I have been a photographer of nature and wilderness since the 1970’s. Much of my work has been done in the Canadian Rockies although I am now photographing farther afield and focusing on projects which highlight issues of wilderness conservation and the ephemeral as manifested through nature.

I was born and raised in the village of Banff in Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies. Coming from a National Park rather than a city, town, or country has influenced my view of the world profoundly. Today we live in a world obsessed with politics and the modern tragedies in our own society and other societies around the world. We live in a dangerous time in which threats both real and imagined abound. The transformative experience of beauty is an antidote to suffering and fear; nature still offers answers to many problems and solace to many cares.

I was born into a family of photographers of wilderness. My grandfather, Byron Harmon, died before I was born but his influence was everywhere while I was growing up, on the walls of our own Harmon Building in downtown Banff, and also those of restaurants, offices, and stores around town. My father took over running Byron Harmon Photos after the war and my growing up paralleled his development as a photographer. When I was ten he studied large format colour photography at The Brooks Institute in California and I went to school in Mendocino for a winter. By my late teens I was accompanying him on photographic trips, often rising at 2 in the morning to drive to some mountain lake for dawn, or back packing without a tent because the camera gear was too heavy and bulky to carry more than sleeping bags, a tarp, and food. I was introduced to mountain travel and the flower kingdom by my aunt, Aileen Harmon, who worked as a naturalist for Parks Canada and is also an excellent photographer.

I have a BFA in theatre and worked as an actress in my twenties but fate had other plans for me. I also studied photography at The Banff Centre for two years before moving to Toronto and I eventually returned to Banff in 1979 with my husband Stephen Hutchings. Together we founded Altitude Publishing Limited and expanded Byron Harmon Photos into the foremost regional publisher in the Canadian Rockies from 1979 until 2008. I was with Altitude until 1991 and was it’s main photographer and editor during that period.

In 1991 I left Altitude and my marriage. For the next decade I was focused on raising my wonderful children, Sebastian and Julia Hutchings. Since I was no longer involved with publishing I developed nature stores and galleries in Banff which highlighted the Harmon family photography in a context of environmental products and services within the National Park. In 1995 I met my new partner Gary Sill who is a wonderful composer, musician, and computer maestro. Together we continue to do many joint projects. His help has been invaluable in my continuing project of conserving and exhibiting the Harmon photography collection. Today Harmon Gallery and the harmonphotography.com web site continue to present over one hundred years of mountain photography as our family’s contribution to Banff history, heritage, and culture. Our collection parallels all the innovations of photography from the earliest twentieth century: glass plates to film, black-and-white to colour, hand made to mechanical reproduction, and the most recent, the digital revolution.

Today I live and work in both Vancouver and Banff. I am seeking a balance between my personal art work and my ongoing involvement with Harmon Gallery. Scanning and retouching the many inspiring images in the Harmon historical collection is a possibly endless task. In the instance of the colour transparencies this work is time sensitive as colour films deteriorate quite quickly and some of my father’s earliest work is beyond saving.

My own art work is focused around several themes related to the crucial part wilderness plays in our world. I often focus on flowers and nature close-ups and combine imagery, use hand colouring, and other techniques to highlight the numinous quality of nature. I work on a project basis with subjects as wide spread as the standing stones of Brittany, close-ups of grasses, my ongoing love affair with wildflowers, and the intertidal zone. Selections of my personal wok can be seen at caroleharmon.ca.