I have been photographing for most of my life. As a young person, it was a way of establishing an artistic identity, honing a vision and focusing attention out onto and into the world. I taught art in high school for over 20 years, critiquing images with all their symbolic and compositional meanings everyday of my working life. I come from a background where visual language is primary, and the body is the recipient of the image’s meaning. I guess I’m unapologetically old school, believing composition and structure read through the body is a wonderfully direct way of “knowing”. I’m interested in beauty, whether “terrible” beauty of the sublime sort, or the less threatening garden variety we encounter everyday. My fascination with deserted, abandoned or austere places is well documented in my work. I’m always looking at the “underbelly” or around the corners of everyday perception of the animate or the inanimate world. Then there are people, who create the curious cultural anomalies that interest me so much and figure prominently in my work. I like to find what is hidden and mysterious.This website is part photographic memoir with my vintage prints and also a showcase for my present day practice. It has been and continues to be a great journey.
Lougheed Mall Swap Meet
The Lougheed Drive-In operated from about 1951 to 1981 when the property was sold. It was located on the south side of Lougheed Highway between Gilmore and Madison avenues where condo towers are going up today.
It’s unclear how long the swap meet operated but it was one of the ways, including farmers markets, that the owners of local drive-ins used to bring in income during daytime hours when movies weren’t being shown, Gooden said.
It was very ephemeral. It’s a group of people getting together at a spot to do business for the day and then at the end everything gets loaded in a truck and disappears.
See the set
The culture of Lithuania combines an indigenous heritage, represented by the unique Lithuanian national language, with Nordic cultural aspects and Christian traditions resulting from historical ties with Poland.
See the set
The culture of Lithuania combines an indigenous heritage, represented by the unique Lithuanian national language, with Nordic cultural aspects and Christian traditions resulting from historical ties with Poland.
See the set© 2013 Birute Photography
