Monthly Archives: January 2012

I go, you go, Fogo!

31 Tuesday Jan 2012

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                                                                     From a more hopeful time.

Pardon the silliness of the title, but I’ll be off to Fogo Island on the north coast of Newfoundland. It, after arriving in St. John’s, will be the first stop in my second trip up there. It is there where I hope to find and start to photograph the newly realized core of my book, “Arn? Narn.”

Just what is that core? It’s what I had already known but not realized; then realized but didn’t understand; and now it was a growing awareness of the impact of the fishing moratorium and it’s subsequent long-term effects. It was as my Fogo Island innkeeper was to tell me, “What you see now will not be here in 10-12 years.” That wasn’t prescient; it was fact: one I was still to discover first hand.

Fogo Island is so uniquely Newfoundland. (Where else could you be greeted by The Mouse?) The name was originally Y del Fogo, meaning island of fire. There is speculation as to the origin of the name: perhaps it was the native Beothuk’s (now extinct) campfires or multiple forest fires, but no one is certain.

The island supported itself solely on fishing as had the entire province. Now it was suffering the same fate as that of the larger “mainland” island. True, it had the annual Brimstone Head Folk festival each summer on Brimstone Head, (reputed by the Flat Earth Society to be one of the four corners of the earth!) but that was in early August for only a few days. A week before that is the Ethridge Point Seaside Festival in Joe Batt’s Arm. These bring some tourists in but for a short time, not enough to make much of a difference.

I was to be here for nearly a week in which I would be able to roam and photograph across the island, talk with people directly, and get a better feel for this environment. I would learn that Fogo was the main outport/town on Fogo Island – do not confuse the two. Fogo (the town) is joined by the communities of Joe Batt’s Arm, Seldom, Little Seldom, Tilting, Barr’d Islands, and Stag Harbour. In 2006 they all came together to form the Town of Fogo, while retaining their individual personalities. More to come on Fogo soon.

I’m a real nowhere man…

27 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by in Discovery, Geography, Newfoundland, Observations, Photography, Sea

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Let me say it right up front – I like being “nowhere.” No, not just sitting around doing nothing, but being somewhere that doesn’t look or feel like anything else and has no particular name. In other words, nowhere.

In Newfoundland, there is plenty of nowhere and that’s a really good thing. There is so much good stuff there that if it were named or claimed, it wouldn’t be nowhere. That said, what does it mean?

Simply stated, there is so much land between formal towns and/or outports that is not settled or built upon, that is virtually untouched and untrod. It is glorious in it’s natural state. No malls, no convenient stores, nothing. As I said, glorious. And glorious in its isolation.

And where I’m going on this second trip to Newfoundland, I’ll be traveling through a lot of nowhere before I get somewhere and I couldn’t be happier. As a photographer, it’s very rare that we get to visit land unsullied by power lines, billboards, and visitor centers. This is land one doesn’t so much visit as experience. Nothing can prepare you for it. It is not postcard pretty in the traditional sense. Rather, it has a raw, vital beauty. Not the beauty say of a New England fall, but the unyielding beauty of a land defying commerce and compromise.

In the west, there are mountains, lakes, fjords, and caribou. Everywhere, there are bogs, moose, streams, and birches. And everything, every thing is informed by the sea. Oh, the sea. It is the lifeblood of the island even though its bounty has long been gone. It is in the DNA of the people and the culture. It is that that has helped me to decide where to go.

In a song by the Newfoundland group Great Big Sea, they sing: “There is no place quite like this place…”. They got that right.

Newfoundland is an island, about the same size as the state of Tennessee. But where I’ll be going to photograph this time are two islands off the coasts of Newfoundland – Fogo Island and Ramea: two very different islands sharing a similar story but ultimately with dissimilar outcomes: almost nowhere on the map, but home for a few hopeful and determined people.

Passport, please.

24 Tuesday Jan 2012

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Yup, I was going back to Newfoundland. Was I upset by this? Hell, no. I couldn’t wait and this time it was to be for three whole weeks, not two as in the previous year. And my passport was still current.

While I had to do a lot of research and planning for the first trip, this would be easier to implement. All that remained to plan was to map out where I wanted to go shoot since I now knew what the core of the story was to be.

During the first trip while I had learned about the fishing industry being decimated and its’ inestimable damage, I hadn’t realized then that that was the story, the core for which I was looking. Now, armed with that knowledge, I was better prepared to shoot with a lot more intention and focus.

Returning to one of the original “crime scenes” of my first trip (visiting with my Newfoundland photographer friend Randy), I was able to map out precisely where I needed to go. I also determined that I needed to spend more time in fewer locations to get better steeped in that particular area. With Randy’s guidance, I would be spending most of my time on two islands – one on the north coast, the other on the south coast. Travel time itself on the island would cost me a minimum of four days including ferry travel. This would be different indeed from my first journey there.

