Philip Kanwischer

Philip Kanwischer is a multidisciplinary artist based in Calgary, Alberta, whose work explores the relationship between humans and wildlife. Through years of encounters with wild foxes, wolves, caribou, bears, and other animals in remote landscapes from Svalbard to the Yukon, his practice considers what exists between observer and observed.

Working primarily through photography, Kanwischer is interested in moments of mutual awareness: how an animal perceives his presence, whether connection can exist across species, and what these fleeting encounters reveal about the boundaries between human and animal worlds.

His practice also extends into physical making, including finely crafted knives, custom frames, hand-carved animal limbs, and sculptural objects. These works deepen his investigation beyond the image, using material, form, and process as another way of understanding the animals, histories, and environments that shape his work.