Let's move to the middle of the alphabet, m'K?
For the 11th image in The Alphabet Project - a centennial initiative of the Prince George Citizen and the Community Arts Council - photographer Pat Suter went back to the beginning of that 100 years and moved the viewer through to modern times.
Sixteen photographs trace the history of the city and the lines of the letter K to form a collage of our local times. Every one of the images was snapped by Suter herself, then arranged to spell out a lesson in human history.
"Without the Prince George city, you wouldn't have the Prince George Citizen, so I wanted to show that 100 years of connection, the transition from black-and-white to colour, the growth to the newer features of our city, and it took that many photos inside my K to go through the hundred years, bit by bit."
Flip through the below slideshow to view the Alphabet Project art and a link to each artist story:
The shots are a potpourri of well-known local images, from Northern Hardware to the cutbanks, from the CN Rail bridge to UNBC, from Wally West Studios to Connaught Hill. Suter's shutter celebrated local landmarks, architecture and public art to tell the story of our city.
"I considered other images, but for myself, these were the only ones I took myself to reach back through those hundred years," she said, explaining that the old photos of Northern Hardware were, with the permission of the proprietor Moffat family, her snapshots of those older images, giving them a new generation of life.
"I played with images. I put them on, took them off, slept on it only to change my mind, it was a lot of experimentation," she said. She also tried cutting up picture frames, forming the pieces into the letter K; and using photos that were then cut into Ks, leaving telltale parts of the picture inside the shape of the letter. Eventually she settled on this idea of numerous photos within the frame of the letter K, then that within an antique frame.
"The picture frame I got from a friend, it was a burgundy colour so I antiqued it with the gold and the black, again trying to cover the meaning of the 100 years."
The large letter within the frame left three patches of open white space. She filled the most prominent one with the repeated phrase "The Prince George Citizen's 100th Anniversary" in a font similar to that of a newspaper page.
"I went to the Prince George Public Library to look at old copies of the Citizen to get some ideas, think about how the Citizen was all about printing and presenting words and photos together," Suter said. "I felt like the Citizen was being forgotten (within the submissions of art in the Alphabet Project so far). I filled that space initially with words beginning with K, but I kept coming back to the idea that it was the 100th anniversary of the Citizen, and that was too important to ignore."
The process was several steps of symbolism farther than she is used to taking. Suter is the proprietor of Picture A Time Photography, a self-run business based out of her home in Hixon. She sells framed prints, since her experience as a volunteer venue photographer at the 2015 Canada Winter Games she expanded to postcards of local images, some of her images from the Games were picked up by newspapers at extreme distances from here like Corner Brook and Whitehorse, and her primary stock is in greeting cards.
She was a letter carrier for Canada Post for years, commuting from Hixon to her lifelong hometown of Prince George to work each shift. Now retired, much more of her energies and creative thinking is being applied to her photographic arts.
"I've been doing this since around 2005," she said. "My mom was dying of cancer, she was in hospice house for three months, I took leave from my job and focused on my mom, and I turned to photography in that period, for the both of us. I took a lot of pictures of birds, and I also met Laurie Cyr who ran the hospital gift shop and she was the one who said 'you could sell cards of your photos you know' and for some reason I listened to what she said, and I've sold thousands of cards since then. I give my mom the credit."
Well, some of the credit is also due her husband Larry Thompson who "can do the best u-ies on the road" in support of her eagle eye as they travel. When she spots an interesting animal, tree, land formation, weather event or whatever (she specializes in scenes of nature), he is happy to help her get the shot.
Her sister-in-law Sherrey Thompson has also been a strong advocate for her, Suter said, as is her daughter Kim Witges.
"I was very excited to be picked for the Alphabet Project," said Suter. "There were so many applicants. And Lisa (Redpath, project co-ordinator) was the one who encouraged me to apply. I'm so fortunate to have people in my life who are there to give me a little push when I needed it."
It pushed her right to the middle of the alphabet and the heart of the Prince George artistic community.
