Rita Leistner | Forest For The Trees: Exhibition & Book Launch

Reading Room 23 - 30 October 2021 
Reading Room

Exhibition Dates: October 23 – November 6, 2021

Book Signing with Rita Leistner: October 23, 2021, 11am – 6pm

Call or email the gallery to pre-order your copy. 

 

To book your visit, or to attend the opening day, please visit here

 

Stephen Bulger Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition in the Reading Room by Rita Leistner featuring works from the series “The Tree Planters” and "Enchanted Forests”. The exhibition is in conjunction with the book launch of Forest For The Trees.

Forest For The Trees is the culmination of four years of immersion in the Canadian landscape and a life shaped by northern forestry. It is Leistner’s fourth book of photography, and her first with Dewi Lewis Publishers, UK.

Returning to the cut-block (the vast swathes of land cleared by logging) in 2016, Leistner “embedded” herself within a community of 100 tree planters in their bush camps in remote parts of western Canada. She creates heroic and uncanny portraits of work and of the land in homage to the people, profession and environment that were so formative to her. These young labourers became the subject of two series of fine art photographs — the twin epics The Tree Planters and Enchanted Forests, which are currently in major Canadian collections including The National Gallery of Canada and the Royal Ontario Museum, and will soon be a touring exhibition. They are also subjects of her first feature-length documentary film Forest For The Trees (2021), which recently premiered at Vancouver's DOXA Documentary Film Festival 2021. 

The photographs in Forest For The Trees are paired with an intimate conversation between Leistner and her friend and collaborator, celebrated screenwriter, director and actor, Don McKellar — with an exquisite translation into Canadian French by Dominique Russell.