Triggered: Kyler Zeleny

Abandoned house, 2017

Image and text by Kyler Zeleny

I've made the Canadian Prairies my muse for the last ten years, writing, photographing and researching all that makes the region brilliant and unique, but also boring and banal. The Canadian Prairies belong to the Canadian West (an accumulation of the country's four most West provinces), and is an understudied space. We know a lot about the American West, it’s icons and the ideas associated with them, but very little about the (Canadian) West that sits just north of it. It is a vast region and my goal has been to document a small sliver of it and share that reading of the prairies with others.

This image is a part of my most recent artist-book Crown Ditch & The Prairie Castle, which is about documenting the prairies, its landscapes, its built environments and the people who call them home. I stumbled upon this building in the small Alberta town, Sexsmith. There isn't anything spectacular about the scene but it's the small details that make it impactful for me; the general ruin of the building, the peeling shingles that are long overdue a replacement, the pink trim that contrasts with the terrible tar-job, and the spray-painted sign spelling out 'GOD'. 

Rural spaces are often filled with the aging buildings of past prosperity, usually they just become quite grey as the elements stress their exteriors and rot their insides, but this abandoned house said something subtle but unique, that the others did not, and that's why I thought it was worth including. 

Purchase Kyler’s book and check out his work here.