Centre for Creative Photography

FEA TURE and Photography Part Two: Through the Looking-Glass: The Photographs of Robert J. Flaherty and Peter Pitseolak BY AMY ADAMS' n August 14, 1913, a young prospector named Robert Flaherty sailed out Oof St. John's harbour in Newfoundlandaboard the steam schooner Laddie, northward bound forthe Hudson Strait, Baffin Island and the Belcher Islands. His mission was to explore these regions in search of iron ore deposits; it was his third prospecting and exploration journey to the Canadian North. Upon reaching Hudson Strait, with winter freeze-up threatening, Flaherty and his crew sought shelter at Amadjuak Bay on southern Baffin Island, establishing a winter camp there with the help of local Inuit. During the 10 months of winter that followed, many Inuit from the camps in the surrounding area came to visit and trade with them. Flaherty also made several trips inland and onto the Foxe Peninsula, surveying the land and prospecting for ore, travelling and living with his Inuit crew members and the families they came across (Griffith 1953; Calder-Marshall 1963; Flaherty 1924). Among the many Inuit Flaherty met that winter was a boy of about 11 named Peter Pitseolak. Their meeting might have been unremarkable had it not been for the seemingly innocuous fact that Flaherty had brought a camera with him. Flaherty had long been fascinated with the Inuit and their way of life, photographing the land and people on his early journeys purelyout of personal interest. He eventually began bringing a movie camera as well as his usual still camera, his effortsculminating in the well-known film Nanook of the Narth ( 1924). It was during his preliminary still work, however, that Flaherty and Pitseolak met. It seems that Flaherty and his camera inspired the young Pitseolak to take up photography himself, for he too, some 20 years later, began to photograph the "Inuit way of life." But while the two projects could be said to have sprung from the same set of historical circumstances and to deal with the same subject matter, they illustrate a conflict between photographic genres - Photo Secessionism and Realism - embedded in the history of the medium itself. Yet there is an ironic relationship between the two projects; both photographers used the camera to image the Inuit way of life, but Flaherty's view from outside Inuit culture differs strikingly from Pitseolak's view from within. Photos above: Courtesy of the Robert and Frances Flaherty Study Center and the Peary MacMillan Arctic Study Center, Bowdoin College. 4 I VOL . 15, N0 .3 FALL 2000 TWO SCHOOLS OF of what and how one could photo photographer and gallery owner graph, the notion of photographic Alfred Steiglitz, identified with PHOTOGRAPHY: transparency underwent a transfor the Linked Ring {later called the ARTISTIC AND mation. The balance of power within Royal Photographic Society), an DOCUMENTARY the medium shifted from thetechnique English association of Pictorialist The nature of the photographic itself to the photographer, who gained photographers founded in 1892. process and its proximity to human ever greater control over the process, Their intent was to challenge the visual perception made the growth resulting in increasing scrutiny of dominant idea that photography of the "straightforward" documentary the photographer as the operator/ was an inexpressive, mechanical genre particularly strong in the early controller of the camera. This proved process whose products were years of the medium. In the Arctic, to be such a volatile area of enquiry not fit to be considered art. They this genre was well established and that two distinct and conflicting "insisted upon the artistic possibili relied upon to bring rrue-ro-life visual schools of thought formed inthe world ties of camera-made imaging, but accounts of the Arctic - more photographic community around the held that these could be realized specifically, of the Inuit - to the tum of the century. Each acknowledged only when art and science had South via the seemingly transparent that the photographer played a sig been combined to serve both truth eye of the camera. nificant role in the process but disagreed and beauty, thereby yielding photo Towards the turn of the century, as to the exact nature of this role. graphs that represented less a visual however, as technical breakthroughs The Photo Secession group, estab document than a personal vision" progressively overcame the limitations lished in New York around 1902 by (Amason 1986, 66). Fig.1 : Robert Flaherty with children, c.1910. S> t\,t> C\.n, a..rt>�L'l a......,,.t>-./.,_ 1910-�n"_,J. Photo: Notionol Archives of Canada PA 114961 The Photo Secessionists sought to to the life of the times - the pulse and theory that the meaning of their place the photographer at the centre of today. The photograph may be photographs, and the curious of the photographic process and to presented as finely and