Encroachment features images taken from our town of Cochrane, Alberta.

Cochrane is a friendly town with a suburban feel. We have many sports fields and parks and some natural areas, especially along the Bow River. Encroachment examines how Cochrane’s green public spaces are used through the metaphor of “the public commons”. In historical terms, common lands were public and open to anyone (usually the less fortunate) to access and glean resources where they could. In our current era of food insecurity, where cities are only days away from running out of supplies, is our current policy of promoting recreational fields and parks the best use of the modern-day commons? Has our desire for entertainment and activity encroached on healthy, food-producing habitat? Or is the balance adequate, with wild areas proliferating at the edges of creeks and streams, pathways and infrastructure, forever having to be chopped back from infiltrating our parks and soccer fields?

In Encroachment, we intend to suggest these contradictions through use of ‘double exposure’. Images of Cochrane’s green sports fields and manicured parks will be overlaid with images of human food and medicine-producing natural areas in Cochrane. We invite the viewer to contemplate their reaction to this deliberate juxtaposition of two very different visions of the public commons. The overlay will is done digitally to maximize clarity of the concept but requires a great deal of visualization in the field in obtaining the correct images for the project. This project challenged our ability to envision the final product when faced in the field with only the raw materials of subject and light. It is far beyond the beautiful landscape images we created in our commercial work, and we are excited to explore deeper meaning in our work.

All photos by Samantha Chrysanthou and Darwin Wiggett