A Lapse of Time

THE ARTIST David Burdeny

WAITING AND WATCHING “Photography has taken me to some of the most beautiful, strange and fascinating places you can imagine. I’m often out photographing during odd hours of the day or night—always alone for several hours at a time waiting for the exposure to run its course or simply waiting for the right conditions. In our hurried world it’s a great luxury to slow down and feel time pass by while watching the snow fall, or the clouds move. It’s this meditative aspect of the process that I love so much.”

SASKATCHEWAN SERIES “I grew up on the Canadian prairies and made my first photographs there. All through university I still made images of the less-populated areas of central Canada, but because I was so ‘close’ to it, I was unable to see the exotic beauty of what was there. It took a 40-year absence from living there and a few circles around the globe to make me realize what I had been searching for was right under my nose.”

A BEAUTIFUL SADNESS “Early in my career I began traveling to Japan and was bewitched by so many of its cultural and aesthetic sensibilities, with my favorite being the concept of ‘mono no aware,’ or the pathos of things, which is roughly understood as the bittersweet realization that all things are impermanent and everything is transient and of its own time and place. In most of my pictures, the camera is not so much a witness to the moment but registers a state of being, a lapse of time where reality is denied and enriched by the photograph.”

NEXT Burdeny is working on a new series of images based on the orotone process, using glass transparency and gold leaf.