In Small Town Sundays, we travel to dying prairie towns in Alberta to photograph main street and the heart of each town on Sundays.

We are both from Alberta small towns, and we have mixed feelings about our experiences living in them. Sunday traditionally was a day of religion and socializing, of meeting at church and perhaps having a coffee with a neighbour afterwards. The main street would be alive with people going about their day. But with the move to industrialized food systems, many small farms have sold out and left the area with corresponding decreases in school enrolment, hospital visitations, and commerce in small towns.

The towns we visit on Sunday are generally quiet and still. What does this demographic shift reveal about our values as a culture? Are small towns the stuff of nostalgia for the ‘good ‘ole days’ when everything was simple and ‘common sense’ reined? Or is the loss of small communities a reflection of diversifying social structures and technological advancement and viewed as inevitable?

In Small Town Sundays, we use the differences in our personal styles as artists to portray the two narratives of nostalgia and neglect, pairing images together on the wall to suggest these two viewpoints, and encouraging the viewer to think about what kind of story they are attracted to and why. This project encourages us to grapple with our own histories with small towns as well as push to the limit and question tendencies and assumptions underlying our artistic styles.

All photos by Samantha Chrysanthou and Darwin Wiggett