In the summer of 1960 photographic and scenic heaven became a six-week experience attending the Banff School of Fine Arts. Our instructor took us to all the major scenic sights in and around Banff, Lake Louise, Field, all over. Students soaked in the clear high mountain altitude and atmosphere with drama, painting and dance going through their minds. Photo students would develop films of images they took, in the school’s basement darkroom.
I can clearly still see the Bow River and the view. Six summer weeks of ecstasy, Emerald Lake and Banff Avenue. We became family. Red Canoes and that Rocky Mountain breeze. Beautiful white barked birch trees and that tea house way above Lake Louise. It was heaven on earth just to be! The summer of nineteen sixty at the Banff School of Fine Arts. We all played our special parts. There was sculpting, painting, dance, musical theatre, you name it. Making pictures with a film camera was mine. Developing all those pictures in the school’s basement, then enlarging and mounting eleven by fourteen prints, while the atmosphere of all those artists up above, mystically filtered, into the darkroom below. What a development that was! I’ve never felt anything like that since.
The Banff School of Fine Arts, the summer of 1960. What a memory.