During this upcoming trip, I would become more intimately familiar with the legendary Newfoundland hospitality and generosity, homemade wine, moose burgers, and kitchen parties. And it wouldn’t stop there.

Damn… oh, well.

20 Friday Jan 2012

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One of the nice things about being a photographer is that as you develop your film and make proof sheets, you get to relive the entire experience… but from afar in time and distance. Photographs you don’t remember taking (hopefully this is not an age-related issue) are revealed and you now see for real what you thought you originally saw.

So, with many rolls of film to process and proof, I set about to see if any of it made sense.  (Sidebar – as I write this, Kodak, who helped out tremendously with a generous grant of film for this book, has sadly filed for bankruptcy.) This was going to take some time, but as it progressed, I would be able to see it taking shape or so I had hoped. This would be interesting. From the negatives I developed, I could see that my cameras all worked flawlessly. That’s a plus. From the proof sheets, I could see all were in focus. Plus #2. We’re on a roll now.

Several months and a lot of hours later and many gallons of photo chemicals and numerous sheets of photographic paper, I saw the results. My intention was to go up there and find and photograph a culture isolated by geography but still connected to the world. Got that and in spades. Plus #3. But, it wasn’t right.

The pictures were good. They conveyed the isolation I was seeking. But as I looked at them repeatedly, I came to the realization that there was no core to them, no story, no reason for being. They could be little more than Bruce’s Wonderful Trip to Newfoundland. If there was a story to be told, this didn’t do it. All the planning, research, and actual work had not produced what I wanted.

However, not seeing what you were after can often lead to learning what you need. These photographs were good and could be used… along with others yet to be taken. I needed to go back.

In the rearview mirror…figuratively.

17 Tuesday Jan 2012

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A sportscaster once said of his departure from ESPN’s Bristol, Connecticut studio that the best thing about working there was seeing it in his rearview mirror. That is exactly the opposite of how I felt as I prepared to return home after two incredible weeks in Newfoundland. I wished it were still before me through the car’s windshield.

Those two weeks of traveling and photographing the people and the land had been an unbelievably transformative experience for me. As I got ready to leave, I was filled with joy, sadness, laughter, music, new knowledge and wisdom, cod and scrunchions, caribou, and the anticipation of seeing what I had photographed. Since this was shot on black and white film, I didn’t have the immediate luxury and instant gratification of digital photography. I had much work in front of me and several months in the darkroom before I knew what I had.

As I write this, looking at my notes, I see that I was already feeling a need to return…and I hadn’t even left yet. I was leaving new friends and a place that felt more like home than any other place I’d ever been. If I could, I would most definitely return. Maybe Thomas Wolfe had it wrong: maybe you can go home again.

Launching a…house?

13 Friday Jan 2012

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House launching scene from the film “The Shipping News”

Moves are never fun in spite of what it might say on your U-Haul rental – “Adventures in Moving.” Hah! It doesn’t say what kind of adventures though. Broken china, strained backs and relationships, and an absolute, total lack of energy or enthusiasm for anything to do with the new home…at least for the next few days.

When you’re young, you move yourself and all your belongings because you can and probably can’t afford to hire someone to do it. When you get older, you hire someone to do it for you because you can now afford it and you probably can’t or least don’t want to do it.

Now imagine this: you’re a Newfoundlander and you want to move to a different part of the island. But you really, really, love the house you’re in. You know you’ll never find another like it and you do own it (that’s a plus.) And it’s winter. Geez. The trifecta of moving.

Do you call Allied Van Lines? Or do you call some friends with a truck? Ehh, yeah, sort of. What you do is what is commonly and historically known in Newfoundland as launching the house. (Since you don’t own the land, you’re not liable for leaving it behind. It’s the Crown’s land anyway.) Yes, pack up the house(!), lift it up and put it on a large purpose-built wood sled, hook up the men or horses or both, and pull that sucker across the ice in the harbor. Of course, if it’s not winter, you could float it across the harbor pulled by a boat. Get it to the new site and congratulations, you have now successfully launched a house. Think how good that will look on your resume.

It does pose some questions though: What schools do the kids go to? Are we still in the same time zone? Where’s the liquor store? These are all important questions that should be answered before one launches their home. Adventures in moving indeed.

“If the devil will take her…”

09 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by in Culture, Discovery, Humor, Music, Newfoundland, Observations, Uncategorized

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Living Planet, St. Johns, NFLD  It’s all about the music – the only “weapons” in this picture are musical instruments.

Imagine driving around for several thousand miles in silence. You could sing to yourself – that’s an option but one that runs out of novelty real fast. You could also play license plates by yourself -either you’ll always win or always lose; it’s your choice. Or you could go get some CD’s of local music. In Newfoundland, there is a wealth of musical ability. Newfoundlanders love to make music even if it’s just for themselves.

