As we draw closer to the new year we’ve asked a very special guest every day to take a moment to reflect on 2017 and to tell us about one photograph that best captures the year for them. It’s an assortment of treats to surprise you with every day – to enjoy and contemplate as we all reflect on the year that has passed and conjure our hopes and wishes for 2018. This is our way of sharing the sweetness of the season and of saying ‘Thank You’ to each of you for inspiring us throughout the year.
*******
Founding member of the East German Ma’Claim Crew in the late 90s, Street Artist Case Maclaim is now subtly shimmering and rotating and blinking through your photorealistic memory, catching the sunlight and reflecting back patterns and surfaces and volume as he moves. His abstracted human gestures on walls internationally capture the attention of passersby who wonder if they are seeing something static or moving, painted or photographed. Here Case tells about a figurative tightrope he found people walking upon in Manitoba this year.
CASE MACLAIM
The Rope |
In June 2017 I was invited by the PangeaSeed Foundation to go to Churchill, Manitoba in Canada. Churchill is well known for being the capital of polar bears.
In fact the population of this species is alarmingly shrinking.
There is also archeological evidence of human presence dating back 4000 years, yet I have never seen a community suffering more from the man-made global warming than here. The melting permafrost is unsuitable for building infrastructure on, such as the railways they depend upon. In addition to this, massive storms and flooding are washing away the railroads making them unable to use for transportation of goods and people.
While taking the pictures of the railroad workers and chatting with them I realized how deeply these people are embedded with their homes. My hope for these hard working women and men is that their voices will be heard and that their government and the railroad company will finally support them and their future generations.
Case Maclaim. Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. 2017 (photo © Case Maclaim)
Other Articles You May Like from BSA:
Madrid, where street artist SpY is from, is currently covered in its most prodigious snowstorm in years – a feat of nature that takes hold of and transforms our very environment in all dimensions. ...
A quick shot from photographer Nika Kramer here in Berlin from Italy's PixelPancho as part of the One Wall project in Tegel series. Part of the Urban Nation initiative, the new mural dips into is a me...
A new postal stamp in French Polynesia highlights a mural at the “ONO’U” festival in Tahiti, a first for the multi-island country as well as the French Street Artist SETH and his local Tahitian collab...
Canadian Street Artist Fauxreel and Brooklyn’s Specter collaborated recently on a commissioned mural under a bridge to commemorate the 2015 Pan Am Games that are hosting world athletes right now in To...
One thing that some Street Artists do when their work enters the white cube is drop the “street” from their official moniker, instead preferring to be known simply as an “artist”. The decision is poss...