FEATURED ARTIST
GABRIELA ESCOBAR – THE ELK VALLEY QUARANTINE JOURNALS
It is my hope that people learn from this experience, myself included. It is so easy to forget the feelings and emotions during a time like this once everything is back to normal. – Melissa F.
Gabriela Escobar Ari moved to Fernie seven years ago from Bolivia with her husband, Gonzalo. A love of photography stems from her work there, where she documented historical collections as an archeological consultant for the Ethnographical and Folklore Museum in La Paz. Part of her role involved documenting archeological digs in the field; this gave her the opportunity to photograph local landscapes and residents. Often, villages located near the digs provided even more insights into the lives of rural Bolivians, where, 10 years ago, many homes still had no running water or electricity, and cooking was done over an open flame. Living conditions are changing fast now, she says, making her images all the more important in documenting the development of pastoral Bolivia. Her work demanded a high level of skill and the more it demanded of her, the more she was encouraged to learn about the tools of the trade. She studied camera skills and equipment to get the best from her images. as much of the atmosphere of Fernie as she can. Having just taken the leap into full-time work as a professional photographer, her plans were suddenly halted with the arrival of the SARS- Cov-2 Pandemic along with the social restrictions it brought. Undaunted, she reached out to photographer friends and
Jill Barclay stays busy running her business, Goldstar Cleaning, raising her three children, and offering business coaching for the Women’ s Enterprise Centre.
Here in Fernie, Escobar continues to practise photography, capturing events, people and landscapes around town. She is inspired by the beautiful local environment and aims to capture
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