Northern Studies
Northern Studies consists of images taken in and around Churchill, Manitoba. Churchill sits on the western shore of Hudson Bay and is the Canadian Rail’s northernmost terminus. Besides the handful of ecotourists seeking to explore the self-proclaimed “Polar Bear Capital of the World,” the town remains isolated from the rest of the world by the reality of its latitude. So what drew me to this place?
In 1967, the Canadian Broadcast Company asked Glenn Gould to create a radio piece about Northern Canada to commemorate Canada’s centennial year. With this project, the famed pianist set out to make a radio documentary ruminating on what it means to live in Northern isolation. Gould called his documentary “The Idea of North,” and the ideas he expressed through it served as a departure point—and guided—my work.
In his radio piece, Gould experimented with counterpoint, overlapping the voices of his interviewees to explore the differing and often contradictory narratives that exist in the vastness of the North. I shot a handful of seemingly discrete subjects over the course of three years in and around Churchill—Cold War-era military and research facilities, the tundra’s slow-growth spruce, ecotourists looking for polar bear, breast-fetish pornography unearthed at a genocidal First Nation relocation site, the town of Churchill itself—but when presented together in the spirit of Gould’s narrators, the complex idea of this place comes more directly into view.
In 1967, the Canadian Broadcast Company asked Glenn Gould to create a radio piece about Northern Canada to commemorate Canada’s centennial year. With this project, the famed pianist set out to make a radio documentary ruminating on what it means to live in Northern isolation. Gould called his documentary “The Idea of North,” and the ideas he expressed through it served as a departure point—and guided—my work.
In his radio piece, Gould experimented with counterpoint, overlapping the voices of his interviewees to explore the differing and often contradictory narratives that exist in the vastness of the North. I shot a handful of seemingly discrete subjects over the course of three years in and around Churchill—Cold War-era military and research facilities, the tundra’s slow-growth spruce, ecotourists looking for polar bear, breast-fetish pornography unearthed at a genocidal First Nation relocation site, the town of Churchill itself—but when presented together in the spirit of Gould’s narrators, the complex idea of this place comes more directly into view.
