A photographer who arrived at the Canadian National Vimy Memorial nearly two decades ago expecting little more than another assignment left France with a much deeper connection to one of Canada’s most powerful symbols of remembrance.
Blair Ketcheson’s photographs of the memorial will be on public display in Winnipeg this weekend as more than 1,000 Royal Canadian Legion branch leaders and members from across Canada, the United States and Europe gather to mark the organization’s 100th anniversary.
The free exhibition of 20 black-and-white fine-art photographs will be displayed Aug. 21 to 25 in the rotunda on the second floor of the RBC Convention Centre.
For Ketcheson, the photographs began with a commission in 2007.
At the time, the Victoria, B.C.-based photographer was living in France after spending years working as an architectural photographer in Vancouver. One of his clients was involved in the restoration of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, which was reopened in 2007.
Ketcheson was asked to stop at the site on his way back to Canada and photograph the restored monument.
He agreed, adding a couple of days to his trip.
“I didn’t think much about it,” Ketcheson said. “I was vaguely aware of the monument and what it was about, but I really didn’t know much about it.”
He arrived near the end of the day, intending to get his bearings before returning to photograph the site properly the next morning.
Then he saw the memorial in the last light of the day.
“It was incredibly moving,” he said. “I was just stopped in my tracks and had to completely reconsider what I was doing.”
Ketcheson, who also pursued fine-art photography alongside his architectural work, immediately recognized that the site was something more than a straightforward assignment.
He returned before dawn the next morning.
It was still pitch black when he arrived, but he wanted to stand in the same place where he had first seen the monument. As the light began to rise, he photographed the memorial from the first moments of dawn onward.
The resulting images were partly produced for the restoration client and partly for himself.
They then sat for years before Ketcheson began developing the work into an exhibition roughly two or three years ago.
The collection has since grown into a book, Portraits of an Icon, Canada’s Legacy for Peace, as well as exhibitions in communities including Edmonton.
The Winnipeg showing is particularly fitting because it is being held during the Royal Canadian Legion’s national convention, where delegates will gather to honour a century of service and discuss the future of the organization’s veteran support network.
Ketcheson said veterans and Legion members are an ideal audience for the photographs because of their connection to remembrance.
“They have a real stake in this,” he said.
The exhibition also comes at a time when the First World War is becoming increasingly distant from the collective memory of Canadians.
Ketcheson noted that Canada had a population of roughly seven million during the First World War and sent nearly 650,000 people overseas to serve.
The Vimy Memorial stands as a reminder of that sacrifice.
Designed by Canadian sculptor and architect Walter Allward, the monument rises more than 100 feet above the former battlefield and includes 20 sculpted figures, many of them roughly twice life size.
But Ketcheson said what makes the memorial particularly powerful is that it does not celebrate war as a military victory.
“It’s not about, you know, here were the winners, our swords in the air, we won,” he said.
Instead, he sees the memorial as a monument to sacrifice, peace and remembrance.
That distinction is also reflected in the photographs, which focus less on the battlefield itself than on the monument’s imposing forms, figures and relationship with the surrounding landscape and light.
The photographs have drawn praise from people with longstanding connections to Vimy.
Former governor general Adrienne Clarkson, who visited the exhibition during a 110th anniversary event for the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry in Edmonton, told Ketcheson she had visited Vimy many times but had never seen it represented in quite the same way.
“This exhibit of photos by Blair Ketcheson is a deeply moving, evocative and profoundly artistic evocation of all that Walter Allward’s sculpture is,” Clarkson said in a statement. “It takes us beyond photography into a magical and moving remembrance of sacrifice, where beauty and sorrow are mingled and brings us peace and ultimately joy.”
For Ketcheson, the response has reinforced what he felt during those first moments at the memorial in 2007.
He said he has spoken with several people who have visited Vimy and, without exception, they have described the experience as transformative.
“I’ve met quite a few people who have been there, and every person to a person has said it’s changed them,” he said.
The Winnipeg exhibition offers visitors who have never travelled to France an opportunity to experience the memorial through Ketcheson’s perspective.
He hopes the photographs can do more than simply document one of Canada’s most recognizable monuments.
The goal, he said, is to make people pause.
“It’s pretty important even today,” he said.
Ketcheson will be at the RBC Convention Centre during the exhibition to speak with members of the public and sign copies of his book.
The exhibition is free and open to the public during the Legion convention, which runs Aug. 21 to 25 at the RBC Convention Centre, 375 York Ave. in Winnipeg.
For Ketcheson, seeing the work reach a new audience nearly 20 years after he first photographed the memorial is a satisfying conclusion to a project that began almost by chance.
“I’m just really thankful that the images turned out as well as they did, and that people are getting something from them,” he said. “You can’t ask for much more as a photographer.”
