Jean Rivard - University of British Columbia

Richardson, and in many ways the villain of
the piece—Barrow), but where John Ross
seems very much a man of his time, thoroughly
embroiled in the scheming and vanities,
John Clark Ross rises above the fray.
M.J. Ross's final words are quotations from
men who knew James and described him as
the "greatest" and "noblest" of them all, but
long before the end of this compelling book
I had already reached that conclusion.
Between Two Cultures, although a different
type of book from the others—it is a coffee
table volume presenting the photographs of
a twentieth-century Englishman—nonetheless
provides a valuable additional perspective
on the arctic represented by Arctic Artist
and Polar Pioneers. Charles Gimpel's photographs
were taken over ten years (1958-
68) during six trips to the eastern arctic and
they document the Inuit and their changing
way of life. What was largely ignored by
the explorers, often with fatal consequences,
was the people themselves, and
this human aspect of the arctic is captured
well in Gimpel's photographs. Cultural historian
Maria Tippett provides a brief but
useful overview of Gimpel's life, his attitudes
towards the people, and the various
traditions of visual documentary (notably
Robert Flaherty and Peter Pitseolak) that
influenced Gimpel's camera work or provide
a critical context for his images.
Perhaps the most telling comment, however,
is made by Kovianaktuliaq Parr,
Gimpel's Cape Dorset friend and guide,
who is quoted as saying that the
Englishman "was not just trying to tell a
story in his photographs but showing
something that was just there." Tippett
does not analyse what this remark might
mean, either theoretically or practically, for
Gimpel's images, but what Parr has put his
finger on is the relative absence of narrativity,
of narrative motivation and construction,
in the photographs. Instead of
constructing a story like Back's journal or
an identity like Flaherty's "Nanook," these
photographs strive to capture aspects of
Inuit life and work in the moment without,
for the most part, obvious artistic framing,
posing, or visual allusion. Only two strike
me as deliberate quotations of Flaherty's
Nanook of the North (1922).
Of course, in her selection and discussion
Tippett constructs a narrative of sorts to
show how Gimpel moved from more formal
to more candid shots. But the story I
found most interesting was the one I was
left to construct myself, a story that will
differ with each reader/viewer of the volume.
For me, Gimpel's best photographs
are of Inuit children, and by comparing his
1958 image of an Inuk child outdoors holding
a harpoon with his 1968 image of
another child indoors wearing a cowboy
hat and makeshift mask, carrying a toy rifle
and sitting astride a plastic dumbo-the-elephant
doll, one understands what has happened
to a generation of Inuit caught
between two cultures. The pictures speak
for themselves.
All three of these volumes are exceptionally
well produced; Arctic Artist, in fact, is a
triumph. My only criticism of their presentation
concerns the maps: in Polar Pioneers
they are too small and there is no contemporary
map of the Canadian arctic to guide
the reader unfamiliar with the area; for the
same reason, Between Two Cultures would
have benefitted from a general map of the
eastern arctic and a more detailed one
showing Gimpel's travels. Nevertheless,
together these books represent an impressive
amount of research—editorial, biographical,
archival—and remind us forcibly
of just how easy it is for real accomplishment
to be lost in the highly politicized historiographie
battle to establish a master
narrative. Perhaps most important, these
volumes remind us that, after two hundred
years of writing about, painting, or photographing
the arctic, we have amassed a
wealth of information for a story that keeps
changing and growing.
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