Bear Witness

While many of us know Amanda Graham as both an editor of the Northern Review, a professor in the University of the Arctic and at Yukon College, she is fast becoming, IMHO, one of the best photographers around. She calls it a hobby. I think her work is fascinating. I have borrowed a couple of her photographs for advertising classes at the college, but you really must see her collection on Flickr.

What I love about Amanda’s photos is that she has a great eye for quiet moments. These are photographs that deserve to be much bigger, hanging inside a room where you want to feel peace. Sometimes, I think they bring me solace–that maybe if I look for it in the real world, I’ll find the peace in the chaos. She finds the arrangement, the composition, that brings out the peace in discarded carts, peeling paint, arranged fruit, abandoned rags–and makes them beautiful.

She’s also quick to take advantage of a moment of light, an odd juxtaposition that’s there for a second, revealing something I may not catch if I wait for it to happen. I mean, most of these subjects are in Whitehorse. Can you find them?

I’m reminded of the waltz of the bag in American Beauty. It takes the right eye to see the beauty. But that eye can be trained. And thank goodness, that beauty can also be shared.

“Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, and my heart’s just going to cave in.”–American Beauty.

Please take a moment and wander through her Flickr collection. You’ll be glad you did.