Newfoundland music is perhaps some of the best I’ve found for driving (and partying). Take your choice of upbeat, funny, rousing, sad, tender, raucous, historical, whatever. Largely based on a folk idiom with a strong Celtic influence, it’s almost impossible to sit still while listening. That said, it can sometimes make you drive a little faster, OK a lot faster, than you or the RCMP* would like.

But like any movie, a trip must, absolutely must, have it’s own soundtrack. And whether or not you sing along, and I admit I did, it has to reflect the trip. So much so that when you later hear a particular piece of music, it transports you right back there to that very time and spot.

There is no shortage of very talented groups recording in Newfoundland. The most popular and famous group is Great Big Sea who tours frequently in the US and Europe. But that’s only scratching the surface. Musicians like Amelia Curran and Ron Hynes speak with their own unique voice. Groups like Shanneyganock, The Navigators, The Once, The Dardanelles, The Fables, and Eventide helped make the miles go by so much easier and are a wonderful backdrop to the land and the road.

Being folk music, everything is fair game for a song. From “Cod Liver Oil” to “The Fellow from Fortune” to “The Scolding Wife” and so much more, it’s all there. To quote “The Scolding Wife” a favorite of mine and the ringtone on my phone for my wife (much to her dismay):

“And if the devil will take her, I’ll thank him for his pain, I swear to God I’ll hang meself, if I get married again.” Love you sweetie! I think I’m going to have to buy some flowers for this one!

* – RCMP – Royal Canadian Mounted Police or Mounties.

What I really, really wanted…

05 Thursday Jan 2012

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At this point, I’d been on the not-so-tropical island of Newfoundland photographing for nearly two weeks and traveling well-over 3,500 miles while doing so. Yet, laying underneath in the psychic morass known as my mind was the small, festering question as to whether or not I had achieved that for which I had come. If I didn’t, I could not simply return and re-photograph it; I would never see it again with the freshness and the mystery first experienced. I could only hope that I did it honestly and the project justice. These are just some of the fears photographers have while attempting such an endeavor as this.

Shooting it on film meant that I was not going to know what I had until all the film, some 3,000 exposures in all, was processed and proofed. There was no deadline imposed other than the urgency I felt wanting to see what was there. Many hours in the darkroom awaited me. This is not like waiting for the envelope to be read at an awards banquet and the outcome announced quickly. It would only be revealed in multiples of 12-36 exposures at a time. In this case, it was to be like 3,000 cliff-hangers in a Saturday morning serial. Does Pauline get rescued from the railroad tracks? Probably. Does Flash escape the clutches of the evil Ming the Merciless? Oh, we hope so. Yes, that was what it was like. I was going to have to keep processing the film and proofing it before I was able to see exactly what was there. There were going to be many moments of truth before me.

I had gone up to Newfoundland to explore, photograph, learn, and understand isolation in a Western culture. There aren’t too many inhabited places in the western hemisphere that fill that bill, but Newfoundland did. So I got that part right. But it was far from certain if I had succeeded with the photography. There were still a few more days in which I’d be photographing before I left for home and the work now in front of me. The really lame photographers joke fits perfectly here: I was going to have to see what developed.

Moose vs. World

02 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by in Discovery, Humor, Newfoundland, Travel

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If you’re a bicyclist, you know that in a match-up of rider vs. car, the car always wins.

However, in the Newfoundland game of anything vs. moose, the moose almost always wins. These things are (sorry, Mr. Trump) HUGE! At the shoulder they are 6-7 feet high. Add the neck, head, and antlers, and well, it’s just big. Their antlers alone can span up to 6 feet across. Weight-wise, they are probably just a steak dinner lighter than a small Hyundai at 1,500 lbs. average.

Now why, I’m sure you’re asking, is this important? It’s like this – moose, like the younger of our own species, like to come out and play at night. They don’t have very good eyesight. And they’re a little on the obstinate side and can be mean-spirited. One more thing, they seem to like standing in the middle of the road just where you intended to aim your car. Oh, and to compound matters, they’re also dark-colored. So if you’re traveling on the Trans Canadian Highway at night and your forward progress is impeded suddenly, it’s entirely likely you ran into a moose. Usually at great damage and cost to your car. The road signs depicting and warning of such mayhem abound across the island and that in itself is a good case for rental cars and insurance while in Newfoundland.

Again, why is this important? Because as I started to head back to St. John’s from the Western Coast, I’d be traveling partly at night and am not particularly eager to make the intimate acquaintance of said creatures. I’m sure they’re lovely and interesting to study and good to their parents, but I’d try and skip that peculiar pleasure this trip. There are many more pictures to take for the book and this wasn’t in my plans.