The ghostly, painterly photography of nicholas x bent. Words :: Colin Field.
There’s no denying nicholas x bent’s photography has a haunting quality to it. His images of trees, landscapes and winterscapes are creepy, ethereal and striking; you can’t help but get lost in thought while looking at them. His work is the antithesis of the crystal-clear, full-colour imagery we’re bombarded with daily—and therein lies its beauty.
Photography isn’t new to x bent; he’s been shooting for 40 years. In a former life he was a caterer for the film industry, where he had permission to take photographs on set. He has incredible behind-the-scenes images of Gord Downie, The Tragically Hip, Sloan, The Tea Party and others.
He abandoned the rat race back in 2005 and relocated to Walters Falls where he continued to shoot landscapes, finally succumbing to the pull of Instagram about five years ago. What he found there impressed and inspired him.
“I started discovering all these artists,” he says. “Sophie Patry, a French photographer, was one of them. I really loved her punk aesthetic. Her work is very coarse, very grainy and it just spoke to me. I thought, What is she doing?”
Patry is one of a growing number of artists experimenting with what is known as ICM, or intentional camera movement. Using slow shutter speeds while moving the camera, photographers create out-of-focus impressions.
“It’s a technique that’s been used for a very long time,” says x bent. “Early pioneers would move the camera and discover it created this eerie aspect to an image. It’s really taken off as a technique in the last ten years and people are seeing the joys of creating, if you will, impressionistic images.”
For x bent it was an attempt to recreate something that’s been in his mind’s eye since childhood.
“I was raised in northern Ontario. We would travel everywhere by car and my brother and I would be stuck in the backseat. My mom would be smoking like crazy and we’d be pasted up against the window like, Oh my god get me out of this car! But I’d be staring out of the window at the landscape that would drift by. I’d make my eyes water and then blur them and then I’d start to see different things. I’d look at these trees and these passing landscapes and they were streaked and I thought, Well, that is really cool. And I kept doing that. My family had a place in Killarney and we’d be out on the land and I’d stare at a tree. And the tree, as it’s moving with the wind, would blur. This is what the [ICM] technique afforded me: the ability to create the image that I was seeing in my head, both as a child and as an adult.”
Using shutter speeds anywhere from one to 30 seconds and a variable-density filter to reduce the amount of light penetrating the camera’s lens, x bent has continued to push the experimental aspects of ICM.
“Much of the population is using it as one solo technique, which is the movement of the camera. But what I’m doing, and what others are doing with radically different effects, is moving my body with the camera as well. Which gives a different sweeping effect. I want to be able to look at the image I’ve created and have something distinct within it. So I do essentially landscape photography, and for the most part I’m shooting trees, but what I want to do is capture something that isn’t necessarily seen—and that is an emotion, an impression presented by this other life force I’m looking at.”
So what is x bent trying to say with his imagery?
“When you’re shooting you get in your own zone,” he says. “All of a sudden you’re capturing this moment; it’s this other thing. I’m trying to elongate this moment where it pronounces a narrative, an idea. I hope to express that life in expression can be perilous, exalting and transitory. To capture one moment in time is to find meaning, a fullness within one’s self.”
Working with both digital and film cameras, he had a solo show at the Tom Thomson Art Gallery in Owen Sound in 2022 and sold almost every piece. Printing large-format images (34 inches by 48 inches or larger) on Hahnemühle Etching paper, he continues to sell prints throughout Europe and North America.
“I want to capture something that isn’t necessarily seen—and that is an emotion, an impression presented by this other life force I’m looking at.”
What’s next for x bent? More experimentation, of course.
“I used to paint as well. It was a long time ago. I sold work and I love painting; the brush was really my first love. I just sort of drifted away from it as I grew older; we have to work, pay bills. I’m interested in exploring painting again but with photography. There’s a company that will print on silk or cotton organza, really, really fine and you can see through it. I want to print a photographic image on that and behind it I’ll have a photographic image that I will paint over as well. Then I’ll blend the two together.”
As with all things x bent becomes passionate about, you can guarantee the results will be intriguing with no amount of effort spared.
Check out more of x bent’s work at www.xbentphotography.com.
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