The Museum of the Highwood is excited about a new exhibit opening in February.

Director Irene Kerr says she is opening up an exhibit called "Picturing High River," featuring four local photographers, who for over 100 years have documented High River.

"The very earliest one is a man named Tom Parker," said Kerr. "He was a very interesting person. He was world famous photographer but in High River nobody knew. He was very shy and never talked about his career."

He lived with a family west of High River who adopted him. He never married. About five years ago a relative of his adopted family donated some medals from the 1913 Calgary Exhibition.

"We have a lot of his glass negatives. He was a wonderful photographer. I can't wait to do big blowups of his photographs."

Following him was Ray Lane and Gil Garon who a lot of people remember.

The whole exhibit started with Ted Dawson donating some of his artifacts and achieves to the Museum.

"Ted has got lots of great stories. He did more portrait photography and It is very interesting how he got into portrait photography so we will be telling his story as well."

Kerr is hoping to have an interactive component to it.

She's looking to involve local schools by having up a couple of groups of students go out photograph how they see High River.

"And have a little exhibit of how people of different ages see High River. And what they see in High River and what is important to them."

And all those photos will go into the archive and so in years to come people will look back and see what High River was like in 2018.

"It is going to be a lot of fun and it is going to be visually stunning because the photos are gorgeous."

The hardest part Kerr adds will be choosing which photographs to use.

 

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