The Golden Art Gallery has officially opened The Bugaboos – A Celebration in Story and Image, a photo exhibit paying homage to the natural wonder in our own backyard.
The gallery launched the travelling exhibit, which was produced by Kicking Horse Culture, on Jan. 13, and will keep it until March 3. The collection features photographers both from the area, and around the world.
“I want to thank all the artists who submitted their photos to this, and the ones who were selected and were included and persevered with us as we went through this process,” said Bill Usher, executive director of Kicking Horse Culture.
“We tried to keep the photographers as local as possible… Frankly, the best pictures came from local photographers. Some of them were able to join us tonight,” said exhibit curator Pat Morrow at the opening reception.
“The process of putting this together involved going through a couple hundred submissions, and it wasn’t that hard to pick the best ones. They really jumped out at you.”
All of the photos have been put into a catalogue, and will also be shown on an online exhibit, designed by John McLachlan of Full Bleed Arts Marketing.
“I was really pleased to be invited to be a part of this exhibit, partly because I was born and grew up in the area, and always had an affinity for the Bugaboos. In those days, most of the cars that were parked there had license plates from either Alberta or the States. Which indicated that hardly any local people knew about the Bugaboos. Even today, 40 years later, there are still a lot of international visitors to the parks. What I’m hoping is that this exhibit will be seen here in Golden, and travel around the area, and a lot of locals will get to see it, and head on into the Bugaboos, in summer or winter,” said Morrow.
The pictures are also captioned with the personal experience the photographers went through getting that perfect shot.
“There’s lots of us that don’t get to those places, and I think vicariously we can live through these images and then reading some of the captions. Because some of the things the photographers had to go through to be able to capture that image they were looking for is almost wild game hunting in some respects. It’s wild game hunting photography,” said Usher, who made his first trip to the Bugaboos just a few months ago.
“I made my first trip to the Bugaboos in September, and I called it my four-hour step climbing exercise. I made it to the hut and that’s it., and I turned around and came back after my three and a half hour nap.”
The exhibit was put together to commemorate BC Parks’ centennial, and the natural and human history of Bugaboo Provincial Park. It was initiated by a grant from the Province of B.C. as part of the BC Parks 100 – Arts in the Parks program.
