Photographer Dick Groot looks at the loss of Valley industry
Wolfville’s Dick Groot is applying a photographer’s eye to what he calls “an old economy.”
Groot has an exhibition opening at the Cedar Centre for Active Health and Living in Windsor on April 20.
The opening will from 7–9 p.m.
His photo-based installation focuses on the demise of three factories in the Annapolis Valley: Britex in Bridgetown, Fundy Gypsum in Hantsport and Windsor Wear.
His upcoming exhibition has him collaborating with local contractor and artist David MacNeil to build mobiles to house the images.
Groot’s interest was to document the physical transformation of the venerable mills largely in black and white images that he terms industrial archeology.
He says all factories suffered a similar fate. Groot adds that some people view them as eerie buildings, but he finds beautiful shapes inherent in them.
The trio of structures, Groot notes, represent between 600 and 700 job losses in the Valley. Photos of several former workers will be included in the exhibit to represent all those who lost employment.
It has been almost three years since the launch of the book, We Wanted it to Last Forever: Closing the Minas Basin Paperboard Mill took place. Groot contributed interviews and portraits of 23 people who worked at the Hantsport mill until it closed in 2012.
The last part of the book is a series of colour photographs of the silent mill after its closure. Groot has long had a focus on post-industrial photography in Nova Scotia and elsewhere.
A native of the Netherlands, he started working from his LightThrough Studio in Wolfville in 2002. He first exhibited Come from Away: Artists of Minas Basin at ViewPoint Gallery in Halifax (2004) and ArtCan Gallery in Canning (2005) and in 2011 he self-published a book with that title. In 2007 he also had an exhibit of street photos and industrial sites in Cuba.
In 2010, he presented a collaborative sound and photo-based installation Tidelines at the Acadia University Art Gallery. take place