[February 12, 2025]
by Ewa Monika Zebrowski
Minus 30, Angela Boehm, Stuttgart, Hartmann Books, 2024, 112 pages, 24 x 34 cm, hardcover with open spine, Biotop paper
Deer are grazing under the cover of the enclosed landscape.
My feet are warm.
Roaring silence.
– Angela Boehm (front cover flap)
Minus 30 is a daring work in many ways. It poses the challenge of embracing winter in the prairie landscape, and the challenge of photographing and printing, to convey the ephemeral nature of this long season, white on white. And the coldness. And the darkness. Prairie winters are harsher than most, with often-unbearable temperatures and blizzards. In the prairies winter lasts seven or eight months, beginning in October and ending in April. Seven months of whiteness and silence and isolation. This book, Angela Boehm’s first, reflects that.
Born in Saskatchewan, Boehm experienced the poetry and mystery of this white season as she was growing up on a farm with her parents and two brothers. She decided that she wanted to photograph the prairie winter that she had experienced as a child and to reflect on the loss of her family members. She embarked on a series of road trips to photograph her family home and farm, now abandoned. A kind of grieving process.
She began shooting in 2020. One can only imagine the will and courage needed to venture out in the depths of winter to explore the lost past. The seven-hour drive from Calgary, where she lives, was often treacherous given the storms; the blowing winds and limited visibility sometimes forced the highways to close.
Minus 30 is an extended visual haiku. There is a certain meditative rhythm as we turn the pages. All fifty-five images are the same size, placed in the same position on every page, the margins slightly shifting. Mesmerizing. A journey into whiteness and silence. And aloneness.
Boehm photographed the silent fields of white; a crow seems to dance in the wind in several pictures. In her images, animals appear as if in a dream. One feels the intense cold and the howling wind. The impression of being caught in a snowstorm in which one loses all sense of direction. Is winter a mirage or a dream?
Over two and a half winters, Boehm gathered over eight thousand images, shooting only when the temperature plummeted to or below minus 30° C. She shot most of the photographs in Saskatchewan, using only the camera’s histogram for her light readings. The digital photographs were shot and printed in colour. One can see hints of pink and gold in the black-and-white landscape.
The image on the cover feels like a whisper, a Japanese abstract ink or charcoal drawing. The photographs are like delicate landscape sketches that explore the corners of this season of hibernation. We witness traces of a delicate landscape, barely visible, veiled by a mysterious curtain of ice and snow. A dormant season.
Nominated for the Prix Pictet, Minus 30 is a work of visual poetry, of atmosphere. One feels the world enveloped in stillness. Lyrical. No didactic intervention necessary. Though published in a trade edition of eight hundred copies, Minus 30 feels like an artist’s book in both form and content, thanks to contributions by designer Akiko Wakabayashi and printer Robstolk. The elegant size lets us enter the photographs printed on a matte chalky- white paper. The Swiss binding allows the book to lie completely flat when open. The landscapes tell the story. Minus 30 was developed during the unique one year Photobook Program offered by Brad Feuerhelm, from Nearest Truth Editions.
Two texts are included at the end of the book, one by the writer Brad Zeller and the other by the independent curator Daniel Blochwitz. Zeller lives in Minnesota and has worked with the photographer Alec Soth. He is well acquainted with winter. Blochwitz lives in Switzerland and has never experienced the kind of prairie winter Boehm depicts. Both authors respond in a poetic way to her extended winter journey.
Boehm herself adds a brief, matter-of-fact artist’s statement at the end of the book. Her ode to winter. “My work is driven by the fleeting nature of life, and its stages, along with the rhythms of the natural world,” she writes. “Through my photography, I seek to preserve and honor the memories of environments that are slowly disappearing, just as I strive to document the essence of my family’s history, rooted in the harsh, yet beautiful winters of Saskatchewan. This is more than a visual journey—it’s a deeply personal exploration of memory, loss, and resilience.”
Angela Boehm is a self-taught Canadian photographer and artist residing in Calgary, Alberta. She began photographing in 2019, having previously worked as an executive with CP RAIL and in philanthropy. She received a number of awards in 2020 and has had eight solo exhibitions. www.angelaboehm.ca
Ewa Monika Zebrowski is a photographer and a poet. She has presented forty solo exhibitions and produced twenty-five artist’s books since 2001. Her work can be found in over fifty institutional and museum collections in Canada, the United States, and abroad, including MoMA, the Getty Research Institute, and the Menil Collection. www.ewazebrowski.com