As a photographer on her first trip to New York City, the dilemma was what NOT to photograph. Standing on a corner anywhere in Manhattan, at all four points of the compass, there was a monumental manmade structure worthy of a photograph. With no discernible horizon for reference, a vertiginous feeling overwhelmed me. There was no wide angle lens, no camera angle, no digital trickery that could capture the whole of it. A glimpse here, a peek there, a sliver through the concrete canyons flashed before me like frames from some old silent movie, leaving a retinal afterimage of emotion. This exhibition presents a series of black and white ‘glimpses’ of New York, an iconic city I had to leave but that hasn’t left me.

Aynsley Stelfox resides in Calgary, Alberta Canada. She is recently retired from a long career as an oil reservoir technologist. She attended night classes for many years to pursue her love of drawing and painting and she has had the benefit and pleasure of studying with many talented and supportive artists and teachers over the years. In 2004, she put away her 30 year old film camera and bought her first digital camera and subsequently found the medium that best suited her need for artistic expression. Recently, Aynsley has begun a study of darkroom and  historical photographic processes in an effort to recapture, for herself, the wonder of the ‘traditional’ black and white image and to perhaps, in some way, marry her love of the ‘hand processes’ of drawing and painting to her passion for the photograph.