On Friday, Jan. 3, Struxness attended the Second Story Gallery’s art reception for her “Transformation Through Travel” photography show.
The show, which runs through the end of this month, features dozens of Struxness’ travel photos grouped by region on the gallery walls. She points to a photo of an elderly woman peeking from her doorway. The woman was quarantined during the COVID pandemic, Struxness explains, and couldn’t leave her home, but was peeking her head out the door to throw some birdseed and breadcrumbs to her pigeons.
The photo shares a slice of life in Guatemala most will never have the chance to experience, but shooting portraits doesn’t come naturally to the Vancouver doctor. Typically, Struxness, who now works about half-time performing robotic surgery for the Vancouver Clinic and is preparing to enter full-time retirement at the end of this year, doesn’t gravitate toward photographing people or even animals. Rather, it is the landscapes — the wildness and changing nature of the natural world — that captivates her and catches her eye.
“The group I was with in Nepal asked me to do some portraits of people, but I don’t feel like I’m any good at that,” Struxness said. “I am still more intrigued with landscapes and street scenes.”
The Second Story Gallery show highlights the best of Struxness’ travel photography, including dozens of stunning landscape photos taken during her travels to Africa, Alaska, Argentina, Chile, Nepal and even to Oregon’s Willamette Valley, where her mother lives in McMinnville, Oregon, and where Struxness and her husband of 25 years, Les, who oversees his family’s century-old farm, grow a variety of wine grapes, hazelnuts and trees for timber.
