Robert Pope Archive

Yard, picket fence and motor home, it’s the Canadian dream. To pick up and go, trekking from park to park, without foregoing any of the essential conveniences of home. In winter time, these dream machines look a bit like stranded whales. In

Who is this a portrait of? The woman or the photographer reflected in the glass? Is it a double portrait? Robert is the blurry photographer. Heather MacKinnon is the woman holding the glass. She looks upward in a dreamy manner. The

The snow fence looks like its been battered by a recent hurricane or its upkeep has been severely neglected over a period of years. The broken slats create an exciting and chaotic pattern in contrast to the dull winter scene

In the midst of winter, in a drab urban backyard, a tree bursts dramatically into flower. Of course the flowers aren’t real and don’t belong to the tree at all. They’re part of a printed pattern on a bedspread hanging from

As a photographer, Robert sought out patterns more actively than in his paintings and drawings. This tightly cropped view of the rear entrance to a city hospital shows an ambulance bay surrounded by white walls and repeating windows. It looks like a prison, an impression

While studying at art school, Robert rarely photographed people. When he did, the images tended to play down individual identities. These two photos contrast dancers at a party (probably at NSCAD) and dancers rehearsing in a studio. The left hand

Robert’s photographs on the theme of fences focussed on Halifax’s North End. Here he looks across the harbour to Dartmouth, though most of the view is blocked. The chain link fence signals this is private property housing sensitive or dangerous material. What at first glance looks

In Robert’s photo series on fences, he shows structures that hint at human activity without actually showing any people. Often wildness meets tameness, along with contrasts of horizontal and vertical elements. Here, picket fences and a clothesline, one dark and the other light, run close

This photo of Uniacke Square, a public housing site, looks toward Halifax harbour and the distant A Murray MacKay Bridge, whose construction brought about the controversial appropriation of land known as Africville. Africville was a thriving community of black Nova Scotians located

Robert’s shadow falls across a weathered gravestone as he snaps the photo, creating an uncanny effect of the living and dead briefly overlapping. The photograph presents a visual paradox: a shadow frozen on a memorial stone seems to make permanent something that is insubstantial