Art Cafe with David Ellingsen, Photographer

David Ellingsen will talk about his profound exhibit at the Cowichan Public Art Gallery, "Days of Plenty: An Archive of Abundance"

Speaking through historical reinterpretation, a counter history, this project compiles appropriated photographs into statements reflecting on human relationship with the more than human.
Most assessments of wildlife populations use 1970 as their starting point. With vast populations already extinct by that time - including the passenger pigeon, great auk, aurochs, and very nearly the plains bison - it is difficult today to imagine how the wild world may have looked before humanity's Great Acceleration. Generationally shifting baselines have obscured our understandings of the Earth’s capacity for abundance.
But we do have history's photographs to remind us…frozen moments granting us glimmers of now almost unimaginable natural abundance, artifacts recalling forgotten responsibilities.