Ocean Front Property
Book + Audio Experience

Mark Templeton / texts by Brad Feuerhelm and Ezekiel Honig

Co-published with The Ice Plant

98 pages / 22.5 x 31.5 cm / Swiss binding + 8 page supplement
52 color images + soundtrack (digital download or limited edition cassette)
ISBN 978-0-9992655-6-7
Edition of 300 copies, 40 of which are a special edition

April 2021

Standard Edition:
Order direct through The Ice Plant
EU customers: order direct through Micamera Bookstore
$38 USD


Special Edition:
Available through Graphical
$75 CAD


“I was in search of water and the effect its absence had on me,” writes Canadian sound artist and photographer Mark Templeton about his second photobook, Ocean Front Property. From this sense of absence and geographic isolation grew a new body of work with two components: A book of color photographs, made entirely in the landlocked province of Alberta (“where the nearest ocean is a thousand kilometers away”), and an Audio Experience (a ‘soundtrack’ to the book, included as a digital download or available on a limited edition cassette). Rooted in the same sense of longing — for the imagined comfort of warm blue water and an escape from one’s familiar surroundings — these complementary sensory worlds form a kind of mirage: a prism of banal surfaces, spaces, and sonic textures through which the fragments of an intangible fantasy can be glimpsed, a circular psychic journey from the desolate to the sublime. The photobook also contains an 8-page supplement, compiling selections by eight artists whom Templeton invited to choose pairings of sound and image, suggesting possible feedback loops and alternative readings between the audio tracks and his photographs.

Designed by Nicolas Polli, with texts by Brad Feuerhelm and Ezekiel Honig.

Ocean Front Property is a photobook and soundtrack. The soundtrack was originally released on Senufo Editions as a CD in July 2020.

The work was generously funded by the Edmonton Arts Council.

Press:

Le Monde
GUP Magazine
American Suburb X
Nearest Truth Podcast
Fluid Radio
Edmonton Journal