About Tim Van Horn

My first photo shoot when I was just four years old, I knew then I wanted to travel the world and be a "cameraman".

At age four, I had already shot my first roll of film and had decided on a life career as a “cameraman”.  On my fifteenth birthday I received my first 35mm camera, my dream – then as it is now – is to create powerful and monumental photographs and photo documentaries. Growing up and traveling around Canada and around the world in the Canadian military, I developed a sense of duty for my country and a craving for cultural experiences. It became obvious to me at an early age that my life calling was to document the world around me with a camera.

Shooting in the Badlands of Southern Alberta.

The subject matter I have chosen is limited to the unlimited possibilities of the people and places of Canada to capture the diverse and distinct environmental drama. Carrying a camera daily in search of the story of the modern day of Canadian in his landscape,  – an archive of 1000’s of photographs of national importance is taking shape. This impulsiveness to “seize-the-moment” by photographing the beautiful and the not so beautiful moments of our environmental dramas. Searching to make the ordinary, extraordinary. The real, the surreal.

Shooting an apple in a bird's nest in Chester, Nova Scotia

On assignment shooting the "I Am Albertan" book. This was shot 115 feet off the ground in Alberta's highest fire tower.

At the same time special attention being paid to each frame in achieving the most geometrically correct interplay of planes and proportions. Each photograph tells a true-life story on to its own; together they produce a much-needed look into cultural identity on both a national and region proportion. Not to be confused with the “day in the life” photographic approach, these images are complex in both approach and delivery yet being rooted in a traditional documentary manner.
By utilizing a number of communicative mediums ranging from the Internet, to large format fine art photographic prints, to large traveling exhibits, to beautiful photography books – I am now providing Canadians visual art rooted in cultural awareness and a much needed unique kind point of view.

It was as crazy it looks, I bolted a ten foot plateform ladder to the top of my school bus and shot grain elevators across the prairies. Many of those old elevator are long gone.

In 1996, just four years after graduating from The Alberta College of Art and Design I produced my first major body of work and solo show entitled ‘To Be Hutterite’. By using only 35mm black and white film married with a traditional photo-journalism approach of “hands off”, an amazing collection of raw and gritty images were formed over four years that depicted these young boys growing up in limitedness and unlimited ness of an Alberta prairies Hutterite colony. In 2009, 13 years after the project was started, a book with these photographs will be published with the written material being provided by one of the very Hutterite boy’s who was photographed.

I was spending so much time at the hutterite colony, that I started to look like one. Thats me on the right.

In 1997 I started a three-year documentation of the all-important last days of the iconic prairie grain elevators. This in-depth examination of the importance of the lose of these architectural giants resulted in an archive of 12,000 photographs being created. Knowing fully I was documenting an other wise photographed to death subject matter, I focused on capturing these structures coming down and being reduced to a pile of rubble. In addition, I would document the site where these amazing building first stood, then came back one or five years later and followed up on what had replaced the elevator, whether it be weeds or a mall. A “Before and After” series was created and I feel this series to be the strong point of the entire documentation. A national traveling exhibit (2003-2006) entitled “Echoes from the Dust” a multi-media exhibit with the Glenbow Museum traveled from St. John’s to Vancouver with thousands of views experiencing first hand the importance of the disappearance of this prairie sentinel.

From 2002 to 2006 my creative energies were focused on making  “I Am Albertan” book a significant cultural role in Alberta’s 100 centennial in 2005. This highly successful independent legacy project was released in the form of a lush 265 page commemorative book and web site. This 500 plus photographic essay, pushed the viewer into the many sub-cultures Alberta has to offer. Through rigorous fundraising and three years of toil, one copy of the self published

I made it for all four corners of Alberta in the summer of 2004 shooting the I Am Albertan book. That's Bo, one of Canada's most travelled dogs.

“I Am Albertan” book was placed in every school and Library in the province, that’s 2500 copies. Being one of four books short listed by the Alberta Book Publishers Association for the non-fiction book award in 2006 and receiving hundreds of letters of support and thanks from both teachers, students and Albertans alike, availed the importance of documenting a province in the form of a book for all ages to enjoy and experience.

I have a crush on this double decker bus which is parked outside of Saskatoon. Every other year I visit it and every other year, we both look alittle more weathered.

In September of 2008 CelebrateCanada2010.ca was

launched in preparation of Celebrating Canada in 2010.

This year long celebration in which the Celebrate Canada

pavilion as it travels across Canada to a diverse range of

venues such as schools, first nations settlements,

small town events, larger cultural festivals, and a number of high profile national events.

I loved Montreal's street life. Truly a mix of all the world's cultures in living, breathing color.

A room with a view, honestly you never know where you’ll be spending the night when you travelling each and everyday. Fun and tiring at the same blissful moment.

My first morning of a year long trip across Canada, a dream come true, finally!

This vacant lot in Halifax was my home for two weeks, parked beside a high concrete inland terminal. I’d work all day shooting and roll in late, crash out and do it all over the next day. The cops did show up one night, but said I could stay

Doing an interview with a vendor at the St. John, NB City Centre Market.

I love to cook outside, there's nothing like making dinner with a killer view to motivate your creative cooking spirit. That was a new camp store only a year ago. Pretty trashed now...Time for a car wash.

Drive by shootings are a regular part of the day.

It was so cold in the doorway of the van that the milk froze solid. Quebec in winter what was I thinking?

The dead of winter in Quebec! This night the temp got down to minus 36