Alberta photographer braves frigid storms to capture the beauty of Canadian winters

Most people want to stay indoors when temperatures drop to -30, but that’s the picture-perfect condition, literally, for Angela Boehm.

She made a rule to only go out to take pictures of Canadian prairie landscapes when things plunged to -30C, inspiring the title of her new book: Minus 30.

“It has to be -30C or colder because that environment really does look different than when it’s -10C,” she said.

It was a discovery born out of frustration while the award-winning photographer was sitting in traffic during a cold winter day.

“I was thinking to myself and grumbling that I’m a photographer that lives in a part of the world that is winter eight months of the year and I have so little time to photograph. But then I really looked at it and I went, ‘Oh my goodness, this is absolutely beautiful, and it’s been in front of me this whole time, this ice-cold environment.’”

Since that moment several years ago, Boehm has been undeterred by the weather, braving frigid conditions and storms in Alberta and Saskatchewan to capture winter in the prairies.

“So many talk about it being harsh and brutal, but really I started to see it as delicate and fragile,” she said. “Snow breaks when you walk on it, ice is fragile water, and really is there anything as delicate as a snowflake?”

However, the project also tested Boehm physically and mentally.

When the temperatures plunged, she would travel dangerous highways and head into storms alone.

“Staying warm was quite a challenge because if I had my camera out in the cold I couldn’t come back into my vehicle and warm up. Once it got cold, it had to stay cold otherwise, the camera would fog up. So, it didn’t matter if it was -40 out I had to keep the windows open in my vehicle,” she said.

“Try as you might, you can’t take a picture with a glove on or a mitten, it has to be your bare finger on the button so that was a challenge.”

The artist took comfort in her familiarity with the Prairie winters, having grown up in Saskatchewan, but the project also turned into an exploration of grief and resilience.

Boehm lost both of her younger brothers and her mother to different accidents in the past and was surprised to find a connection to them and a solitude in the wintry season.

“It was born out of grief,” she said. “So, that’s really what the work really became about is the softening of memory over time. How in this environment the concrete edges are softened by the snow-blowing fields and it seemed like a metaphor for time and memory and how our memory softens over time.”

She hopes the book will help transform people’s views of winter and hopes it will help preserve prairie winters for future generations, including her own children.

“It’s so beautiful to be out in that, and I know it’s hard to believe, but there are so few places left in the world where you can be completely alone and it’s completely, truly silent.”

The Calgary launch of Minus 30 takes place Saturday, Dec. 7, at 1:00 p.m. at the Franz Dopf Gallery in Kensington.

It is also available online through Hartmann Books and angelaboehm.ca.