The River Artist Statement

“When I leave the Ottawa area, the first thing I miss is this river and its spirit.
It feels like the river is part of me, or I’m part of it.”

“The most profound part of photographing this series was the feeling of everything alive
within every single frame. I’m grateful to the river for revealing a little of itself.”

The River (2004 to 2016), by Pedro Isztin

My earliest memory of the Ottawa River is picnicking as a young child along the reedy shores of Wychwood in Aylmer, Quebec with my mother. As a teenager I combed the shorelines, collecting stones to make art with or photographing nature and old original cottages. In the late 80’s a friend introduced me to the bike path from Aylmer to Ottawa. While biking to work, I grew acquainted with the wildness and secrecy of the river. The river of my youth expanded to include the Ontario side when I moved to Ottawa. In 2007 my father was admitted to a nursing home in Aylmer and after my visits to him I returned to the Aylmer side of the river, finding solace in the forests and shoreline I knew as a child.

I started The River in 2004 with a plastic Holga camera. In 2008, I approached the forest near Aylmer with a medium format camera, but I couldn’t repeat what I’d captured four years earlier. The photographs lacked the unrefined quality that my memory of the river demanded, so I returned to the Holga and shot the rest of the series.

“Cried by the river, had sex by the river, I’ve prayed and mourned, I’ve picked up stones out of the river. Swam in the river, sacrificed things in the river. My eyes have seen beneath and around the river.”

Beneath the River

I can see the bridge where my mother ended her life in 1983. Not sure where she may have drowned, I think she died of a heart attack first. I hope so. Image #5 (page 13) was taken one early spring day while I was standing on the bridge looking down at the massive crack in the ice. The image became the invitation for the debut exhibition of The River at City Hall, in Ottawa. I placed the invitation by my mothers’ old framed passport photo. I moved it away after my intuition received a strong and clear message: “I’m not down in there. I’m at peace, let me go so you can be at peace too.”. Peace came when my father passed away thirty years later in a hospice not far from that very bridge.

I remember my parents bringing me separately or with my siblings to the river in Aylmer, Quebec. Sometimes it would be for picnics or swimming. I can clearly see my dad in the water, his body. The light. I can see my mother and I talking as we’re eating by the shore in the reeds.
Sometimes when I was younger I wished he would have passed away before my mother. Life has secrets that unfold, and they were slowly revealed to me during the years I spent photographing both sides of the river while visiting my father at the nursing home in Aylmer.

The Ontario side isn’t as natural or as wild as the Quebec side close to Ottawa. I would often bike back and forth from Ottawa to Aylmer in all kinds of weather and light, which created different moods. The moods synchronized a feeling I can only describe as healing. A purer connection with my father unfolded.

As my father became more fragile, I began to mourn his looming departure. This project began with childhood memories of my mother and ended with an adult relationship with my father, connected by the river. The River is a project about memory, family, a place, a time, and relationships dear to me.

I dedicate The River to my parents who migrated to Canada from troubled lands. I honour the Indigenous ancestors and their descendants who take care of this land which is now in all our care, whether we come as migrants, refugees, or adventurers searching for new horizons.