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| The signature image from Peter Coffman's exhibition Camino, now on display at Viewpoint Gallery. (Peter Coffman Photo) |
鈥淚t is continuous, unbroken... changing in shape, colour, texture, mood... the one constant is the sound of footsteps. We walk together but from our first step to the last cobblestone, for each of us, the camino is our own.鈥�
Peter Coffman and Oliver Schroer tell the tale of their pilgrimage along the Camino Santiago through music and images now on display at ViewPoint Gallery. And what a tale it is.
As Mr. Schroer鈥檚 violin resonated through age-old churches along the camino, Dr. Coffman was capturing the spiritual journey with breathtakingly beautiful photographs.
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| The only colour image in the show is Mr. Coffman's photo of his friend Oliver Schroer playing his violin in one of the churches along the way. |
In the spring of 2004, the pair of old friends booked off two months to walk about 1,000 kilometres of the pilgrimage road that runs through France and Spain. The camino nourished both of them creatively; before Mr. Schroer passed away last summer, he released Camino, violin music that he recorded with a portable studio. Meanwhile, the road trip reawakened Dr. Coffman鈥檚 love of photography; his photography graces the cover of his late friend鈥檚 album cover and the liner notes.
Dr. Coffman, a Killam postdoctoral in the Department of History at Dalhousie, describes the experience as 鈥渞ich and very multi-textured.鈥�
鈥淚t is a very profound experience of personal growth. It certainly enlarges your sense of what is possible.鈥�
It鈥檚 not an easy journey. While walking the road, you鈥檙e apt to encounter various forms of weather, from cold, rainy and hailing, to hot and humid.
Along with various weather conditions, the landscape is always changing. Dr. Coffman says that walking the Camino made him very aware of the subtle changes in the lsurroundings.
鈥淓very change in the landscape actually has an immediate impact on how you feel. That intimate relationship with this ever changing landscape is certainly something that I will never ever forget,鈥� he says.
His photos captured the beauty and power of those various landscapes. The black-and-white image that has become the icon of his camino collection is truly spectacular: it depicts bold hills overlapping in gradients, with the sharp contrast of a light road weaving its way up the darkest hill in the foreground.
He says the photo gives 鈥渁 sense of what it feels like to be a very tiny person in this very vast landscape. And what it is like to be a tiny person travelling this narrow, sinewy road that slices so emphatically through this vast landscape.鈥�
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If you go:Camino, an exhibition of photography by Peter Coffman, is on display throughout February at Viewpoint Gallery, 1272 Barrington St., Halifax. The gallery is open Wednesdays to Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. |