What better place to begin a walk than in a shoe store? So mused TRU visual arts professor and artist-researcher Ernie Kroeger as he embarked on producing My Morning Walk, a fusion of photos from Kamloops’ past blended with thoughts from the here and now.
Inspired by an historical photo of a Kamloops shoe store, the book, co-published by the SSHRC-funded Small Cities Community University Research Alliance at Thompson Rivers University and the Kamloops Museum and Archives, will be launched this Tuesday at Cowboy Coffee on Victoria Street.
Interestingly, the present-day launch location is pictured in the book itself: the historical photo of Scott’s coffee shop in the Maple Leaf Block is the precursor of today’s cowpoke cappuccino stop, with a link made between the two in Kroeger’s imaginative prose.
“Ernie has taken historical photos and facts and used them in creative, artistic ways in his imaginative walking tour of Kamloops,” said museum supervisor Elisabeth Duckworth”. When you pass those same corners, they come alive again.”
This, his second book, continues a theme for the artist-educator, who explained that “For some time I have had the idea of linking photographs to represent the experience of walking through a particular place”. His first, The Great Divide, featured walking in the Rockies illustrated with panoramic shots.
Though the climbs in Kamloops can’t be compared to mountain trekking, Kroeger put in a lot of miles compiling My Morning Walk, both figuratively and literally.
Using photos he found in the archives and the Camera House collection as a foundation for his work, he then devoted many hours to combing the archives for historical information and also spent what he describes as “a surprising amount of time walking in an attempt to correlate historic photographs with present day places.”
The result is “a quirky little book” that blends the past and present in an engaging way.
The launch is will be held from 6 to 7 pm on Tuesday, April 7th at Cowboy Coffee at 229 Victoria StreetKroeger will be on hand to sign copies of his book and will give a reading at 6:30 pm.
Contact: Ernie Kroeger at 250-371-5964 or Elisabeth Duckworth at 250-828-3576
