The Citizen, 2019-01-24, Page 19THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2019. PAGE 19.
Dickie chronicling rural life for ‘Home Grown’ project
Local photographer Hannah
Dickie has been working for years
on a project she hopes will connect
with rural audiences and introduce
urban residents to the joys of rural
living.
Dickie is a Lucknow-area native
and F.E. Madill Secondary School
graduate who is now at Sheridan
College in Oakville, studying at
what is said to be one of the best
photography programs in North
America. She is also a photographer
for The Citizen and has had her work
exhibited at the Goderich Co-op
Gallery.
During her time at Sheridan, she
has been honoured a number of
times, including the award for best
portrait last year and for best
documentary image in 2017. While
she has been attending classes in
Oakville, Dickie has also been
working on “Home Grown”, a long-
term documentary photography
project that focuses on her rural
upbringing.
It was when Dickie first attended
Sheridan in one of Ontario’s larger
city centres that she felt the need to
document the rural way of life.
Meeting her fellow students, she
found that very few of them had a
connection to rural living. As a
result, she wanted to take the
opportunity to showcase the rural
way of life showing the beauty of
living away from the province’s city
centres.
“Moving to the city for the first
time, [I found that] not many people
had experienced rural living,” Dickie
said.
When she began documenting life
at her Lucknow-area farm, she was
heavily influenced by her father,
Walter. After working at Bruce
Power for over 40 years, he retired
and began his time as a hobby sheep
farmer and maple syrup producer.
Dickie says that her father was a
great inspiration for the project, not
just as a father figure, but as a farmer
as well.
“This series aims to string together
[Dickie’s] life now and how it has
been influenced by her
surroundings. [Dickie] gives viewers
a glimpse into not only her life, but
also her father’s, ultimately
providing the story of her rural
upbringing,” reads a description of
the “Home Grown” project on
Dickie’s website.
Dickie has been working on the
project for several years and, in
many ways, doesn’t see the project
ending any time soon. She hopes it
will be a long-term documentary of
rural living that will feature
photographs from numerous aspects
of her life.
In wanting to tell her story, again,
her father served as a major
influence. She says he has always
been a great storyteller and so she
wanted to take her skills and passion
as a photographer and use them to
tell her own story her own way.
While she has been mainly
working on “Home Grown” on her
own time, as she has progressed
through her studies at Sheridan, she
has been able to use photographs for
the project that she’s taken for
classes along the way.
While it is a true challenge for a
photographer to tell a story using
only images, Dickie has also
expanded her storytelling over the
years, creating an online magazine
and incorporating text into her
images on her website as well.
She has been charged with
creating a book of narrative
photography through her course.
Whether that’s the final form the
project takes or not, Dickie says she
doesn’t know, but she hopes to
present it to the public one day,
either in book form or as a gallery
exhibit. It will, however, be featured,
as part of her class’s final graduation
show in Toronto.
While “Home Grown” is still a
work in progress by Dickie’s own
admission, she says she’s really
proud of where the project currently
sits, feeling as though she’s been
able to connect with her fellow
students through the project,
accomplishing what she set out to do
with it in the first place.
“Home Grown” isn’t the only
series Dickie is currently working
on. She’s also producing a photo
documentary that examines the state
of rural churches and where faith is
heading in the future – a project she
used for her thesis in her previous
semester.
For Dickie, studying at Sheridan
has been a dream come true since
she was first gifted a camera in
public school. Growing up in rural
Ontario, she says she wasn’t sure
about pursuing a career in the arts
because it isn’t exactly the most
well-worn path to prosperity for
rural students.
However, it was her father who
convinced her to follow her dreams
and her passion, regardless of what
the majority of her contemporaries
were doing. She then began to hone
her skills at F.E. Madill in Wingham
and was then accepted into every
post-secondary institution she
applied to, including Sheridan.
To view some of Dickie’s pictures
or to read up on her projects, visit
www.hannahdickiephotography.ca.
GET
CONNECTED!
The Citizen
is now planning its
2018-2019 Telephone
Book
WANT TO ADD OR RENEW YOUR CELL PHONE LISTING?
Each person can have one free listing
(cell or landline).
Additional phone numbers are just $5.00.
Get in the book!
Is your number correct in the recently delivered Bell
Canada phone book? Do you have a new listing
since that book was compiled?
Let us know about corrections or additions
Call 519-523-4792 or info@northhuron.on.ca
‘Home Grown’
Hannah Dickie, a native of the Lucknow area and a graduate of F.E. Madill Secondary School,
is attempting a long-term photographic documentary project called “Home Grown”, which is
chronicling rural life, largely through her family farm. (Hannah Dickie photo)
Inspiration
For her years-long photography project, “Home Grown”,
Hannah Dickie didn’t have to look far from home for
inspiration, focusing heavily on her father, Walter.
(Hannah Dickie photo)
By Shawn Loughlin
The Citizen
Documentarian
It took moving to an urban centre for local photographer
Hannah Dickie to truly appreciate what she was leaving
behind with the rural way of life. (Jessie Wortley photo)