleries and artist-run-centres across Canada and holds an MFA from the University of Waterloo where she is a sessional instructor. She lives and works in her home city of Hamilton, Ontario.

For more visit www.natalie-hunter.com

List of works All artwork and images are courtesy of the artist Natalie Hunter, Edge of Sky, 2020-2021; archival pigment prints on transparent film from 35mm negatives, turned aluminum, birch, light; size variable Natalie Hunter, Through sunset, slow dusk, and gathering dawn, 2023-2024; archival pigment prints on transparent vinyl from 120mm negatives; site-responsive installation

The artist wishes to acknowledge the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. (front) Through sunset, slow dusk, and gathering dawn (detail), 2023-24

Natalie Hunter creates photo-based installations, sculptures, and moving images that explore relationships between embodied experience, spatial perception, the senses, and memory. Time and light are integral to Hunter’s fascination for both image making and working with materials by hand.

She often employs and exploits the immaterial principles of photography—time and light—with the material aspects of sculpture in her installations. Hunter speaks to Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery’s Curator, Sonya Blazek, about what informs her process and her interest in the ephemeral.

The following interview was conducted over email with the artist in Hamilton on November 11 and December 5, 2023. The interview has been edited for brevity.

Sonya Blazek: I would like to hear more about the chance element of working with film and the fine line of digitizing the work. Is further manipulation done to the images once they are digitized?

Natalie Hunter: Working with film in general introduces an element of chance because I can’t actually view what I’ve just shot on a screen. I’m relying a lot on memory. I’m also making exposures over and over again layering images directly in the camera to make a photograph that is the entire length of the film. Even the way I wind the film for the next exposure affects how the image will turn out. In our digitally saturated culture we are so used to immediate review of our images.

I find this affects our perception of reality…this isn’t the case with analogue photography. The fact that I’m committing to a roll of film for weeks or months at a time enters a kind of slow intention to the process. In terms of further editing after digitization, I do very little in terms of major colour manipulation…I do adjust for exposure, as some areas that are layered may be over exposed or under exposed, so I try to bring those back. And I retouch any dust on the negatives.

How did you choose where to take the photos for Through sunset, slow dusk, and gathering dawn. Was it generally the same location or did this shift depending on where you were during those times of day…in a sense documenting your presence?

To make Through sunset, slow dusk, and gathering dawn, I used the morning, noon, and evening as moments of a day that we use to mark time. I tried my best to adhere to these loose guidelines and shot whenever I had the opportunity or when the light and cloud cover significantly changed. We may not realize it, but each day the exact time of the sunset and sunrise subtly changes... depending on season or even where we are in the world. This is really interesting to me because it speaks of time as a moving elemental force rather than a static moment or a fixed thing. When you approached me to make Through sunset, slow dusk, and gathering dawn, I thought about having a more intentional approach to how I was using and perceiving time by focusing on the core times of day that we use to mark time in a day (morning, noon, evening). Wherever I was located with my camera in the morning, at noon, or in the evening, that is the sky that I captured. I almost feel like I am mapping the sky according to my presence in the here and now, creating a kind of portrait of it. Our view of the sky can be somewhat comforting and is unique for each individual. The sky has its own emotive patterns just like we do as people.

Speaking of presence, I like that you show the artist’s hand by creating and intervening with physical colour filters…can you tell me more? How do you choose which ones to use?

I use filters to accentuate my process and the layering of moments in time, but also to heighten our sense of awareness. No one really thinks about the artist’s hand in photography because there is this perception that the camera does all of the work. But I think it is important. Colour is almost always discussed in terms of painting, but colour is essentially light and we are able to see the visible spectrum of light in the form of colour. This is really interesting to me because we see colour because of light...and light and time are essential ingredients and immaterial forces in photography. When I think of photography’s relationship to memory, the camera is seen as a recorder of reality...but when I think about my memories, I rarely remember specific details. I remember a colour, or a smell, or something I can’t quite place my finger on. My use of filters almost tries to make photography feel like or recall a memory rather than represent reality. In terms of the actual filters, I use them to heighten or accentuate an aspect of a moment, and to somewhat separate the layered moments in my camera, which adds another element of chance. I choose a colour based on emotion or to heighten a colour that is already in my camera lens. The artist’s hand is really important not just in making an image, but determining how it will exist in space, and the materiality of the image is important to me. I’ve been working with photographs on transparent film in material ways for over ten years now. Not only am I using my hands to make my images but in the case of Edge of Sky I’m sculpting and draping the image with my hands in space and shaping it in relation to light.

The work becomes tactile. There is evidence of my hands on the prints, which further points to their materiality and vulnerability as objects.

Thinking about your comment about how even winding the film in the camera impacts the next image. How do you decide which camera you will use for each project?

My analogue cameras are both from the late 1980’s which is when I was born.

Perhaps this is why I gravitate to them. They are nostalgic for me and my generation…my 35mm camera is actually my dad’s camera from 1987. He gifted it to me in art school. It’s a little broken and doesn’t wind all the way fully to the next frame, which is how I got used to shooting with it...everything overlapping.

Shooting with 35mm has some size restrictions. I can’t really print anything really big, so that’s why I went and bought a 120mm camera of the same age. I’m able to infinitely add multiple exposures on each frame. And unlike many full frame digital cameras at the time, it was much cheaper to buy. There is also a really lovely mechanical slowness to it that forces you to slow down when working with it. Which I find refreshing compared to the infinite photographs I can take with my digital camera. When I made Edge of Sky, the film was in my camera for about five months. For me my analogue cameras speak more to thought and the mind. There is also something lovely about information being recorded on film rather than digital data. My multiple exposures are made up of layers of light, material, and chemical rather than just pixels.

Can you share how you landed on the title for the piece you specifically created for JNAAG? Through sunset, slow dusk, and gathering dawn points to both what I’m doing with a camera and how I’m making my images, but also what will happen in the gallery and how the installation will function and behave throughout the day and night. I’m very much thinking about how the piece will react in the space and whether it will unfold as a kind of slow cinema throughout the day depending on the angle of the sun or lighting conditions in the room. I’m hoping a viewer will have a durational encounter.