by Angela Boehm
HARTMANN BOOKS
2024//$85.00/112 pp.
White is not always white. The colour makes light, movement and the structure of the material visible,” said auction expert Simone Wichmann, waxing lyrical in 2015 about a painting by the late high-modernist American painter Robert Ryman. How true. Ryman relied on the medium of paint and subtle textural gestures on various support surfaces to create resonant, meditative paintings entirely in white to suggest, in part, that the purity of white associated with nothingness was entirely contextual and always shifting depending on one’s perspective in relation to the work. In Minus 30, Alberta-based photographer Angela Boehm also invites us to contemplate a rethinking of white as a relative tone, made “impure” by the vicissitudes of winter conditions and the prairie landscape buffeted by crystallized moisture on days when the temperature dips below –30°C.
In photographs taken from 2021 to 2023, Boehm captures evocative images of barren landscapes and highways, forlorn ranches, lone human figures and birds in motion, all blanketed to varying degrees in snow of a ghostly grey tint. The crystalline white snow of the frozen landscape we might anticipate is nowhere to be found. Rather, Boehm captures a gritty snow nuanced in shades of grey punctuated by hints of colour. Desolate fields littered with skiffs of dirt. Seeds and frozen plant matter that register as flecks of muted blues and mustard yellow.
The photographs of Minus 30 offer a study in our ever-changing environment. Boehm makes visible the increasingly rare “whiteout” conditions encountered on the northern plains. A whiteout snowstorm can be like entering a luminous, dense fog in which nothing—except every form to be glimpsed through the swirl of snow—is palpable. Whiteouts are disorienting and can cause panic when visibility becomes challenging. The sight of a majestic tree, a lone figure in the middle distance, a crow or a flock of snowbirds, granaries and straw bales, an isolated farmhouse or farm equipment on the landscape—each can suddenly become a marker along a path to finding shelter or returning home.
Minus 30 includes short written passages by Boehm, Daniel Blochwitz and Brad Zellar. Each contributor responds to the photographs of a visceral winter landscape with stories of lived experiences filtered through snow and winter light. Boehm reflects on what she calls the “whited air” of Saskatchewan that is intimately connected in spirit to the tragic deaths of her mother and brothers. Overall, the book is a spellbinding engagement with winter—amidst the climate change crisis that may signal a gradual end to –30°C temperatures.
Wayne Baerwaldt is an independent visual arts curator.
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