Peter Pitseolak

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"Peter Pitseolak in the textile shop" (self-portrait), Apr. 1968, Cape Dorset

Peter Pitseolak (November 1902, Nottingham Island, Northwest Territories—September 30, 1973, Cape Dorset, Northwest Territories) was an Inuit photographer, artist and historian.

He lived most of his life in traditional Inuit camps near Cape Dorset, on the southwest coast of Baffin Island, now in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. This was a time of great social and technological change among the Inuit, from nomadic life to permanent settlements, from spears to rifles, from dogteams to snowmobiles. Airplanes, electric generators and Western clothing were also changing the human environment. Pitseolak dedicated himself to preserving knowledge of the old ways, by writing, sketching, and especially photography. He documented customs, hunting techniques, stories and myths.

In 1912 Pitseolak met photographer Robert J. Flaherty. Flaherty, best known today for his documentary movie Nanook of the North (1922), inspired Pitseolak's interest in photography. It was not until the 1930s, however, that Pitseolak took his first recorded photograph. This was for a white visitor who was afraid to approach a polar bear for a shot. Pitseolak took the photo for him, using the visitor's camera.

In 1923 Pitseolak married Annie from Kimmirut. They had seven children, of whom only two daughters, Udluriak and Kooyoo, survived. Annie died of tuberculosis in 1939.

"In Peter Pitseolak's Home". Credit: Charles Gimpel / Library and Archives Canada /e002414705 [1]

In the 1940s Pitseolak was living in Cape Dorset working for fur-traders when he acquired his first camera, from a Catholic missionary. With the help of his second wife Aggeok (1906-1977), he developed his first photographs in a hunting igloo. Many difficulties had to be overcome, including extreme climate changes, high light levels from the reflective snowscape, and the difficulty of obtaining film and developer. Peter and Aggeok experimented. They used a battery-powered flashlight covered with red cloth as a safelight, and a lens filter made from old sunglasses.

He was also a painter, executing a series of watercolors in 1939 for John Buchan, later 2nd Baron Tweedsmuir, son of Governor General John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir. The younger Tweedsmuir was a fur trader with the Hudson's Bay Company at the time.

Pitseolak wrote various diaries, notes and manuscripts, all in Inuktitut syllabics. He published People From Our Side (1975), the story of his early life, and Peter Pitseolak's Escape From Death (1977), an account of a near disaster among the ice floes.

He photographed himself, his family, and community members in real situations, and also posing with traditional clothing and implements. Pitseolak made more than 2,000 photographs of the disappearing way of life over more than twenty years. In 1961, at the age of 59, he left his camp at Keatuk and returned to settlement life at Cape Dorset. After his death in 1973, more than 1,500 negatives and photographs were purchased from his widow for the National museums of Canada (now part of Library and Archives Canada).