For his entire career, Peter Coffman, the photographer, has been pretty much separate from Peter Coffman, the architectural historian.
But for Anglicana Tales: Stories of the Nova Scotian Church, Shown and Told, an exhibition running through to July 4 at the 新加坡六合彩开奖直播 Art Gallery, the two managed to work together.
鈥(The exhibition) is a collaboration between a photographer and a historian, who, in this case, happens to be the same guy,鈥 says Dr. Coffman with a smile.
Organized to coincide with the 300th anniversary of the first Anglican service in Canada, the exhibition documents the built heritage of the Anglican Church through beautiful photography.
The photographs of churches, ranging from the grand to the humble, can be admired on their own merits, but Dr. Coffman is hoping viewers will see them as windows into stories. Taking a page from Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales, the 31 photographs in the exhibition are arranged in eight groupings, each grouping telling a story drawn from Dr. Coffman鈥檚 research. It鈥檚 research that鈥檚 spawned not only an exhibition but a few conference papers and journal articles as well.
One grouping, for example, is called The Loyalist鈥檚 Tale, a series of photos of some of the earliest Anglican churches in the provinces, built soon after the United Empire Loyalists arrived in Nova Scotia following the American Revolution. The parish churches鈥攚hite, pretty and fairly simple in design鈥攁re echoes of St. Martin in the Fields in Trafalgar Square in London, England.
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But as beautiful and as striking as these churches are, they are disappearing. One of the churches which appears in Anglicana Tales, All Saints Church in Granville Centre, was dismantled and shipped to Louisiana last fall, leaving behind 鈥渁 cemetery with a bald spot,鈥 says Dr. Coffman. One other has been abandoned; another is about to deconsecrated.
鈥淚f we鈥檙e going to try and save these buildings, people need to engage with them,鈥 says Dr. Coffman, who is completing a two-year fellowship with the Department of History and has accepted a position at the School for Studies in Art and Culture at Carleton University in Ottawa.
鈥淥r else they鈥檙e just piles of boards and shingles.鈥
SEE PHOTOS: Telling tales out of church