Shadows of Light
VIEW CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL WEBSITE
Curated by: Khim Mata Hipol and Jimena Diaz Jirash
Shadows of Light explores the boundaries of photography through experimental processes that transcend conventional image-making. This exhibition looks at the medium of photography, pushing its traditional role of representation into abstraction and experimentation. The artists Odartey Aryee, Maya U Schueller Elmes, Freya Harding, Khim Mata Hipol, and Jimena Diaz Jirash each share work that offers the viewer an understanding of the photographic process by omitting the camera as the primary tool.
Central to the exhibition are photograms, cyanotypes, and chemograms – three alternative methods that engage with the essence of photography: light and chemical reactions. Harding and Hipol’s photograms, produced without a camera, involve placing objects directly onto light-sensitive paper to create abstract compositions that are as much about absence as presence. Schueller Elmes’s cyanotypes, with their characteristic blue hues, are created by exposing a light-sensitive surface to ultraviolet light, often using natural objects such as plants or leaves as stencils. This technique highlights the precision of light and the organic textures of the natural world, offering a poetic meditation on photography’s connection to time and nature. In contrast, Aryee and Jirash’s chemograms blend the practices of photography and painting, as chemicals are manually applied to photographic paper through controlled or uncontrolled methods, resulting in unpredictable and vibrant forms.
Through these techniques, Shadows of Light offers an intimate look at the interplay between light, chemistry, and materiality. In this exhibition, photography is no longer bound by its mechanical origins. Instead, by working with light and shadow, the artists push photography’s relationship to reality, form, process, and image-making.
Odartey Aryee
Maya U Schueller Elmes
Freya Harding
Khim Mata Hipol
Jimena Diaz Jirash
About the Artists
Odartey Aryee's visual language seamlessly weaves together his profound appreciation for art, culture, and storytelling. With a discerning eye for detail, he possesses a remarkable talent for capturing the very essence of his subjects through both photography and film. His body of work often serves as a poignant reflection of the stories that mold his community and the richness of his lived experiences.
Odartey’s photo and film projects have tackled topics such as economic migration, Domestic Violence and Cultural representation. His works have found recognition and exhibited at the Kuenyehia Contemporary Prize Awards, GUBA Awards USA, Sony World Photography Awards, African Film Festival New York, Berlinale Forum, African Film Socity and EmilyCarr University. He has produced and filmed for global brands such as Ssense, Numéro Magazine, Universal Music Switzerland, Magnum, CBC, Amazon Prime and Netflix.
Beyond his creative endeavors, Odartey Aryee actively contributes his perspective to discussions and panels. He has lent his voice to events hosted by institutions such as the University of Copenhagen, University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and the Vancouver Black International Film Festival, showcasing his commitment to engaging with diverse audiences on important subjects.
Currently, Odartey Aryee divides his time and creative energy between Vancouver, Canada, and Accra, Ghana, further enriching his work with the dynamic influences of these two distinct yet interconnected locales. @odarteymango
Maya U Schueller Elmes is an interdisciplinary artist from London, UK, whose work employs drawing, printmaking, photography, performance and installation to explore themes relating to their experience of and curiosity in the world around them. Schueller Elmes currently lives as a uninvited guest on the unceded territories of of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations - otherwise known as Vancouver, Canada. Schueller Elmes’s practice centers on elevating intimate moments, self care, and quiet reflection, as well as an exploration into the meaning of home both within the body and in place. In recent years, Schueller Elmes’s work has come to directly examine the push and pull inherent in unraveling and re-weaving oneself within the contexts of queerness, neurodivergence, trauma recovery and the immigrant experience. Schueller Elmes received their BA(Hons) in Fine Art from Kingston University, London and has completed a number of artist residencies in the UK. Schueller Elmes has taught printmaking, bookbinding and visual arts classes at various universities, art schools and print studios in Vancouver and the lower mainland, and is currently a photography technician at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Schueller Elmes's work has been exhibited in the UK, USA, Canada, India, Cypress and Japan, with works held in both private and public collections. @mayauart
Jimena Diaz Jirash is a multidisciplinary Mexican artist whose work delves into the concept of "nothingness" by exploring non-cognitive forms of knowledge, such as involuntary memory and anamnesis. Her artistic practice is rooted in an embodied process, where the interaction with materiality becomes central to her creative expression. By prioritizing the "working-through" of chosen materials, she seeks to create formless pieces that encapsulate the emotional journey traversed through their making. Jimena currently lives and works on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
Freya Harding is a Vancouver based artist primarily working with photography and currently studying at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Her work focuses on her experience as a trans woman, the body, and how Trans and Queer people exist in this world. Freya's work acts both as an exploration of her relationship to herself as well as others. Often using different methods modifying and collaging images as a form of taking back ownership and control of the trans body.She has exhibited her work in Shadow of Light at Shipyard Coffee, North Vancouver (2025), presented in conjunction with the Capture Photography Festival (2025); Beyond the Visible at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (2024); and Transient Rhythms in Vancouver (2024). Her earlier exhibitions include Chester Fields: Be Your Selves at The Polygon Gallery (2021) and showcases with Artists for Kids and the Gordon Smith Gallery, North Vancouver (2021 and 2022). @foto_frayy
Khim Mata Hipol is an emerging interdisciplinary artist based on the unceded territories of the Squamish, TsleilWaututh, and Musqueam people. Through photography, Hipol examines how a sense of identity can be manipulated through commercialization. He explores the intersections of tourism, souvenir objects, and official government symbols, demonstrating how countries establish identity through these representations. Through portraiture, he illustrates how individuals use these objects to express patriotism and nationalism while simultaneously questioning their meanings and invoking ideas of colonialism and the "foreign."
He graduated with a Certificate of Photography (2019) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts Major in Photography and a Minor in Art and Text (2023) from Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Hipol is a recipient of the Audain Travel Award (2022), Chick Rice Award for Excellence in Photography (2023), An honorable mention of the Seymour Art Gallery ‘New and Emerging’ (2022) and was long-listed for the Lind Prize (2022, 2023). Hipol debuted his first public art project with the Richmond Art Gallery at Aberdeen Station in Richmond (2025) in conjunction with the Capture Photography Festival (2025). His works have been featured in group exhibitions at Fotomoto PH at the Ayala Museum in the Philippines (2025), the Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts (2024), Filter Photo in Chicago, Illinois (2024), Pendulum Gallery (2024), Access Gallery (2024), The Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, Colorado, USA (2022), as well as in Calgary (2022 and 2023), Vancouver, and the Philippines (2023). His works are held in private collections, including Union Christian College (Philippines), Cianu Umuk Gallery (Philippines), and various collections in Vancouver, Toronto, Canada, and the USA. @khim.hipol