Additional Images

Provenance:

Private Collection, Toronto, ON

Note:

Only a small number of Robert Flaherty's photographs have been published (most of them between 1918 and 1924), to illustrate articles written by Flaherty for geographical journals in 1918, newspapers, and the publication My Eskimo Friends in 1924. Two portfolios of photogravures, one untitled and a second, Camera Studies of the Far North, were published in 1922 by Revillon Frères to promote the film Nanook of the North. Original photographically reproduced prints of Flaherty's Inuit images are exceedingly rare. In her 1980 article Robert Flaherty / Photographer, Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker notes:

“While the films of Robert Flaherty have been analyzed, and disputed, in great detail, virtually no consideration has been given to a collection of nearly 1,500 photographs which he produced before and during production of Nanook of the North (1922). Most of these photographs, taken primarily in the Canadian subarctic between 1910 and 1921, have survived only the form of fragile glass plates, slides, or nitrate negatives, deposited by Flaherty's widow in 1972 with the Robert and Frances Flaherty Study Center at the School of Theology, Claremont, California. Flaherty often gave his photographs to both his subjects and his friends. Most of these vintage prints, however, have been lost. Two almost identical vintage albums have been located, one in the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum, in Toronto, and the other at the Thunder Bay Historical Museum. Other than six photographs from the Medland Collection in the Public Archives of Canada, National Photography Collection, Ottawa, and some vintage prints reputedly still in the Arctic, virtually all the vintage and modern prints as well as the negatives are to be found at the School of Theology in Claremont.”

An important period print by the artist, the present photograph dates circa 1912 and was likely taken on one of five expeditions funded by the company Revillon Frères, New York. The print and mount paper appear identical to page catalogued “W” in one of the two known period Flaherty albums, the example held in the collections of the Thunder Bay Historical Museum (Cat. No. TBHM 972.255.175).

While the identity of the subject of the photograph is unknown, it is possibly a portrait of the Innu (Naskapi) chief (sometimes identified as Pantany) photographed by Flaherty in Northern Labrador or Kuujjuaq circa 1912 (see: Library and Archives Canada R15774-0-1-E, Accession number: 1991-367 NPC).

Flaherty is widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of documentary film art. Nanook of the North is considered the first feature-length documentary film in the history of cinema. Sometimes criticized for its largely fictitious storyline and at times caricatured portrayal of its subjects, some anthropologists and historians have contended that despite these flaws Nanook and the artist’s other lens-based documentary work were likely some of the first collaborative visual works of ethnography. Filmed and developed with the assistance of Allakariallak (Nanook), Nyla and other Inuit collaborators, participants in Nanook viewed the rushes, suggested content for scenes, and participated in reenactments and stagings.

References:

Robert Flaherty / Photographer By Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker