KRISTIN SJAARDA

Kristin Sjaarda is a photographer based in Toronto, Ontario, where she lives with her husband and three sons. Kristin is known for her large scale, lush photographs of flowers and fauna of her garden and local, urban environment. Photos from this series have been exhibited internationally. Kristin also has designed silk scarves based on the photographs. She has taught workshops on her style of natural light photography and floral arrangement.

 

Using the style of Dutch Golden Age painters as a jumping-off point, and objects passed down to me from my Dutch grandmother’s family, I photograph flowers grown in my downtown Toronto neighborhood alongside the flora and fauna that live and thrive in our urban environment. While the 17th-century artworks were made in an era of expansion and exploitation, these images strive to preserve what is now threatened by climate change. The birds are loaned to me from the Royal Ontario Museum, and insects from the Cambridge Butterfly Conservatory. The images are a reflection of both my heritage and the city that I live in and are printed and presented at larger-than-life scale to render these fragile subjects in a manner that is powerful, provocative, and immersive.