A photograph I once made reproduced the sky's deep blue colour I'd observed over the east coast of Nova Scotia. A simple image, I thought, in the sense that it presented a single hue. But to make this and instead of film exposed in a camera, I used only light and light-sensitive paper. The image recorded the action of light at a specific moment in time, as only photographs can. I'd produced an abstraction, an approximation of the light effects I'd experienced in nature, a 'sky' yet not a sky.

Blue from margin to margin, my print was indeed like the colour I'd seen but not, like other photographs, of the sky itself. As straightforward as this project seemed to me then it raised questions about the nature of a photograph (and photography) that today, fifteen years later, continue to fascinate me. While my subjects have broadened and my relationship with them deepened, the questions that motivate me to make images, the questions I ask of and through them, remain largely unanswered.

A photograph has a special relationship with the world it represents, to those things that once existed but no longer do. This intimate bond always invokes for us an absence. Whether a familiar face or pool of experiences, the traces recorded by a photograph rekindle this former presence as memory. But what escapes or exceeds representation? Based on material fact, presented as lyrical information, these photographs refer to and draw upon the natural world. Insects, birds and other small animals; seeds, flowers and countless life forms I've collected along my way become (missing) figures destined not to oblivion but refigured as an image. A 'life', if you will, in representation.

David Miller's works have been exhibited extensively across Canada and in Europe since 1984. His installations, site-works, sculpture and performance reflect his long involvement with photography. A recipient of numerous awards, a participant at international residencies, symposia and an instructor of art, his work touches an ever expanding audience while continuing to embrace a wide range of discursive and material practices. Recent exhibitions include: Space Camp 2000: Uncertainty, Speculative Fictions and Art, Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina; small world, Gallery 44, Toronto and Stadtmuseum Muenster, Germany; Yawning, At Home Gallery Samorin, Slovakia; and the group exhibition Tracing Shadows, Lonsdale Gallery, Toronto.