The Presentation House Gallery will be opening the exhibition of selected works, To Here from Home, on Friday, May 31, at 6pm. The event will also be an awards ceremony for three Chester Fields prize winners, and a launch for the To Here from Home catalogue publication. We look forward to seeing you!

The Chester Fields contest, now in its sixth season, was created by Presentation House Gallery to foster an interest in photography among North Shore and Lower Mainland students. Recognizing that the medium is a highly accessible communication tool, the project aims to give young artists a platform to expand their visual literacy by exploring the many ways photography can be used, not only as a means of expression, but also as an investigative tool and method of identity formation.

This season, young artists focused on the theme of cultural identity. Under the banner To Here from Home, youth were asked to think about the various physical and psychological connotations of the word "home:" as condition of belonging, national identity, state of mind, etc. The Chester Fields program invited youth to think of ways in which cultural identity can be formed through distance, and how photography and mass media contribute to shaping who and what we identify with. Many participants addressed these questions directly, and the final selection reflects a variety of interpretations of cultural identity. Four sub-themes emerged from the jury's final selection, however— portraiture and the body, the urban environment, nature and animals, and technology.