Fogo Island: Artist Retreat

The rugged coastal landscapes and arresting architectural contrasts of Fogo Island off the northeast coast of Newfoundland are captured in this stark series shot by photographer Scott Chandler at nightfall. The small Canadian island has recently undergone a re-invigoration thanks largely to Zita Cobb’s Shorefast Foundation, an organization promoting art and tourism as Fogo’s future. In a project helmed by commissioning architect Todd Saunders, the foundation built six striking, modernist studios across the island to house visiting artists for residencies granted through the Fogo Island Arts Corporation. “I think local people enjoy the reinterpretation of our traditional built heritage into contemporary forms,” explains Cobb. “You almost see the passing of time as you move your focus from the past to ‘the now’—the old and the new give meaning to each other.”  Fogo Island joins a growing list of remote retreats, like Est-Nord-Est in the village of Saint-Jean-Port-Joli in Quebec focused on the creation of contemporary sculpture, and the tiny Rabbit Island in Lake Superior some three miles north of Michigan, a 91-acre modern-day utopian escape for artists and architects alike. “Newfoundland is a whole different kind of rural landscape and feels really isolated from the rest of Canada,” says the Montreal-based Chandler. “Fogo Island is a more extreme version of that.”