A set of photographs recently featured in an exhibit in London, UK will be on display at City Hall until Dec. 7.
Pat Kane, a Yellowknife-based photographer, was the only Canadian to have his work featured at the 'we feed the world' exhibit at the Bargehouse Gallery in England's capital.
“They got photographers from all over, some really big names like people that shoot for National Geographic, New York Times, Times Magazine on a regular basis and then me,” said Kane with a chuckle. “A lot of people came through and it was a good story overall and a good experience and I think a lot of people walked away knowing stuff about the NWT or smaller communities around the world.”
Kane's featured photos were from a moose hunt that took place on Thathlina Lake, south of the community of Kakisa. The moose hunt was one of five photo shoots that Kane did for a project titled 'On the Land'. The project was originally featured in the north and then placed as a multimedia project online.
Kane chose nine photos from the hunt in which community members were able to hunt and harvest three moose to help feed the people of Kakisa.
“My job was just document and show that there are people in the communities who use kind of places outside of their community still as meeting places as hunting grounds and that kind of thing,” said Kane. “Kind of the whole idea of that project is to show that these potential areas of land will be put aside and used and its not just like a big vast kind of empty space up here.”
Once the project was online, the Gaia Foundation found it and asked to have the photos be placed to showcase the small-scale harvesting that takes place in Northern Canada.
the people from the Gaia Foundation based in London, they saw my work and they wanted to run it because they were doing an exhibit in London featuring small scale subsistence harvesting and farming around the world,” said Kane.
“The people from the Gaia Foundation based in London, they saw my work and they wanted to run it because they were doing an exhibit in London featuring small scale subsistence harvesting and farming around the world,” said Kane.
We Feed The World was organized by the Gaia Foundation, a London-based charity that works to promote community sustainability and climate change resilience. We feed the world featured small-scale agriculture and food harvesting projects.
“This is about people, not production lines; farms not factories; agri-culture, not agri-business. This is about a fair and just farming system that regenerates the Earth and does not cost the planet,” states the foundation's website.
Now the City of Yellowknife is honouring Kane's achievement by showcasing photographs from the shoot as well as a selection of photos from the 'we feed the world' exhibit by having them placed in the council chamber for the next week and a half.