London photographer's new book offers diverse view of Forest City
This is the London Richard Bain wants you to see.
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This is the London Richard Bain wants you to see.
The photographer, who has published six books about London during the last three decades, has compiled his latest vision of London, the one that has been home to Indigenous people for hundreds of years and has become home to immigrants from around the world.
Shared Waters: London Listens, with a foreword by Leslee White-Eye, former chief of Chippewas of the Thames and a board member at King’s University College, is a colourful, informative and intimate profile of London, its people, history, cultures and environment with a heavy focus on the Indigenous communities in the city and region.
“I wanted to do a new book about London and show it the way we really are, the diversity, all the different cultures, especially a strong Indigenous component,” said Bain, who has published more than 30 coffee-table photo books since graduating from Western University and setting up shop as a corporate and commercial photographer more than 30 years ago.
“This book has a very strong water focus as well as a strong Indigenous and BIPOC component. Corporations and organizations are included, but also were asked to share space for photographs of their own path of reconciliation pursuits. I asked each of them to guide my photography in one of three areas: Water, land and relationships. I was honoured to help tell the story of Antler River through photographs and text, as we acknowledge and celebrate Indigenous Peoples in the region.”
The book is sponsored by the London Chamber of Commerce and its chief executive, Graham Henderson, wrote on the book’s dust cover the book is aimed at contributing to the truth and reconciliation “discourse” that’s flowed from the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves on the grounds of former residential schools.
“I hope this book adds something meaningful to the discourse. Shared Waters is a partial fulfilment of the Chamber’s moral obligations in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action,” said Henderson, noting all net proceeds from the book will be “devoted to furthering these obligations.”
White-Eye offers some profound words on the back cover.
“We are but a droplet in a great big sea of life,” said White-Eye.
“And if we conduct ourselves in kindness, in humility, we are the promise, fulfilled, made by the seven generations before us. Reconciliation is truly about leading. The promise of a better tomorrow, therefore, lives on in all of us.”
The book includes 140 photographs (including several photos by Indigenous and BIPOC photographers.) from London and the surrounding area, some that are startling, powerful and beautiful, if not surprising, such as a photo of a grey wolf along a tributary of the Thames River near Delaware.
“Water is what’s drawn people to our city,” said Bain, who also has released his 32nd calendar of London photos, which sells for $15 at local book stores.
“There have been seven generations of Indigenous people who’ve lived on the river before us. Maybe London is not quite what we think it is. But this is who we really are. I’ve been amazed by the people I’ve met and the doors that have opened for me for this book.”
Shared Waters: London Listens is published by Binea Press Inc. and is available online an in all major book stores for $45, as well as the Oxford Book Shop, 262 Piccadilly St.
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