Arto Djerdjerian’s photos of Canada’s Ya Ha Tinda horse ranch will be shown in an appropriately mountainous setting in the new year.
Thirty of the Lacombe photographer’s images of Canada’s only federally owned and operated working horse ranch will be presented from Jan. 26 to April 7 at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies in the Town of Banff.
“I’m very pleased. It’s the ideal location for this project,” said Djerdjerian. The Ya Ha Tinda Ranch is located north of Banff, and he feels the exhibit fits with the museum’s mission to expand people’s appreciation of, and exposure to, the mountains.
Djerdjerian spent six years, from 2015 to 2021, making repeat visits to the ranch. The resulting images, seen in 2021 at the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery, offer a rare and intimate view of everyday life at facility, which is closed to the public.
Djerdjerian had to get special permission to photograph where horses are wintered and trained for use by Parks Canada staff in Banff, Jasper, Kootenay and Yoho national parks.
His images capture both gritty ranch life and magnificent animals in a stunning landscape.
Djerdjerian, who will attend the opening reception on Jan. 26, was born in Egypt to Armenian parents and raised in Montreal where he studied photography. He’s been living and working in Alberta since 1977, and continues to expand his vision through landscape photography — from New York City to the wilderness of Alberta and Wyoming.
Several central Alberta artists’ works have been getting wider exposure lately.
Red Deer’s Erin Boake is now presenting her art exhibit Children of the Apocalypse at the MAUD gallery in Edmonton until Dec. 15.
Boake, who studied art at Red Deer College and the Alberta College of Art, was inspired by climate change and photos of her children in nature to create these figures-in-landscape paintings. She will attend the Dec. 2 reception at 10643-124 St., Unit #307, in Edmonton.
Sylvan Lake artist Larry Reese also recently had a successful exhibit of his landscape paintings at Edmonton’s Trinity Gallery — with plans underway for a possible second exhibit at the same location next spring.
Reese feels ”it’s important to spread your wings” as an artist, and exhibiting in a new location certainly broadens your audience. While there are always some risks in stepping out of familiar territory, he added “the pay-off can be extraordinary.”