Visti Kjar | Carbon Point Gallery

Visti Kjar

Visti Kjar was born in Penang, Malaysia, grew up in Western Canada and has made Calgary, Alberta home since the early 80’s. Throughout his life, Visti has worked and played in the outdoors building a great appreciation for the world around him through his personal exploits in overlanding, backpacking, fly fishing to far off places, as an instructor and mechanic in the cycling industry, and as a traveller. His professional career is varied like his photography. He graduated in the field of Archaeology and worked throughout Alberta. His career switched gears as he moved into the oil industry to manage remote exploratory oilfield sites and then into the environmental world where he has spent the last 10 years of his career.

We all started somewhere with photography. For Visti it was flipping through 100’s of his dad’s photos and listening to the stories of his travels to far off exotic regions around the world where he worked. Visti dabbled in photography and the darkroom in his younger years, got his feet wet, literally in underwater photography while reaching the certification of a NAUI Dive Master. His first camera was a Canon AE-1 which followed him around, but it was not till he spent his first summer surrounded by the intense splendours of the natural world in Yellowstone National Park working as one of the park's archaeologists that his time and love for photography really took off. Within a year, Visti fell in love with medium format, black and white, and a Pentax 67. From there he moved into large format and a love for the darkroom.

Visti’s work is a mix of natural landscape, the industrial scape, and the built environment that surrounds us all in all aspects of our daily lives. His work has been printed in numerous publications and displayed in smaller galleries over the years. His largest and most recent project was spent in Japan photographing Japanese blacksmiths and craftsmen across the country for a successful joint book project. It is through his travels and the curiosity of the great world around him that is reflected in his photography. Visti does not have one defined style but a broad interest where he is continually seeking unique experiences, all the while refining, evolving, and improving his view of the world through the lens of his camera.

“Horizons” - Tuktoyaktuk

It was the summer of 2018, my dad turned 89 and my jeep was packed for a trip that took both of us on a 9000 km adventure to the Arctic Ocean. With three weeks of time we headed north into the Yukon following our family history that stretched back to the 1940’s. From there we made our way further north to Arctic Ocean and Tuktoyaktuk. Reaching our destination meant this was my first time reaching arctic waters and after decades since his last foray in Tuk I was able to bring my dad back to the arctic.

Tuktoyaktuk is a small welcoming hamlet of Inuvialuit peoples, nestled along the shores of the Arctic Ocean. Bright colored homes are tucked amongst the low rolling hills, where the treeline has faded away and the tundra and brackish waters extend out beyond the horizons of this land. My first experience in the arctic was overwhelming with the sheer size of the land and how small one feels in such places. When travelling to these destinations one never knows what the weather will bring. Fast moving skies and troubled waters are calmed to create a sense of peace and simplicity within this Canadian landscape. Keeping a fixed wide view I wanted to give a sense of openness where the vast horizon is juxtaposed
with the simple beauty of this region and our interaction within it.