Derek Boswell - My Backyard

I’ve always lived in the quintessential Canadian city; London, Ontario: A place too small to reliably be on everyone’s map, yet too large – and lacking any outward character or charm – to be an inviting location. I’m yet to hear of someone who treats this city as anything but a stopover on their vacation. In contrast to those sophisticated international cities we have reverence for, London, Ontario lack an overt incentive to come visit. Yet, as someone who has spent their entire life here, I’ve come to find that aesthetic pleasure isn’t nonexistent in London – it’s just a bit harder to find.

In many respects, a backyard is a space for exploration. The Sifton Bog and the local suburbs were a condensed version of the world that I investigated with my sense of childhood wonder: I could navigate the interface between the plants and the animals, the houses and the humans. Photography enables me to do much the same by expanding and documenting that backyard – that space for exploration and inquiry – to the entirety of London. Here, photography acts as a patron searching through the shop-worn bargain racks of a department store; seeking that diamond in the rough. Its existence may have been disarmed by its surroundings, but when that object is viewed in an alternative context – through photographic composition, rather than the naked eye – It has the power to be just as captivating as any other sight