St. George : Ebb and Flow
Artist Statement
Characterized by one curator as both “practical and poetic,” Susan’s photography explores the relationships between people and place. Her work has been described as a love letter to the town of St. George, a small fishing village in New Brunswick, Canada. For generations, the people of St. George have cherished their short maritime summers and long evenings. Susan captures these quiet and extraordinary moments, as light bends, time slows, and families gather around bonfires to share the day’s adventures. Her images capture moments between memories and evoke the rhythms of summer: wildness and tenderness, sun-glazed cheeks and dizzy laughter.
Rich, sensitive, and intimate, Susan’s photography is full of contradictions: a small town that is home to big industry, ephemeral moments that seem to last forever, children both playful and serious. As the guestbook in a local New Brunswick exhibit once said, “her work makes my backyard look so cool!”
Susan first began taking photographs of the community in 2005. While in some ways the town life has stayed similar for decades, she has witnessed firsthand how St. George is also undergoing massive shifts due to climate change and an increasing globalized fishing industry. What began as a project about a community that she loves soon became the record of this larger story – fleeting moments of childhood in summertime, nostalgia for older ways of living, and a community grappling with the changing demands of industry and the natural world. Through these images, she aims to reflect the collective memory of the people of St. George, capture these fading summer days, and document the monumental changes through a series of small, intimate moments of daily life.