SWIFT CURRENT, Sask. – The rotting timber farmhouse is empty except for the dusty toys scattered on the floor and curtains billowing out a window frame.
The image is a window into the life of families that once dotted the southwestern prairie landscape, said Swift Current photographer Bonnie Dunlop.
“When I go into old farmyards, the air is pregnant out there,” she said. “You can feel the people.”
Far from haunting her, decaying buildings, tattered screen doors and sagging windows set against the backdrop of the prairie form the basis of much of her work.
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Dunlop seeks to capture images of a disappearing way of life on the farm.
“I have to get out and do it. These buildings might not be there in 10 years,” she said.
She knows her subjects well, having grown up in this country and farmed for 21 years with her first husband and four children.
For her, photography is a solitary pursuit accomplished during drives around the local countryside on days away from her office administrator’s job.
Her photographic technique is deceptively simple. Using only a point-and-shoot Yashica camera with limited zoom, she gets as close as possible to what she shoots.
“It gets you into the picture and talks to me a lot more,” she said. “I can imagine the kids coming out of the school house.”
Her intimate, detailed portraits of buildings set her photographs apart from other studies of rural landscapes, said Kim Houghtaling, director-
curator of the Art Gallery of Swift Current.
Dunlop’s work was recently on display there.
“They draw people in to talk about their own experiences. People relate to the images and share their own stories,” he said.
Dunlop also uses fiction to capture prairie stories. Her first book, The Beauty Box, published by Thistledown Press, features coming-of-age stories loosely based on characters and personalities drawn from her own large extended and rural family.
Weaving a work of fiction around someone is a tribute to them and a way of keeping them in the world long after they are gone, she said.
“With both my writing and my photography, I have found a way to look at things through a much closer lens. Somehow, the combination of the two has ratcheted up my awareness of the world.”
In the future, she plans to write more fiction, with a second book ready to be published.
She hopes to launch a new photographic project, capturing images of clotheslines, and plans to continue honing her fiction skills at writers’ retreats.
“You have to get the silence in your life to tap into the stories,” she said.
“The quietness helps me to see.”
