WHITNEY LEWIS-SMITH

Though she has had the creative urge since childhood and studied painting and drawing at university, Lewis-Smith’s career also includes work as a scuba-diving instructor and marine researcher. It was following this period in her life that she started photographing underwater specimens. From there, she moved her camera above water, creating elaborate compositions of mainly dried floral bouquets teeming with insect life. Think of them as small, unique ecosystems. Or you can view them as jaw-droppingly gorgeous still-life black-and-white photographs referencing 17th-century Dutch Golden Era tableaux. These days, Lewis-Smith can often be found in Mexico City, where she is working with like-minded colleagues in a 19th-century medium called heliogravure, which involves a rather complicated process of transferring photographic images to a copper plate from which prints can then be made. LewisSmith so adores the actual plates that she considers them works of art in their own right. With this process, LewisSmith’s work is evolving in new directions. Her previous environmentally themed photographs were restricted to plants and insects. She plans to add people referencing historical art figures. She has branded this new subject matter biophilia, a word describing humans’ wish to connect with nature and other forms of life. An exhibition of this new work at St-Laurent + Hill is being prepared for a show this November. Expect to be astounded.