Scott McFarland

Scott McFarland (b. 1975, Hamilton, ON) is a Toronto-based photographer. McFarland studied at UBC and worked as an assistant to Jeff Wall. Embracing techniques of digital manipulation, McFarland’s striking landscapes are composites of numerous photos, seamlessly stitched and layered to create exquisitely detailed large-scale works. Positioning his camera in a single spot, he rotates it slowly, taking numerous photos of sections of the same location over long periods, sometimes up to a year or more. He then uses a digital photo editor to combine multiple exposures into extremely sharp and detailed images that appear at first glance to be created in the single click of the shutter. Questioning the assumption that photographs represent decisive moments, the artist’s images promote the medium’s ability to depict complex realities of space and the passage of time. McFarland’s works are included in public collections such as the MoMA, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the National Gallery of Canada, the SFMoMA, the Walker Art Center, and the Vancouver Art Gallery. In 2014, the Art Gallery of Ontario exhibited McFarland’s solo exhibition Snow, Shacks, Streets, Shrubs, which surveyed his recent work, and other major surveys were presented at the National Gallery of Canada (2009) and the Vancouver Art Gallery (2009).