Exhibition: Threads of Time: Photographic Connections

Join us for the opening reception of Threads of Time: Photographic Connections on Thursday, February 13, at 5 PM! Curated by Birthe Piontek, this exhibition showcases the work of 14 students from the Fall 2024 ECU Studio Photography class (PHOT316: Hopehill x Emily Carr), highlighting their exploration of photography as a tool for intergenerational connection and storytelling.

Threads of Time: Photographic Connections
February 13 – 26, 2025
Emily Carr University of Art + Design
Michael O’Brian Exhibition Commons Gallery, 1st Floor

In the exhibition Threads of Time: Photographic Connections 14 photography students from ECU showcase that the photographic medium can transcend the surface of the everyday, fostering deeper connections and expanding knowledge. These emerging artists, through a partnership between ECU and Hopehill, left the comfort zone of their university classroom to engage with a new and unique learning environment at a seniors’ residence. Utilizing photography’s unique ability to facilitate connection and build community, each student teamed up with a senior and engaged in a meaningful exchange of stories, ideas, and perspectives across generations.

Threads of Time showcases the rich interplay of stories, ideas, and images exchanged over an immersive eight-week collaboration. Working with portraits, objects and still lifes, the artists activate the camera’s capacity to compress time, blending past, present, and future. Conversations and archival images brought seniors’ histories into the present, while their rich life stories inspired the students’ visions for the future. These encounters reveal how photography can preserve and reinterpret life’s narratives, offering profound insights into how lives are lived—and could be lived.

Threads of Time: Photographic Connections features work by: Katelynn Agnew, Lucinda Beaumont, Aryana Borders-Pendakur, Lou Chabanet, Emma Dorn, Freya Harding, Isabel Hu, Joanne Hu, Mengyan Li, Sunsun Liu, Jessica Ouimet, Cochise Seitcham, Sehyun Zo, and Joey Yang.

This exhibition is part of the Shumka Centre’s Pathways for Creative Futures program, funded in partnership with Hopehill and the Business + Higher Education Roundtable with support from the Government of Canada.