Sarah Anne Johnson’s Arctic Wonderland

Sarah Anne Johnson has had a significant impact on Canadian photography, as winner of the Grange Prize, as a focal point of numerous exhibits and as a rising international star who represents this country abroad.   Her work is in New York’s Guggenheim Museum and she has taught photography at the Yale School of Art.  Her Arctic Wonderland flowed from an expedition she describes as “amazing, exotic, breathtakingly beautiful and sublime.”

Canadian Art magazine describes this work as “Arctic landscapes with fantastical alterations:  buildings and confetti grace the tops of glaciers; vibrant, smoky fireworks fill the expansive northern sky. The result of an expeditionary residency to Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, the works combine a celebration of the Arctic’s beauty with the artist’s awareness of its precarious future.”

See more photo-art from Arctic Wonderland at the Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto, and Julie Saul Gallery in New York.  The series is worth examining as one of the more arresting examples of her work.

Johnson is also well known for her photography of northern Canadian tree planters, works which were previously posted on Canadian Art Junkie.