St. George: Ebb and Flow Book
Softcover
88 pages, 8 x 8”
Photographs by Susan Lapides
Introduction by John Leroux
Publisher and Design: Goose Lane Editions
Bilingual edition (English/French)
Published September 3, 2024
ISBN 978-1773104263
$27
“Boston-based photographer Susan Lapides has felt St. George’s attraction for decades, as she has spent her summers in the community since 1998. Her deep commitment to capturing character and place is brilliantly matched by her innate sense of composition and colour. Like the photography of Stephen Shore, Susan’s work testifies to the fact that the everyday can be mesmerizing if we are lucky enough to have the right exponent behind the lens. Through Susan’s eyes and camera, the dusky cobalt blues of the ocean and sky become symphonic; a neoprene-clad swimmer floats like a spent superhero; three wet-haired girls beside a bonfire evoke the deepest musings and tensions of youth; a rural preacher becomes Moses in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments; and the image of a windswept cliff with a lighthouse, dog, lacrosse player, and tree is as powerful and enigmatic as an Edward Hopper painting.
“Susan Lapides has the intuition and courage to give St. George and its inhabitants an honest visual record of themselves to spectacular effect. Her photographs transport us to that polished blue horizon, those fishers, and the humanity of the citizens, all ebbing and flowing as they always will.”
—John Leroux, 2024
Manager of Collections and Exhibitions & Director of the Marion McCain Institute for Atlantic Canadian Art, Beaverbrook Art Gallery