Sandra Semchuk

Sandra Semchuk (born 1948) is a Canadian photographic artist. In addition to exhibiting across Canada and internationally, Semchuk taught at Emily Carr University of Art and Design from 1987 to 2018.

In 1998, Presentation House, Vancouver, B.C. programmed "How Far Back is Home ..." a 25-year retrospective of Semchuk's career highlighting her relationship to identity, morality and land.

Sandra was awarded a grant from 2008 to 2015 from the Canada First World War Internment Fund to complete her book on Ukrainians in Canada, The Stories Were Not Told: Stories and Photographs from Canada's First Internment Camps, 1914-1920.

Career
Semchuk was raised in a close-knit Ukrainian-Canadian community, which greatly informed the theme of interconnected identity in her practice. Her work from the late 1970s involved dialogue and collaboration with her parents, partner, and young daughter. Semchuk's early photographic works have been said to belong to a “broad general category of documentary”. Her photographic portrait works from this era, more specifically her 1982 series of eighty-seven photographs entitled Excerpts from a Diary, address themes of death and family whilst presenting a narrative of “self-examination and transformation” through her use of self-portraits and images containing domestic and prairie backgrounds.

Penny Cousineau-Levine, the author of Faking Death: Canadian Art Photography and the Canadian Imagination, writes of Excerpts from a Diary that the journey of Semchuk's protagonist “follows the structure of classic initiatory voyages of descent and return, death and rebirth, the prototype of which is the Greek legend … of Orpheus, who, grief-stricken at the death of his wife, descends to the underworld to convince the god Pluto to allow her to return to earth.” Cousineau-Levine goes on to state that these photographic sequences “take the shape of heroic descent into darkness and peril, into an experience of death and nothingness followed by rebirth, a transformed relation to the self, and a renewed connection to life”, something that she claims offers “an understanding of death that is particularly relevant to Canadian photography.”

Collaboration with James Nicholas
James Nicholas & Sandra Semchuk were married until James died suddenly and unexpectedly in 2007. James was a Cree artist from Nelson House, Manitoba. He suffered extensively in residential schools as a child. Their collaborative work focused on the multiplicity of relationships to land, cultural geography, settler and indigenous relationships and memory.

Collaboration with Skeena Reece
In 2013, Sandra Semchuk worked with performance artist Skeena Reece on a piece titled Touch Me for the exhibition Witnesses: Art and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools. During this performance, Reece and Semchuk struggle with themes of forgiveness and mother-daughter relationships as Reece bathes Semchuk.

Education

 * 1983   Master's degree in Photography, University of New Mexico
 * 1970   Bachelor of Fine Arts, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan
 * 1970   Professional "A" Teachers Certificate, Province of Saskatchewan

== Select solo exhibitions ==
 * 2016 The Stories Were Not Told, Comox Valley Art Gallery, Courtenay, BC
 * 1998 How Far Back is Home . . . ., Presentation House, Vancouver, B.C.
 * 1991 Coming to Death's Door, a daughter/ father collaboration, Presentation House, Vancouver, B.C.
 * 1991  Moving Parallel: Reconstructed Performances from Daily Life, Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; Prince George Art Gallery, Prince George, British Columbia; University of Waterloo Art Gallery, Waterloo, Ontario; Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Ontario; Art, Gallery of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario; McKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, Saskatchewan; Nickle Arts Museum, Calgary, Alberta; Floating Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba; Gallery 44, Toronto, Ontario
 * 1990 Paralleling the Bird, Forest City Gallery, London, Ontario; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia
 * 1986 Ritual, the Photographic Sequence, Forest City Gallery, London, Ontario
 * 1986  The Coburg Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia
 * 1982  Excerpts from a Diary, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
 * 1979  The Photographers Gallery, London, England
 * 1975  The Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
 * 1973  The Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Awards

 * Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts (2018)

Collections

 * Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver
 * Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa
 * Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Regina
 * Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa
 * Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina
 * Edmonton Art Gallery, Edmonton
 * McKenzie Art Gallery, Edmonton
 * Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon
 * Mount St. Vincent University of Art Gallery, Halifax
 * Museum of Modern Art, New York
 * Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon
 * San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
 * University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

Publications

 * Bassnett, Sarah; Parsons, Sarah. "Sandra Semchuk" in Photography in Canada, 1839–1989: An Illustrated History. Toronto: Art Canada Institute, 2023. ISBN 978-1-4871-0309-5
 * Semchuk, Sandra. 2018. "The Stories Were Not Told: Canada's First World War Internment Camps." The University of Alberta Press. Print.


 * Semchuk, Sandra, and Laurel Tien. "Telling Story! Voice in Photography: An Online Visual Art Critical Studies Program Evaluation." International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning 5.3 (2004): n. pag.ProQuest Education Journals [ProQuest]. Web. 17 Sept. 2016.
 * Semchuk, Sandra. Toward Real Change: My Photographic Work Done in Saskatchewan from 1972 to 1982 and in New Mexico from 1982 to 1983. Diss. U of New Mexico, 1983. Albuquerque, New Mexico: U of New Mexico, 1983. Simon Fraser University Library Catalogue. Web. 17 Sept. 2016.
 * Semchuk, Sandra. 1991. Coming to Death's Door: A Daughter/Father Collaboration. North Vancouver: Presentation House Gallery, 1992. Print.
 * Semchuk, Sandra. 1989. Moving Parallel: Reconstructed Performances from Daily Life. Toronto: Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, 1989. Print.