Author Author

by Bob MacKenzie

In the photograph at the back of Spirit of the Land, Courtney Milne looks for all the world like a jolly gnome waiting to greet us as we enter some enchanted wood. In person, he seems not much different. The hair and beard are more closely trimmed, but as he speaks there is still a sense of jovial enchantment about him.

The sense that there is something exceptional about Courtney Milne pervades our conversation. His speech is animated and captivating. Rather than artifice, he brings to the conversation a directness and honesty that complements the spiritual nature of his work.

Noting the painterly quality of much of his photography, I asked Courtney Milne if he was related to David Milne, the Canadian painter.

"I actually looked into that at one time, had someone do a search for me. It seems that David Milne was actually a distant relative."

Because of David Milne's friendship with Emily Carr and the resemblance of a significant number of Courtney Milne's photographs to her work, I asked him whether she or other painters might have tended to influence his photography.

"I suppose my favourite painter is Tom Thompson. The Group of Seven influenced my images more. It's easier to find photographic techniques to replicate what they do than it is with Carr. With Emily Carr, it's more perception. I would like to do what she does, but it's much harder to replicate in photography.

"The Group of Seven is more rooted in realism but Emily Carr is way out there. I think I am a photo-impressionist, if there is such a thing. Well, if there wasn't, I guess there is now. I've just invented the term.

" I think I am in a tradition of Canadian photographers. There is a very strong tradition of colour landscape photographers in Canada, much more than in the States. In the States, photographers tend to make political statements. In Canada we go for the wilds, for the landscape. Certainly one influence for all of us in this regard is the Group of Seven. The wilds and the landscape become a metaphor for freedom and for what makes us Canadians.

"I perceive the features of the landscape as metaphor or as expression.

"I don't think of the Group of Seven or any influences when I'm out there. I'm thinking of the visceral influence, what I feel. In trying to recreate that visceral influence, I am more influenced by the stories of the place, by the folk lore.

"For example, in Niagara Falls, they tell the story of how an evil monster lived there and the gods killed the monster with a thunderbolt and that's how the falls was formed.

"I like to think of the monsters."

Spirit of the Land is clearly a book about spirituality. How does an artist reconcile the practical task of making the photographs and assembling the book with this more spiritual sense?

"We need to recognize that, for better or worse, this book does follow a five year pursuit of landscapes around the world. This is a sequel. This isn't my first attempt to create a book of sacred places. And there is a difference between the books.

"For the first book, I was basically winging it.

"The second had the blessing of a publisher who said here's your mandate; here's your project. I had a specific deadline. I had to go to fifty-four sites in a year and a half. Certainly time was a factor this time.

"In retrospect, my wish is that I could go back to some of these sites and experience them with more feeling, more depth.

"I was glad for the commission, but this is not the ideal way I want to work. For me, this has been a loud, clear lesson to me to slow down and smell the roses."

In fact, for Courtney Milne, photography itself has been a way for him to slow down and smell the roses. Two decades ago, he dropped out of a busy and successful professional life in order to pursue his art.

"My first real awareness of myself as a photographer was when I began to take workshops and to experiment with the camera. I had a masters degree in psychology and I had practised at that for a number of years. But I began to feel unfulfilled.

"A number of things happened in my life. My first marriage broke up, then I was diagnosed with diabetes. I was working at extremely stressful jobs. It got to feel like I was in a bottomless pit trying to find meaning in life.

"One day, I was walking along the street and I heard a little voice. And it said to me: if you want to be happy, take up a camera and do landscapes.

"Then, in 1975, I bailed out of the conventional work world and said, I am a photographer; I am a landscape photographer. For quite some time, I lived in a little shack on the edge of Regina with no heat. I used every dollar I got for film and processing.

"I began to teach photography courses part time at the local community college. For a long time, that was my only income."

Clearly, Courtney Milne has come a long way over the past twenty years. Meeting him, I was left with the sense of a man who, rather than searching for meaning in life, had found his own special meaning and purpose.