Essays
Allegro
by CATHERINE OSBORNE
What these soaring forms represent collectively is the physical manifestation of power and aspiration. In the determination to densify, cities have permitted them to spring up everywhere, and now towers that look almost identical to one another are standing side by side. Interestingly, in such tight quarters they have also begun to talk to each other, their reflective skins projecting cacophonic displays of indistinguishable shapes and forms. Their glass coats have become their essential voice.
Ice Huts
by MARCUS SCHUBERT
A striking feature of Johnson’s observations - considered as objects with aesthetic merit - the conventions used in the making of these curious buildings seem universal in conception but highly individual in execution; a form of renegade architecture that verges on the development of a vernacular folk art tradition.
Ice Huts
by BEN WEEKS
In Nova Scotia, rain comes in from the ocean which can freeze the hut to the ice, so huts are small and easy to move. Saskatchewan has the country’s highest per-capita ownership of pickup trucks, so huts there fit like Tetris blocks into truck beds. On Prince Edward Island, the popularity of spearfishing makes light-proofing a design criterion.
Ice Huts
by MARK KINGWELL
And now the brightly painted hut is a beacon, an island, a ship struggling upon a hostile sea. Every one of us knows the feeling of profound relief and comfort that rises within us when, after exposure, we reach a place of shelter and warmth. It is perhaps the most basic of human responses, the way a smell of woodsmoke even on an urban street can transport us immediately to the campfire, the cave, the fellowship of temporary safety. The weather, that unruly god, has been placated once more. We will not perish today.
Jeté
by CATHERINE OSBORNE
But there is something else happening: the flight into a painterly space that has replaced Johnson’s natural instinct to document reality without impediments. This series slides beyond the bounds of a single frame and into illusionistic space, where the viewer’s eye can’t help but bounce across each image in an attempt to shuffle an abstract puzzle back into its logical order.
Root Cellars
by CATHERINE OSBORNE
For decades, though, cellars have mostly languished in abandonment. Locked in time, they have stood as lone survivors of homesteads that have long since moved on. … Their simplicity is what’s enabled them to last for over a century, and what makes them such a compelling image of survival.
Ice Villages
by CATHERINE OSBORNE
Coming Soon
Press
2021
National Post, December 11, article commemorating Richard’s work
2020
Newfoundland Telegraph, “Exploring Root Cellars Through Photography”
REI Uncommon Path [USA], “Photo Essay: Canada’s Ice-Fishing Huts”
2019
National Geographic, “The Lure of Cold Places”
Maritime EDIT, Vol. 11, “Frozen Villages”
Canadian Architect, “Allegro”
2017
Canadian Art Junkie, “Ice Huts”
2016
The London Sunday Times Magazine, “Spectrum: hut and cold”
Smithsonian Magazine, “Portraits of Canada’s Ice Fishing Huts”
Slate.fr, “À la pêche aux belles cabanes du Canada”
Modern Farmer, “Photo Essay: Portraits of Canada’s Ice Fishing Huts”
Feature Shoot, “Canada’s Tiny Ice Huts Will Make You Shiver”
Works That Work, “When The Ice Gets Thick,” The Netherlands
2015
Cottage Life Magazine, “This gorgeous gallery of Canadian ice-fishing huts will have you reeling”
Dwell, “Architecture Off the Grid: Quirky Ice Huts Dot Canada's Frozen Lakes”
CBC Radio, “Ice-fishing shacks across Canada documented by photographer”
Radio Canada International, “Ice-fishing huts in Canada”
BBC Radio Climate, “Being Cold”
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Switzerland
2014
The New York Times, “Freeze Frames of Canada’s Ice Huts”
Globe & Mail Arts Review, ”Out on the Ice, No Two Huts are the Same,”
Globe & Mail Arts Review, “Richard Johnson’s Exhibit ‘Ice Villages’”