March ’11 – Chris Harris “Magma” – Exhibition & Artist Talk
Chris Harris is a professional freelance nature photographer. Since leaving a career of wilderness guiding, pioneering outdoor adventure tourism, teaching, and educating youth in the outdoors both in the school system and working with youth at risk, Chris Harris has been one of this country’s foremost and most respected photographers.
As an independent publisher of his own work, Chris released his eleventh book on Oct. 16, 2010. The book, Motherstone: British Columbia’s Volcanic Plateau, will follow on his work of the last six years to bring conscious awareness to the imperative need to protect British Columbia’s biodiversity and beauty, and to understand its global significance in the face of coming crises.
In all of his published work, Harris has engaged scientists, writers, editors, and designers who are at the top of their fields and award winners in their own right. His books are of the highest possible standard of writing and production.
In 2007 his work was recognized by being short-listed in two categories of B.C Book Prizes for the book Spirit in the Grass; the Cariboo Chilcotin’s Forgotten Landscape.
In addition to the publication of his books, Harris owns and operates a gallery of fine photographic prints, which is unique and world-class. The gallery is located at his home in the Cariboo and is a destination for visitors from all parts of the globe. The print series Magma is the companion to this new book.
Chris Harris is represented internationally by five major stock agencies, and his images are sought after as representative of British Columbia.
The print series ‘Magma’ is the result of two years exploring, on foot and horse, the fifteen million year old volcanic plateau and its mountain ranges which we know as the Cariboo Chilcotin.
This landscape, explored very seldom even by the people who populate it, and virtually never by those living afar, is usually compared by those seeing it for the first time to landscapes more visually familiar, but in distant places.
It is with a jolt of revelation that we understand that the images before us are created not more than a few hours of where we live in British Columbia.
As British Columbians, Chris Harris and his valued support network of family, friends and professional collaborators, understand and carry as their personal truth that this land that we are so privileged to occupy carries with it the responsibility of the most sacred and profound respect and reverence.
It is with this sense of reverence that Harris presents these images to the larger public.
They carry the understanding, gained over many years in a process that began in the early part of his now seventy years of living on and exploring our generous Earth, that our only validity as a human family is found in our knowledge of oneness with all that is.
In this understanding, the viewer is invited to enter that sacred space and come home to the Earth and be humble in Her presence once again.
More work can be seen online at www.chrisharris.com and at the Station House Gallery from March 4 – April 2, 2011
ARTIST TALK: Thursday, March 3rd @ the SHG, 6pm