Molly Steels Photography

Name: Molly Steels Photography
Address: Bradford, ON, CA
Telephone: 289-338-8315

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Bradford, ON
Molly Steels Photography

Canadian Photographer currently located in Bradford Ontario Feel free to message me for more informa

05/22/2026

Tomorrow is the last day to see Within a Surface at Gallery 44!🌟 Check it out before it’s gone ! 💙

05/17/2026

Within a Surface wraps up this Saturday at ! Check it out while you can ! ☀️

05/06/2026

There’s a little over 2 weeks left to see Within a Surface at Gallery 44!

Find it in their Member’s Gallery space, located off their Main Gallery. Closing May 23rd! 🌟

Thank you to Darren Rigo for these great install shots!

04/15/2026

Within a Surface is now open in Gallery 44’s Members’ Gallery! 🌟

I have so many thank yous to give!

Thank you to The Gallery 44 staff for platforming this project and giving me the wonderful opportunity of Member in Residence!

Thank you to Heather Fulton for supporting me in so many ways throughout this entire process. As well as Jackson for their amazing admin work.

Thank you to Sameen Mahboubi, Jordan King, Jeff Nye, and Peyton Keeler-cox for their helpful feedback and being a second set of eyes !

@99.frames for their expertise and hard work!
Murat at Saman Design for the most perfect vinyls

My nana Elaine Steels who generously offered me our family archive to work with. As well as my parents for always keeping a huge pile of albums for me to pour through.

All of the amazing friends, family and peers who made it out to opening night or sent kind messages - your presence brought so much joy that I’ll be tapping into for years to come! And another shout out to all the amazing friends who gave me pep talks throughout this process.

And of course my amazing Fiancé Gillian who has listened to me endlessly yap about ideas, looked over countless drafts of writing, gave me infinite encouragement and helped me install the entire show ❤️

It truly takes a village to make any project come to life and I’m very grateful for my village ❤️

Check out Within a Surface, on until May 23! 🌟

03/04/2026

Very excited to announce that I’ll be having a solo exhibition at Gallery 44 within their Members’ Gallery 🌟
This show is a culmination of the work I’ve made during my 6 month artist residency at Gallery 44 as their Member-in-Residence! It’s been an exciting time filled with research and experimentation, and I’m grateful for the opportunity and support I’ve been given ❤️

🌟Opening reception :Thursday, April 2 | 6 - 8
❤️ free and all are welcome! Would love to see some old and new faces!
🌲Exhibition open : April 2 - May 23
(Please note that the gallery will be closed from April 3-6 for the long weekend)

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Within a Surface explores time as a non-linear experience bridged by a shared world, with photography as a tool to build that bridge. Working with family archives, artist Molly
Steels connects with both their presence and absence on this earth. Blending images of her relatives with natural materials, Steels creates surreal, in-between spaces. They are both ephemeral and lasting, past and present.
By looking at image making as a method to exist in a non-linear way, Within a Surface is an attempt to battle existential dread with curiosity and wonder. It explores how
photography can help us conceptualize mortality, and perhaps on some level defy it.

Death itself is a non-presence, it cannot be observed - like a shadow is the absence of light. However photography, intrinsically built by shadows and light, can give this
non-presence a feeling, a space, a fleeting sense of understanding.

Here this space is imagined as a body of water. Cycling through to empty and refill, a consistent backdrop suspending life above and below. The surface, a meeting space we momentarily slip into, which like the plane of a photograph, puts us in both worlds
simultaneously

09/26/2025

A Place to Rest (2025)

This chair was owned by my great grand parents. They cut it’s legs short and used it to sit on their dock. While it’s old and fragile my family still uses it for the same task 🌊

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Philosopher Diana Prokofyeva considers a photograph to be a phenomenon existing between two worlds - the living and the dead. A way to avoid death by copying a moment and suspending it within time. She suggests that a photograph gives confidence of existence, a way to state “Here I am and was, and always shall have been”.

At a young age, I developed a deep fear of the inevitability of death. However, when family archives present mortality as a connection between myself, others and humanity - this dread softens. I am/was/always is an evolving series that looks to photography as a method of conceptualizing grief and mortality. Using family archives from the past century and conceptual imagery, I locate myself within a chain of human experience. I look to the women who came before me, observing their proof of existence with reverence and the knowledge that I will one day add to this catalog. Through this series, I aim to overshadow fear with curiosity.

Photography gives way to observe temporality, both from afar and within - a tool turning existential crisis into appreciation for those living before and after our own fleeting bodies. A collective chant of “Here I am and was, and always shall have been”.

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09/08/2025

Summer is starting to wrap up and I’m continuing to chip away at my new series “ I/am/was/always” 💧

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Philosopher Diana Prokofyeva considers a photograph to be a phenomenon existing between two worlds - the living and the dead. A way to avoid death by copying a moment and suspending it within time. She suggests that a photograph gives confidence of existence, a way to state “Here I am and was, and always shall have been”.

At a young age, I developed a deep fear of the inevitability of death. However, when family archives present mortality as a connection between myself, others and humanity - this dread softens. I am/was/always is an evolving series that looks to photography as a method of conceptualizing grief and mortality. Using family archives from the past century and conceptual imagery, I locate myself within a chain of human experience. I look to the women who came before me, observing their proof of existence with reverence and the knowledge that I will one day add to this catalog. Through this series, I aim to overshadow fear with curiosity.
——

04/18/2025

Playing with family archives and materiality has been a joy lately 🌿

Here are faded images of my great great aunt Sylvia swimming in the same lake that I swim in every summer, woven together with birch bark gathered from the surrounding forest.

03/11/2025

Observing from a distance - in a space that feels in between (2025)

01/30/2025

The “World’s Smallest Bookshop” in Haliburton County📚 A place I always drove past growing up but only recently stopped at ✨

Address

Bradford, ON

Telephone

289-338-8315

Website

http://mollysteelsphotography.com/

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