Lowell Shaver’s first photography exhibition represents three generations of life in Qualicum Beach.
The photos in Process are meaningful and nostalgic to Shaver, who enjoys shooting with a film camera and developing his own prints, mostly in black and white.
“There’s something that I really like about the dark room,” he said. “There’s something really magical about watching the photograph come to life in a tray.”
Process is one of three exhibitions on display at the Old School House Arts Centre (TOSH) in Qualicum Beach.
The collection includes photos of his children, his mother, his wife and himself. Shaver had a lot of photos to choose from for his exhibition and selecting them was a culmination of 10 years of photography, he said.
“It was fun to kind of rediscover them and then put them together in a way that tells my story,” he said.
Shaver grew up in Qualicum Beach and has always been interested in photography, but it was while living in Montreal for 10 years that he became interested in film.
“One of the houses that we bought there I found a camera that the owner before me left behind,” he said.
“I just started playing with that and getting film and shooting with that.”
Shaver found that old Canon TL 35mm camera in a drawer in the basement of his first house in Montreal.
He described it as a student camera, dented and scratched, but it became one of his most treasured possessions.
READ MORE: Echo Players Theatre Society plans 50th anniversary celebration in Qualicum Beach
“It created really beautiful images,” Shaver said.
“That’s when I realized that the process of taking the picture, developing the picture and having it in print, it was just really special.”
He was drawn to the physicality of film, Shaver said in his artist statement, the scratched and water-marked negatives, the chemicals and the filters through which the light hits the paper.
“The alchemy and mercurial nature of the printing process, the way that the photograph curls as it dries, and stains and degrades over time,” he added.
Shaver and his family moved back to the Island and settled in Parksville, where he became interested in developing film and making his own prints.
He connected with Wilf Hatch, who also happens to have an exhibition at TOSH this spring.
“He started developing my negatives for me and he said you know you could do this yourself,” Shaver said. Hatch showed him how to set up his own dark room and develop prints.
Although shooting in film limits the number of frames you can shoot, it allows a lot of creativity later in the process, Shaver said.
“It’s about bringing it into a print and how you crop it and how you expose it,” he said. “How you develop it and what kind of filters you put on. There’s just so many ways of interpreting that one negative.”
Process will be at TOSH (122 Fern Rd. West) until May 4. The arts centre is also hosting exhibitions by D.F. Gray, Wilf Hatch and Aviva Stein-Wotten this spring.