Home > Explore Art > Member Gallery > Fern Helfand

Fern Helfand

UBC Okanagan photography professor Fern Helfand is a woman who responds to her environment. This trait is revealed in both her photographic art works and in her attitude to life as an instructor. Having come to the Okanagan in 1998 after accepting a teaching position with Okanagan University College, Fern has observed many changes in the local environment and has captured many of these moments through the lens of her camera.

Helfand’s interests lie in revealing the fabricated nature of the world. Her own photography explores issues of veracity both within the experience of the moment caught within a given photograph, and also within the issue of digital photography as a medium. Her work has approached the subject of tourism in locations such as Niagara Falls and Disney’s Epcot Centre, has questioned people’s experience of real events such as the Okanagan Mountain Park fire, and continues to explore the experience of community development within the region of the Okanagan. Helfand takes none of these experiences at face value, nor do her works. Working with the medium of photo and collage, she questions the authenticity of people’s experience with their world, and at the same time, questions whether there currently exists any truth inside photography as a medium.