artistically as relationship between their images, move the physical process into the you will; but to merit serious consid is revealed. periphery. As Steiglitz explained: "The eration, must be directly connected painter learns his technique in order with the world we live in" (ibid.). ROBERT FLAHERTY, to speak, and he considers painting a To the Realists, a proper visual ADVENTURER/ mental process. So with photography, document must be "directly connected PHOTOGRAPHER speaking artistically of it, it is a very co the world" in an unmanipulated Robert Flaherty was born in 1884 severe mental process, and taxes all way (hence "straight" photography). J. in Iron Mountain, Michigan, the the artist's energies even after he has At the same time, the involvement eldest of seven children. His father, mastered technique" (1980, 118). of the photographer in selecting what Robert H. Flaherty, had found his For the Secessionists, the final product to phorograph is acknowledged and niche mining iron and copper in the conveyed the photographer's personal becomes central co the meaning of rich hills of Michigan and vision. Careful posing, costuming the photograph. Minnesota. When in 1893 an eco and lighting, focusing effects, varied The Social Photography school nomic slump swept the United printing media and even certain identified closely with the Realise States and forced the closure of the atmospheric conditions were used to way of thinking; what drove their Flaherty mine, Robert Henry headed create the artistic visual language of selectivity was the use of photography north to seek his fortune in gold the photographs of such artists as as an instrument of social reform. mining. When he was offered the Steiglitz, Gertrude Kasebier and Photographs acting as visual post as manager of the Golden Scar Edward Steichen ( Gernshcim 1969; documents helped Lewis Hine to Mine in the Rainy Lake area of Amason 1986). expose child labour abuses in U.S. Ontario in 1896, he brought young Realist, or "straight," photographers factories in the 1920s and 1930s Robert Jr. north to live with him. frowned upon what they called the "ennobling" techniques used by the Photo Secessionists, whose deference towards the tradition of painting the The photogrC:Jpher's intentions, Realists considered facile. Photography was a unique medium with a tradition emotions, state of m Ind and of its own, they maintained, and making photographs look like paintings personal history all contribute to in order for them to be accepted as art did a serious disservice to the the creative process. medium (Gernsheim I 969, 447-51; The two years Flaherty spent at Amason 1986, 376-7). (Amason L986, 365). Jacob Riis Rainy Lake were instrumental in Berenice Abbot, an American "took his camera into the alleyways forming his interests. He and his photographer and student of the and tenements of New York's Lower father lived in a cabin among the French Realist Eugene Atget, wrote: East Side for the express purpose of miners and prospectors, and bands of "A photograph is not a painting, a crusading against the wretched Indians regularly passed through the poem, a symphony, a dance. It is not conditions he found there" (ibid.). camp. While many regarded Rainy just a pretty picrure, not an exercise Though fundamentally divided on Lake as a last outpost of civilization, in contortionist techniques and sheer the nature of the photographer's role, the young Flaherty came see it, as print quality. It is or should be a the Photo Secession and Realist to his father did, as only the beginning significant document, a penetrating movements together succeeded in of a vast land full of adventure. He statement, which can be described establishing an important tenet of took it for granted chat he would in a very simple term - selectivity" photographic theory: that the apparent pick up exploring where his father (1980, 182). transparency of photographs is, in left off, seeking out rich mineral If photographs were, above all, fact, unavoidably influenced by the veins and opening up the North for truthful visual documents, then photographer, whose intentions, mining (Griffith 1953, xvii-xix; according to the Realists, the emotions, state of mind and personal Calder-Marshall 1963, 15-L 7; responsibility of the photographer was history all contribute co the creative Barsam 1988, 12-I 5). He spent a to select carefully what to document: process and inform the photographer's short time at Upper Canada College, "Photography, if it is to be utterly visual language. Though they were both subsequently attending the Michigan honest and direct, should be related amateurs, Robert Flaherty and Peter College of Mines with the intention Pitseolak nevertheless felt the influence of following in his father's footsteps. Fig.2: of these theories in their work. It is Udluriak, Peter Pitseolak's eldest Never an apt pupil, however, Flaherty Peter Pitseolok, c.1947.

Load more