Vintage Canoeing Photograph
What motivates people to buy an antique photo? Serious photography collectors of course, seek high-value photos with historical or artistic significance due to the scene or person captured, the early photographic and printing methods used, or the photographer’s notoriety.
But people who are not specifically photography collectors are also drawn to vintage photographs for a variety of reasons. These include attraction to the aesthetic richness of the image or appreciation for its inherent visual commentary that is thought-provoking or smile-inducing. Or a photo might have a connection to a subject matter that relates to one’s broader areas of collecting or interest (e.g., railroads, dolls, barber shops).
Old photos can also remind people of a place or pastime they have enjoyed – an image of a person skating or an old farmhouse shaded by a maple tree need not be exactly identifiable to evoke nostalgia. Finally, there are photos of an actual place that one knows well, but captured in an earlier era, thereby putting one’s experience of it into historical perspective; that is what attracted me (Jeff) to this photo.
The 7” x 9” black-and-white image captures a circa 1910-1920 scene on Grand Lake in Canada’s Algonquin Provincial Park, a 2,946 square mile preserve of lakes and rivers established in 1893 which quickly became a desirable destination for wilderness canoe tripping.
I spent many summers canoeing, camping and guiding in Algonquin Park, and have paddled by this exact spot. I found (and kept) a print of this image 15 years ago, so this one is now going to a customer for whom it also triggers positive associations with lakes and canoeing.
Algonquin Park was popularized in the early 1900s by the Canadian artist Tom Thomson and his colleagues in the “Group of Seven.” In fact, this photograph shares similar compositional structure with a 1917 painting by Tom Thomson called “The West Wind” (below) that some art historians surmise was created at Grand Lake.
The perspective of looking through the limbs of a conifer towards a lake with hills in the background is also seen in Thomson’s 1916-17 painting “Jack Pine” (below) which has been definitively documented to portray a specific location on Grand Lake.
The photo taken on Grand Lake is appealing to me beyond its specific setting because it captures a style of wilderness travel in wood and canvas canoes. The small (probably 15’) canoe pictured was made by the now disbanded New Brunswick-based Chestnut Canoe Company. Small, light canoes are ideal for tripping in the Park where most lakes are small and most portages are long.
This paddler is comfortably in control of the canoe - kneeling with his paddle braced in the water. Although it is a calm day, when the wind picks up on the larger lakes in the Park, good control is essential. The solo paddler is not sitting in the stern, but kneels against a more forward thwart to position his body weight toward the center of the canoe. Although holding the canoe level while looking up for the photo, chances are that once underway the paddler would tilt the canoe so that the gunwale almost touches the water as he paddles. This requires good balance, but makes for more streamlined travel.
For anyone who has experienced paddling in a traditional style on a northern lake, an image such as this speaks volumes.
