Circle of Light Reflects: Anna Morgan on the West Coast of Vancouver Island
In this series of blog posts celebrating the upcoming release of The Nature of Place: Personal Narratives in Landscape Photography, “Circle of Light Reflects” poses the same six questions to all members of Circle of Light. These six questions are intended to explore the nature of our individual connections with a place that resonates with each of with us in our photographic practice. In this installment, Anna shares her connection with the West Coast of Vancouver Island.
1. What would you consider your home place in terms of your photography practice?
Think beyond where you were born or where you live to a place where something in you settles. It might be somewhere you return to often, or somewhere you visited only once but have never quite left.
There are many places I have either visited or stayed longer term that continue to call to me in a visceral way but the West Coast of Vancouver Island is a place that I return to often. I feel at home at this place that feels like the edge of the Earth, where the land meets the wild, Pacific Ocean.
2. What first called you to this place, and has that call changed over time?
Was it light? Silence? Something harder to name? And if you now know it more deeply, do you come for the same reasons or has the relationship quietly shifted into something else?
There is something generally about the Pacific Northwest that spoke to me from the moment I first experienced the moss-encrusted forests and the wildness of the Pacific. In Europe, where I grew up, modern society has a different relationship with the coast - the ocean is of course still seen by many as a powerful, ancient force, a great unknown full of mystery but coastal towns, of which there are many, are developed, human-centric places. Although they have their own charm and appeal, it was the idea of standing alone on a miles-long beach surrounded by wildlife that first drew me in to visiting the West Coast of the island I now call home. Not much has changed since my first visit in that way. I come to breathe deeper and find a quietness that is unlike that of any other place, and each time I make a new discovery about this incredible ecosystem, deepening my relationship to the incredible landscape.
3. Describe this place using only those details a camera cannot capture.
Think of sound, smell, temperature, the particular quality of the air, or that feeling in your body when you arrive. What is present there that never makes it into the frame?
Even before arriving on the west coast, the moment I set foot on the island after being away, it immediately feels calmer, slower than most other places I have ever visited. As I cut through the forest to reach the beaches of Tofino, there is a feeling of anticipation. And then the blustery, fresh air hits you, the sound of the rolling waves, the knowledge that you are sharing these beaches with wolves. This type of wildness cannot be tamed.
4. Choose one image from this place to share.
Think beyond your finest technical work, or your most awarded. Choose the image that is most true, the one that comes closest to why you keep returning to your home place.
5. What have you learned about yourself through this place?
Places are mirrors as much as subjects. What has this landscape shown you about your own interior terrain—your fears, your longings, your way of seeing?
I first came to know this place at a time when I had moved far from where I grew up and where I was trying to understand who I was after welcoming our first-born into the world. The liminal landscape - between land and sea - has taught me that identity is dynamic. It changes with the relationships we build with the land, ecosystems, and other living beings. I have learned that rather than forcing outcomes in photography - and in life more generally - I am more fulfilled when I stay open and practice seeing what arises.
6. What is one lesson you will take away from one of the essays in The Nature of Place?
In what way has this ebook provoked thought in terms of your photography practice? Will this lesson lead to any change in your philosophy or approach going forward?
It is hard to pick a single lesson in isolation from the book. It is the manner in which all these lessons intermingle and build upon one another that gives them the most meaning. What particularly resonates with me is the richness that comes from engaging with multiple perspectives, the joy we each feel in following the aliveness and the idea that our practices evolve from the connections we have made with each other - as well as with the natural world.
