Dahlia 'Cafe Au Lait' by Shelagh Howard

Shelagh Howard is an award-winning photo-based visual artist. Born in Toronto and now living in Halifax, her practice probes the layered terrain of memory, identity, and embodied experience. Through long exposures and the human figure, she explores themes of gender, intimacy, and rebirth.

  Her images thread motion and stillness, capturing ephemeral shadows offering a fleeting glimpse of what lingers behind our carefully constructed facades. Each image asks the viewer to see its subject captured outside of time, and to consider what it means to belong to and in a body.

  Shelagh studied psychology at The University of Toronto and photography at Ryerson University, and has exhibited works in Canada, the US and Europe. Her work has been published in photoED magazine, Lenscratch, Songlines Magazine UK, Opera Canada, VICE magazine, and on billboards in Times Square, NYC and Dundas Square, Toronto. She has received recognition from various international awards, including The Julia Margaret Cameron Awards, The Artist Award from the Cornell Henry Art Gallery in San Diego and Photolucida’s Critical Mass.

  Learn more at: shelaghhoward.art

Genus/species explores the invisible, all-encompassing power of names, labels, and language. In lieu of their names or other descriptors, the models are only identified by the taxonomic names of the flowers they hold, harkening back to botanical illustrations and Linnaean classification.

This deliberate refocusing invites the viewer to move away from assumptions about the humans in the frame. Forsaking labels, judgement, or markers of time or place, we are left with the essence of the image before us.

“I am repeatedly drawn to bodies - as vessels for, extensions of or obstacles that impact our sense of selfhood. In response to endless images of bodies being commodified and victimized, I seek solace in what remains fundamental - our connection to each other and to the natural world. These relationships supersede all boundaries, borders and divisive ideologies.”