An Unnatural Collection

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Whitney Lewis-Smith, “Chimeri Fukinagashi Bonsai,” 2021

archival pigment ink print on 100 per cent cotton rag paper, 61" x 78" (courtesy Kostuik Gallery, Vancouver)

They look like heirlooms, beautifully lit and composed. But peer more closely and you’ll realize something is amiss with the 10 photographs in Whitney Lewis-Smith’s show, From Here at the Threshold, at Vancouver’s Kostuik Gallery until July 18.

“A lot of the plants are dead,” says Lewis-Smith. So too are the butterflies that flit about in Lavanda and Jacarandas at Night in Parque Mexico. And while the Chimeri Fukinagashi Bonsai suggests a tree withstanding a windstorm, the star attraction is a construction of clippings she has attached individually to a long-dead stem.

“Adding each leaf over several months was a lesson in patience,” says Lewis-Smith. “I’m a photo-based artist, but the majority of what I do is actually collecting, sourcing and building sets. I create other worlds using plants and animals and insects and try to involve the viewer in this alternate universe I create.”

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Whitney Lewis-Smith, “Lavanda,” 2021

archival pigment ink print on 100 per cent cotton rag paper, 61" x 76" (courtesy Kostuik Gallery, Vancouver)

She constructs her tableaus from materials she has gathered, often from the forest floor, to make her point: pay attention to the environment and the pressures it faces.

“I am very interested in photographing things that are on the verge of extinction or are almost there,” she says. “For this particular show, I was really interested in the plants we think of as special or that we give value to.”

Lewis-Smith grew up in a small town just north of Ottawa, where she spent much time outside,  enjoying the company of plants and animals. “That became my ecosystem and my community,” she says.

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Whitney Lewis-Smith, “Jacarandas at Night in Parque Mexico,” 2021

archival pigment ink print on 100 per cent cotton rag paper, 42" x 70" (courtesy Kostuik Gallery, Vancouver)

She went on to the fine arts program at Concordia University in Montreal and decided to focus on photography after taking underwater pictures of coral in the Seychelles. She produced the work in From Here at the Threshold while living in Mexico City during the pandemic lockdown.

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Whitney Lewis-Smith, “Lily of the Nile,” 2021

archival pigment ink print on 100 per cent cotton rag paper, 22.5" x 16" (courtesy Kostuik Gallery, Vancouver)

Carefully positioned and lit with a mixture of natural and studio light, her images have the dreamy, ethereal quality of floral paintings by the Dutch masters. 

She says their flower arrangements were often staged. “Those bouquets of the 17th century Dutch Golden Age were impossible at the time,” she says, pointing out that seasonal blooms wouldn’t be found at the same time and place. 

Lewis-Smith wants viewers to interrogate what they are looking at. “Is it alive? Is it a drawing or a photograph? For those engaging with my work, I aim to evoke a sense of awe and fascination with the natural world.”  

Is her work a warning about the perils of environmental collapse?

“I would argue it’s positive,” she says. “There’s an element of bringing things back to life and how human beings have a hand in how ecosystems are understood, looked after and cherished.” ■  

Whitney Lewis-Smith: From Here at the Threshold at the Kostuik Gallery in Vancouver from June 10 to July 18, 2021.

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