Staple Series

Halifax, Nova Scotia is a city of transients. Sailors, students, musicians, cruise ship passengers, summer tourists all pass through on their way to somewhere else. Pier 21 was the Canadian Ellis Island, the gateway for a million immigrants seeking to be elsewhere. Half of the city blew up in a 1907 explosion that killed two thousand while injuring nine thousand more. It was the largest man-made explosion until the atomic bomb.
As people pass through a city, they leave bits of themselves behind in the food, customs, language, buildings, music. Their detritus forms the character of the place. A visual archeology of words and images that mirror their rapidly changing lives.
Part of the character of Halifax’s student areas is the steady stream of paper announcements for upcoming events that are stapled to wooden telephone poles and kiosks or taped to metal electrical poles. These posters have a very short life span. They are quickly replaced by others or are ripped down in a futile attempt to make this unauthorized mess disappear.
The resultant palimpsest bits of paper, staples, and tape--a collage of chance--is the subject of this portfolio. The images included in this on-going series starting in 2006 with a variety of cameras in available light.