Prince Edward Island

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

This is a book without text; it consists of 83 color photographs, most full-page, and captions.

Hines has many books and awards to his credit. The popular success of his work is that it is approachable — high quality but not too aloof, artistic but not intellectual.

A photographer’s strongest impression of Hines’s work is that he is completely familiar with his medium — color film — and is continually stretching its limits. Hines exposes for saturation, ignoring shadows and highlights.

An artist will recognize in Hines’s photography the concerns and compositions of the abstract painter. He concentrates on blocks of color, their juxtaposition and balance. Yet his photos are the opposite of abstract: he presents his subjects in sharp, crisp focus, with incredible depth of field.

On the surface, the book is a full-color portrait of Prince Edward Island — her farms and tourist sites, beaches and fishing fleets, docks, bays, towns, roads, and sand dunes. Even her people, although they’re definitely secondary to the scenery. On this level the work is less than ideal. The captions are isolated from the photos in a grouping at the front of the book, a practice that’s annoying to those readers who like to know what they’re looking at. Also, as a portrait of a province, or as a sales aid for the tourism folks, it feels flat, unenthusiastic. There’s a take-it-or-leave-it quality that will disappoint Island boosters.

Fortunately, the work operates more successfully on other levels. On the first of these, it’s an art exhibit celebrating earth, water, and sky. Blocks of nature’s purest colors are positioned and repositioned to show land, ocean, and sky as a unity. Here the captions become irrelevant and are best segregated out of the way. And on still another level, it’s a look at serenity, for serenity seems to be what Hines sees as the essence of Prince Edward Island. Certainly it is the essence of the book. On these second and third levels it is a highly successful work. What a pity that its nature is certain to be mistaken: it is a weak travelogue, but a strong collection of artistic statements.