A Prairie Town, 2021 | David Burdeny
The Canadian prairies have an architectural tradition of impermanence, committed pragmatism and humble resolve. These early settlements and buildings had a tenuous link to the earth, their very existence a flaunting of the distances and the endless plains. Infused with old country visions only partially resolved, our first builders grasped the most basic of spatial and architectural means-the survey grid, the windbreak, the exaggerated facade – to tame an immense plain.
Motivated by a sense of nostalgia, I traveled the lesser roads of the Canadian plains in search of the same scenes I once photographed as a child. I was seeking remnants of the past and present them here as a catalogue of artifacts, revealing an identity shaped by a connection to the soil, ethnicity and community.
The narrative was influenced by sections of Robert Kroetsch’s long poem “Seed Catalogue” (1977). The photographs explore, as Kroetsch’s Seed Catalogue does, the construction of place and the prairie town as a new world garden where the fundamental question is: “how do you grow…” a town on the prairie landscape.” ——— David Burdeny