Friends and Heros
congratulations are in order
I thought I had sent this out a month ago, came to do a new post, and discovered it was never sent!
Albertans take note! New York photographer, Alison Rossiter and Edmonton sculptor, Catherine Burgess have a wonderful collaborative exhibition titled Temporal on until February 22, 2026 at the Art Gallery of Alberta. I intend to fly out to see it after Christmas.
Years and years ago I studied photography at the Banff Centre with Alison Rossiter and Ross Colquhoun, among others. Both Alison and Ross helped me with my original foray into “saving” the photographs of my grandfather, Byron Harmon, while living in Toronto in the 1970’s.
Both Alison and Ross helped me build darkrooms, first on Spruce Street, (Alison). This one didn’t work out with room-mates, I had to move.
Then, in a warehouse on Ontario Street, (Ross). I rented the 3000 sq. ft. third floor of this warehouse, which had been a peanut factory. It had two offices which we used as bedrooms, and a vast open space with brick walls, windows on two sides, and a hardwood floor with a gigantic mound of peanut oil in the middle. Ross sand blasted the walls and build the darkroom, a bathroom and a rudimentary kitchen. I was manual labour: I tore up the linoleum in the offices, and sanded and refinished the floors. That winter it was freezing cold, except in the offices where the radiators were located, so we hung translucent plastic around the living room area.
Both friends also worked on the conservation project: making copy negatives with the big film processor at Ryerson Polytechnic, (Alison) and contact printing those negatives (Ross). I edited the collection; we made copy negatives of this edit which weeded out duplication, and labelled the archival sleeves which replaced the rotting paper envelopes the originals had been crammed into for years.
While living in Toronto, Ross met and married scientist Mary Brunkow, they now live in Seattle with twin daughters.
On October 27 Alison alerted me that Mary was one of three scientists to be awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance. Their work identified how the immune system regulates itself. Their discoveries have laid the foundation for a new field of research and spurred the development of new treatments, for example for cancer and autoimmune diseases.
The interviews with Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi on the Nobel Prize Website make much better reading than the morning rundown on politics.
I feel proud and lucky to know these remarkable friends. Alison, whose work with expired photographic papers renders poetry from history. Ross for his support of me at an important point in his life, and more importantly, the women in his family.
I have never met Mary, I know her husband who is an old friend.
again an enlightening piece of history entwined in your creative life. love it!