This year’s Jeffrey Ahn, Jr. Fellowship winner is Milo Field, age 17, from the Etobicoke School of the Arts in Toronto, Canada. The Fellowship jury praised the maturity of Milo’s portfolio and the thoughtfulness of his plan for a project at the intersection of textile and photography, inspired by the landscape of Killarney Lake and Silver Peak, some 400 kilometers from his native Toronto. 

 

With his Fellowship grant, Milo will spend five days shooting images onsite in nature in Killarney Provincial Park, then spend the rest of the summer creating three large-scale textile works that integrate the resulting photographs into cotton fabric hand-dyed with natural pigments such as turmeric and elderberries. The resulting works will also include hand-sewn details, layered fabric, ink detailing, and 3D elements such as wooden beads and rocks. 

 

In his winning proposal, Milo wrote, “As a species, we’ve distanced ourselves so much from the natural environment we were designed to thrive in; we’ve built cities to shield us from our trees and lakes, and we refer to ourselves as being separate from animals as if we aren’t neighbors on this planet. In my work, I like to showcase the beauty of nature and the place we can hold in it. These shots will be reminiscent of the previous photography series I have done. What sets this series apart is the new approach to incorporating textiles. [...] I hope to create an immersive natural world in order to encourage reflection on our place in our ecosystem. I use textiles that are primarily hand sewn in order to incorporate a level of comfort into my work. I hope that by blending this comfort with the vastness of nature photography, I’m able to properly represent the peace that the outdoors can provide.”