Seasons of the Eskimo

Fülszöveg

SEASONS OF THE ESKIMO A Vanishing Way of Life
FRED BRUEMMER
Fred Bruemmer is an artist engaged in a race against time. This book is a tribute to his dedication to a world and a way of life ihat are vanishing from the earth. The success of his efforts is important not just to him, but to al! of us who are interested in the future of the Canadian Arctic.
Because that is what Bruemmer and this book are all about: the Arctic, Canada's Arctic, and the people and animals and flowers there.
Bruemmer has spent the last seven years of his life trying to capture, in superb photographs and sensitive but never sentimental prose, what that country is like. But it is changing fast, and soon the Arctic and its people - and much of its flóra and fauna-will have changed too. And a way of life thousands of years old will have died.
Bruemmer personally has nothing of the crusader or cause-maker about him. In fact, he is probably the most unassuming artist one could ever meet.
Anyone who has... Tovább

Fülszöveg

SEASONS OF THE ESKIMO A Vanishing Way of Life
FRED BRUEMMER
Fred Bruemmer is an artist engaged in a race against time. This book is a tribute to his dedication to a world and a way of life ihat are vanishing from the earth. The success of his efforts is important not just to him, but to al! of us who are interested in the future of the Canadian Arctic.
Because that is what Bruemmer and this book are all about: the Arctic, Canada's Arctic, and the people and animals and flowers there.
Bruemmer has spent the last seven years of his life trying to capture, in superb photographs and sensitive but never sentimental prose, what that country is like. But it is changing fast, and soon the Arctic and its people - and much of its flóra and fauna-will have changed too. And a way of life thousands of years old will have died.
Bruemmer personally has nothing of the crusader or cause-maker about him. In fact, he is probably the most unassuming artist one could ever meet.
Anyone who has worked with Bruemmer is quickly aware of this. The first time he came into the Week-end Magaziné office, for instance, he quietly asked if there was any interest in somé photographs of the Arctic. He did not say they were "great" or "unique." He merely asked if anybody would have a look. The look was taken. And a rather stunned editorial group asked if he had any others.
"Oh, about twenty-five thousand," Bruemmer re-plied.
Bruemmer is not a dilettante when it comes to his work, or his love - the Arctic. He does not make brief visits. In fact, during the last seven years it would be safe to say that half of his time was spent in the Arctic, and half in his Montreal home.
He not only photographs the Arctic life and writes about the Arctic life. He lives the Arctic life. In 1969 he spent six months living with one of the last of the nomadic Eskimo groups that still exists as the Eskimos of old lived-by hunting and fishing and moving from place to place to be ready for the arrival of the seal, or the caribou.
Why does Bruemmer live like this? Because the Arctic to him is a fascinating place. And because he realizes that the old and traditional Arctic life is doomed. He writes: "A generálion ago, most Canadian Eskimos lived in small camps scattered over the vastness of the Arctic. By being dispersed, they avoided, to somé extent, decimating the game re-sources of any one area
"Now at least 95 per cent of Canada's Eskimos live in settlements. Only a few camps remain; specks of
independent people resisting the blandishments of settlement life. They ask for little, and get less.
"Settlement Eskimos receive free and good housing, camp Eskimos do not. Settlement Eskimos have their school-age children at home. Camp Eskimos do not see them for nine months of the year.
"Given these and many other disadvantages of camp life . this form of traditional Eskimo existence is bound to disappear, if not by government fiat or coercion, simply by attrition."
So a way of life lived by a sturdy people ingenious enough to carve out an existence and even a culture while confined to one of the world's most hostile environments will soon be gone forever. It will not even exist in song or folk tale because, as Bruemmer points out, even the Eskimo language will disappear.
But it will exist, in all its wild and haunting beauty and its grim gauntness and loneliness - the stark con-trasts that have made the Arctic a place of almost hypnotic fascination - in this book.
Primarily this is a pictorial account of the Arctic. And that is as it should be, as Bruemmer is primarily a photographer. A forty-one-year-old native of Latvia, Bruemmer came to Canada in 1950 and work-ed in the mines at Kirkland Laké, Ontario. It was there he first took up photography. As he explains, "Pho-tography is a good thing to learn when you don't speak the language."
Since that time he has been a successful freelancer, both here and in Europe. About seven years ago he got his first assignment to the Arctic, and feli in love with the area and its people. But, during those years, he has alsó developed into an excellent writer as well. His prose has a cleanness and clarity about it which is admirably suited to his subject - something like a whiff of clean, clear Arctic air.
So you should enjoy this book, both its photo-graphs and its essays. You are there, bucking the raging Arctic gale, following your dog team across the endless wastes of snow, enjoying a feast in an Eskimo camp when the hunting is good, marvelling at the beauty of the brief Arctic summer.
And, perhaps, wondering if it really was necessary to rob a proud and independent people of a unique way of life.
Frank Lowe
Editor,
Weekend Magaziné Vissza