The Straight Way Lost

Solitary figure standing on a frozen landscape in winter, photographed in soft monochrome tones.

Introduction

The Straight Way Lost explores disorientation and psychological landscape along the Rideau Canal corridor in Eastern Ontario. Produced during the final stage of my MA Photography studies at Falmouth University, the work emerged following a thirty-year military career and the transition to life as a veteran living with PTSD.

Developed through repeated visits and attentive drift, the project draws on psychogeographic practice, treating landscape less as description than as a field of lived experience.

“Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a dark wood,
for the straight way had been lost.”

– Dante Alighieri, Inferno

The work adopts a fully analogue process using medium format black and white film, long exposures, and intentional camera movement. Structured as a three-part sequence informed by Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, the images trace movement through disorientation, transition, and toward provisional clarity.

Long-exposure black and white pinhole photograph of the Rideau Canal near Newboro Lock, viewed from the Highway 42 bridge beneath overhead utility lines.
Inverted long-exposure black and white photograph of the Rideau Canal near Newboro Lock, viewed from the Highway 42 bridge with overhead utility lines crossing the frame.
Intentional camera movement photograph of snow-covered trees at Kingston Mills Locks, with vertical blurring and streaking created through upward camera movement during exposure.
Blurred winter canal landscape created through intentional camera movement, with soft trees and shoreline dissolving into abstraction.
Abstract winter landscape created through rotational camera movement, with blurred trees radiating around a dark central form.
Blurred winter trees layered over frozen water in an abstract monochrome landscape.
Long-exposure black and white photograph of the raised structure of the Smiths Falls Bascule Bridge, framed against bare winter trees and frozen water.
Blurred winter canal scene with bare trees and historic stone building reflected in water.
Long-exposure black and white photograph of meltwater, exposed wooden beams, rocks, and ice at the Jones Falls Lockstation basin.
Long-exposure black and white photograph of partially frozen water and snow within the drained basin area of the Smiths Falls Combined Lockstation.
Long-exposure black and white photograph of a partially frozen drained lock basin at the Smiths Falls Combined Lockstation, with exposed ice and dark channels of water.
Snow-covered riverbank and blurred winter water beneath bare trees.
Snow-covered lockstation building and flowing winter water framed by bare trees.
Long-exposure black and white photograph of snow-covered concrete steps and a metal handrail at Old Slys Lock in Smiths Falls, Ontario.
Long-exposure black and white photograph of the snow-covered shoreline at Jones Falls Bay during the season’s first snowfall, with calm water and a distant white building reflected across the bay.
Winter canal landscape with snow-covered trees and buildings reflected in still water.
Winter canal scene with snow-covered lock walls and trees reflected in calm water.
Long-exposure black and white photograph of a weathered wooden dock extending into calm winter water at Jones Falls Bay, Ontario.
Long-exposure black and white photograph of calm winter water and snow-covered trees at Lower Brewers Lock, horizontally mirrored from a companion image in the sequence.
Winter river landscape with snow-covered trees and still water rendered in soft monochrome tones.
Minimal long-exposure black and white photograph of light and cloud over Lake Ontario in Kingston, with most visual detail dissolved into soft tonal fields.

Artist Book

Custom linen-bound presentation box for The Straight Way Lost artist book on a wooden surface.

The work is presented as a two-sided leporello artist book. On the recto, diptychs establish visual dialogue between adjacent images, while blank pages and singular frames introduce pause and reorientation. On the verso, a parallel cartographic system situates each photograph within a geographic and historical field through numbered markers, current flow, and distance from the canal terminus.

Contemporary photographs are paired with archival watercolours from the John Burrows fonds, published in 1835 before the advent of photography. Together, these elements place the work in dialogue with both lived experience and historical inscription.

Recto side of The Straight Way Lost artist book showing abstract black-and-white photographs from the opening act of the sequence.
Verso side of The Straight Way Lost artist book showing GIS-generated Rideau Canal maps paired with historical John Burrows watercolours.

Closing Reflection

The Straight Way Lost does not attempt resolution so much as orientation. Through walking and sustained attention, the canal becomes a space for navigating transition.