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Home Away From Home – Jesse Louttit

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This is a guest post by Montreal photographer Jessica Auer. I’m very excited to have Jessica contribute a post to the blog. You might be familiar with Jessica’s work, here on the blog,  from a previous post in an interview with Louis Perreault. I’ve had the privilege to have Jessica as a teacher this past year and benefit from her outlook and sensibility to the photographic medium. Jessica has recently published a book titled Unmarked Sites, a wonderfully well thought out book about the landscape and history of Newfoundland and Labrador. Having been to Newfoundland myself, this book echoes the immensity, the silence and the beauty of the land. Here, Jessica introduces us to a fellow Canadian photographer. Enjoy!

© Jesse Louttit - Place to Call Home

I was recently in Portland, Oregon to attend the Photolucida Portfolio Reviews. Portland is an absolutely fantastic city that reminds me of my hometown, Montréal. Perfectly walkable, one can saunter around its European-feeling streets, which are full of life and culture and peppered with amazing and affordable restaurant options. Regardless of whether one would feel a kinship with this city, any photographer will feel at home there, especially during Portland’s Photo Month.

At these large international events, the first question one tends to ask another photographer upon meeting them is “where are you from?” I have always been interested in notions of locale, so for me this question is more than just small talk. I am really interested to know where people come from, and how that may play out in their work. It is also no coincidence that I tend to befriend other Canadians, as though we should be sticking together in solidarity. I suppose it is a way of feeling at home away from home.

© Jesse Louttit - Place to Call Home

I met photographer Jesse Louttit while passing through security during my airport connection in Toronto. On noticing my portfolio box going through the X-ray, Jesse engaged me in conversation and we bonded as we ran to catch our flight. The next day, I was introduced to Louttit’s work during the Portfolio Walk at the Portland Art Museum, and was immediately impressed by his new series Place to call home.

Place to call home is a series of large format landscape photographs taken on Toronto Island. Having moved to Toronto from Vancouver just over two years ago, Louttit began taking excursions from the city to the island as a way of re-connecting with a landscape that he had left behind. The water, lushness of greenery, and the subtle inhabitation of the environment figure throughout the series, however with this work Louttit shares not only the depiction of a site but also an experience of place.

I am reminded of Simon Schama’s seminal book Landscape and Memory in which Schama argues that landscape cannot be free of culture, and that as viewers we project our own mythologies onto perceptions of nature. Louttit may have fled from the concrete jungle of Toronto in search of a natural solace, yet he brought along his personal history and an idea of what one could call home.

My own experience of Toronto Island recalls images of yacht clubs and airports, so Louttit’s refreshing and delicate take on this built environment is very inviting. Place to call home is currently on exhibit at the Distillery Historic District for the Contact Photography Festival in Toronto until May 31st.

© Jesse Louttit - Place to Call Home

© Jesse Louttit - Place to Call Home

© Jessica Auer

Jessica Auer is a Montréal artist and Professor at Concordia University. Her photographic work explores the history, mythology, preservation and development of cultural landscapes.

View Jessica’s work on her website.


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