I had contacted the City of Ottawa because of the missing panel at Richcraft Rec Center. They were surprised to hear that it is gone, and will replaced it soon. According to the city's art collection, the artist is Alisdair MacRae, the work is entitled Flora of Nova Scotia, produced in 2011.
The photographs are utilizing the cyanotype process through a contact print coated paper with the sun acting as the exposure.
That's what the text panel will say: Process plays an important role for MacRae in producing his work. He takes pleasure in the uncertainty of results. Here, each of these images is produced through cyanotype contact printing whereby various plants are positioned on coated paper between two sheets of glass and exposed to sunlight. This photographic process produces images on a blue ground. MacRae’s prints were inspired by Anna Atkins’ cyanotypes featured in Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions from 1843, the first photographic prints ever published. Atkins used a cyanotype process to document various forms of algae and seaweed, contact printing the plant along with a scientific caption. In contrast, the prints that MacRae has produced lack technical information related to species, moving these images away from the merely indexical.
MacRae received a BFA from the University of Victoria and a MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School for Fine Arts (New York). His work has been featured in numerous group and solo shows in Canada and abroad including Anthem at Carleton University Art Gallery (Ottawa) in 2007. MacRae currently lives and works in Ottawa where he has been involved in several curatorial and commission projects.
