• born in 1948 in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan
• parents emigrated from Ukraine
• B.F.A., University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (1970); M.A., University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico (1983)

click on thumbnails at left to view larger images

First generation Ukrainian-Canadian photographer Sandra Semchuk has focussed her work on the relationships between herself, her family, and her community. In 1975, she exhibited photos of the people in her hometown, Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan. It was first shown there on main street where everyone from the community could stop and discuss them, before it was moved to other places. In 1980 she took part in a group show of female self-portrait photography, In/Sights. She continued to document, in black and white photography, herself and her family, creating Excerpts from a Diary (1982) and Series #10 (1982-83). Of the former, Penny Cousineau wrote: "Semchuk is careful . . . to articulate the intimate connection between herself and the rest of nature. Cyclical change is as evident in her emotive face as it is in the landscape. She celebrates the strength and power which she shares with nature and which flow through her and through the generations of women from her beloved grandmother Baba to her mother, herself and her daughter" (1982). Cousineau points to Semchuk's ties to her cultural heritage, indicating "Semchuk's strong sense of the extended family may be in part attributable to her Ukrainian-Canadian heritage. She includes family, using the photographic narrative to imply that what has taken place is a mystical revelation of a larger self." Semchuk describes herself in terms of the founding group at Photographers Gallery, "we were mainly documentary photographers, witnesses to the changes that were taking place, the demise of the older generation with their specific ways of being as well as changes to the social structures that often occurred unconsciously, without consideration of generations to come" (1997). Starting in the 1980s, Semchuk began to work also in colour, and changed her viewpoint from recording of the self to recreating experiences of the self, using blurred photographs and complicated collage, as in Moving Parallel: Reconstructed Performances from Daily Life (1989). She continued along these lines in Death's Door: A Father and Daughter Collaboration (1990), prompted by her father's experience of a serious heart attack, with an investigation of Semchuk's relationship with her father and the inevitability of his death. Describing the work, Semchuk says: "In the photographic images, I trace my own responses to my father and to his inevitable death. This investigation occurs within the simple experiences of moving from the tent where I slept separate from my father’s home, and of situating myself in his bedroom. I use the camera gesturally as a way of sustaining the experience from the inside, and of leaving a trace as an outside observer . . . Much of the text is excerpted from a dialogue with my father, who also helped me edit the images" (Borsa, Semchuk, 1992). Following this, Semchuk again collaborated with her father and her partner, James Nicholas, to create Old People, Animals and Indians (1994). This four-part installation shows images of the two men and a bear, using videotapes, text, photographs and silk-screened images. Pierre Dessurreault wrote of the piece, "the established order that freezes identities is rejected for a sort of metamorphosis of the characters, weaving them into the current of history to rediscover the touchstone of ancient wisdom" (1994). In 1998, she held a retrospective exhibition in Vancouver, British Columbia, called How Far Back is Home. Surveying twenty-five years of her career, the show was a mixture of portraits and self-portraits exhibited by her over the years. In 1971, Semchuk helped to found the cooperative Photographers Gallery in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Semchuk has been teaching photography at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design since 1987.

Coming to Death's Door
Presentation House Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia

The Coburg Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia

Two Transcendencies
Main Library, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Mascara i Lirall
Museu d'art Contemporanu, Barcelona, Spain

25th Anniversary Exhibition
The Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Reels Fiction Virtuel
Rencontres internationales de la photographie, Arles, France

Held in Trust
Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, British Columbia

Search, Image, and Identity
The Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Forecasts: Shifts in Direction
Museum of Fine Arts, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Unlocked Grid
Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba

Small Works by Big Artists
University of Manitoba Fine Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba

Personal Histories
Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, British Columbia

Art and Its Language
Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, British Columbia

How Far Back is Home . . . .
University of Saskatchewan, Regina, Saskatchewan; Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa, Ontario

Fotofeis, Scottish International Festival of Photography
Edinburgh, Scotland

Memory and Desire, The Voices of Seven Women of Culture
Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia

Standard Stoppages
Cathedral Place, Vancouver, British Columbia

Rephotographing the Land
Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia

Family Snapshots
Artscourt, Ottawa, Ontario

Spirit in the Land
Haritage Hall, Vancouver, British Columbia

The Diary Exhibition
Art Gallery of Memorial University, St. John's, Newfoundland

Photography: A Facet of Modernism
San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, California

Contemporary Canadian Photography
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario

Extending the Perimeters of Twentieth-century Photography
San Francisco, California

Self Portrait: The Photographer's Persona, 1840-1985
Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York

New Women: New Documents
Houston Center for Photography, Houston, Texas

Sweet Immortality
Edmonton Art Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta

Baldwin Street Gallery, Toronto, Ontario

Exposure
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario

Borsa, Joan, and Sandra Semchuk. Sandra Semchuk: Coming to Death's Door - A Daughter/Father Collaboration. Vancouver, British Columbia: Presentation House Gallery, 1992.

Coleman, A. D. "Up Canada way: Mois de la Photo à Montréal." European Photography 13, no. 1 (Winter 1992): 9-11.

Cousineau, Penny, and Stephen Cummings. Excerpts From a Diary: Mendel Art Gallery, February 24 - April 4, 1982. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: Mendel Art Gallery, 1982.

Dault, Gary Michael. "Photography. A special kind of truth in Meadow Lake, Sask." Saturday Night Leisure (November 1976): 96-97.

Dessureault, Pierre. How Far Back is Home . . . Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, 1995.

Fraser, Gordon. "In/Sights." Ten 8, no. 4 (Spring 1980): 5.

Garvey, Susan Gibson, et al. Rephotographing the Land: Marlene Creates, Patricia Deadman, Lorraine Gilbert, Ernie Kroeger, Sylvie Readman, Sandra Semchuk. Halifax, Nova Scotia: Dalhousie University Art Gallery, 1992.

Harris, Mark. "Sandra Semchuk and Carole Itter." Parachute 62 (April-June 1991): 51-52.

Langford, Martha. Beau: A Reflection on the Nature of Beauty in Photography. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, 1992.

Reid, Shirley, et al. Fotofeis: Scottish International Festival of Photography. Edinburgh, Scotland: Fotofeis, 1993.

Robson, Frances. "Sandra Semchuk. Moving Parallel: Reconstructed Performances from Daily Life." Blackflash 7, no. 2 (Summer 1989): 3-5.

Rosenberg, Ann, and Ed Varney, eds. Artropolis 90: Lineages and Linkages. Vancouver, British Columbia: A.T. Eight Artropolis Society, 1990.

Semchuk, Sandra. Moving Parallel: Reconstructed Performances from Daily Life. Toronto, Ontario: Gallery 44, 1989.

---. Tracing as we make culture." Blackflash (1997): n.p.

Veith, Ulrike, et al. Search, Image and Identity: Voicing Our West. Toronto, Ontario: Gallery 44, 1994.

"Visuals." Photo Communiqué 9, no. 3 (Fall 1987): 13-20.

Williams, Carol, et al. Search, Image and Identity: Voicing Our West. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: Photographers Gallery, 1994.