Kyler Zeleny is a photographer who grew up in Mundare, Alberta, a sleepy, 900-person farming community 45 minutes east of Edmonton. He spent most of his childhood on his parents’ farm, playing in hay bales with his cousins, desperate to grow up and move to the big city.
At 18, he took off to Edmonton, then studied in England and Toronto, before turning his gaze back to his roots on the Prairies. In the years since he’d left, Mundare had lost so many residents that it was on the cusp of decay. He decided to document his hometown before it disappeared completely.
Zeleny spent nine years taking pictures of Mundare, lovingly documenting out-of-service grain elevators, social halls, octogenarians growing vegetables, his own elderly relatives and the customs of the area’s Polish and Ukrainian community members. The resulting book, titled Bury Me in the Back 40, is a sensitive account of Mundare’s past and present. In the September issue, Maclean’s published a collection of Zeleny’s photographs, along with intimate descriptions of the world each one represents.
—Sarah Fulford, editor-in-chief
