Sentinel is an ongoing series documenting
light sources that struggle against the
surrounding darkness of the Alberta
prairie. On nightly walks I began to
imagine the streetlights as sentry patrol,
echoing Northrop Frye’s idea of “garrison
mentality,” a theme in Canadian Literature
when characters build metaphorical walls
against the outside world. This mentality
derives from part of the Canadian settler
imagination threatened by the desolate
expanse of the Canadian landscape.
Within city limits, the streetlights are like
nodes in a vector, slowly expanding the
city’s boundary of visibility with every new subdivision. As a cultural prosthetic,
electricity extends our vision well beyond
“natural” diurnal hours, subjecting certain
areas to perpetual brightness. Individually,
the scenes appear quiet and banal, but
collectively they start to become highly
theatrical and incidentally organized with
implied drama.
1. Edition 05/2019
Texts by Tyler Muzzin
Book design by 89books
44 pages
21 x 28 cm
32 color photographs
Stapled brochure in a printed envelope