On Tuesday morning, May 6 2025, photographer Larry Monczka treated us to a beautiful slide show of photographs from his recently published book, Tobacco Kilns of Norfolk County. He showed us the remarkable beauty of natural deterioration, and read some of the text in the book, written by poet Amber Homeniuk. The tobacco kiln photos were taken between 2010 and 2018, and Larry noted that now 95% of the subject kilns have been torn down. Please visit the website of Larry Monczka and his wife Kathleen Pickard www.RaraAvisPhotos.com for additional examples of their photo art. They also produce cards with their photography, and Larry invited us to take our pick after the meeting. As a thank you for Larry's talk, the Club has made a donation to Operation Eyesight to restore vision to a woman in Rwanda.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY – LARRY MONCZKA
Photography became a serious avocation for Larry Monczka when, in 1979, he happened across an exhibition by the noted American photographer Eliot Porter in New York City. Soon afterwards, he signed up for a week-long workshop with the photographic educator Freeman Patterson. Freeman's encouragement led to many more workshops on the east coast of Canada during the 80s and early 90s.Throughout the 90s, Larry was a contributing editor to the Canadian photography magazine "Photo Life" where he wrote numerous articles on photographic subjects.
Larry has participated in three joint exhibitions of photography (2002/2006/2010) with his wife Kathleen Pickard in the gallery of the Lighthouse Theatre in Port Dover. He participated in a group show "Well Hung" at the Lighthouse Gallery in 2015 as well as a joint exhibition at the Old Town Hall Gallery entitled "Playtime" in 2015.
Larry and Kathy were honoured to be asked to exhibit their photographs of Norfolk County in a major retrospective entitled "Hereabouts" at the Norfolk Arts Centre in 2015. “Tobacco Kilns of Norfolk County” was featured at the Norfolk Arts Centre in 2019 and “On the Fence” in 2022 at the renamed Lynnwood Arts in Simcoe.
Larry has had two portfolios of work published in the respected online fine art photographic journal LensWork. A six image project was juried for publication in the LensWork book "Seeing in Sixes" in 2017.
Larry's website, www.RaraAvisPhotos.com, a collaboration with his photographer wife Kathleen Pickard, displays current work, ongoing and completed photo projects as well as galleries of archived images.
