Mar 22, 2012 – 5:00 PM ET | Last Updated: Mar 23, 2012 1:53 PM ET
Ian Brewster
Northern Saskatchewan’s Uranium City may be a life too isolated for the likes of most city dwellers, but as photographer Ian Brewster and anthropologist Justin Armstrong discovered on their trip to the ghost town, the city’s sense of community has kept its remaining 70 inhabitants going strong.
“I have this idea of writing a place into existence,” says the 35-year-old Armstrong, a professor at Wellesley College outside of Boston. He wrote his dissertation on vanishing cities across Canada and the United States, and wanted to continue his work with the Saskatchewan Heritage Foundation through Uranium City. “So how do you take it from being just a sad, abandoned place to having a really rich narrative and history that might otherwise have been evacuated?”
Brewster documented the surrounding community with his Kodak film camera, focusing on the people left behind rather than the deteriorating remains of Saskatchewan’s most northerly settlement.
“It’s an interesting context and I think it’s interesting to look at that abandonment style of photography for a little bit, but I feel you could get carried away with the sadness of it and [with] looking backwards to what was lost and sort of see what wasn’t lost and what was gained by having people leave,” says Brewster, 34, whose photography can be seen on his website. “And for the people who are up there, I think what was gained from having people leave was a bit more privacy, a bit more freedom.”
Once a booming industry town of 10,000, Uranium City was quickly abandoned in the early 1980s after the closure of the surrounding mines, and quickly became a haunting reminder of the flourishing community that once was. (This year marks the 30th anniversary of the mine’s closure.) What is left of the city is threatened by the discontinuation of water and hydro services but, according to Brewster, the remaining residents are committed to keeping the area alive.
“The idea of the abandonment wasn’t as interesting as the people who stayed,” Brewster says. “You know, I don’t really view this as a story about the town and all the people that left, I view the story more about the people that have stayed and why they stayed and that was sort of the more interesting aspect of it for us.”
“I had never been in a place that had so much life and character in it with so few people that was so far away from everything,” Armstrong says. “The characters that we met, they’re just one in a billion.”
The new project also marks the continuing efforts of Armstrong and Brewster to focus on the people — not just the buildings — of towns left to the dust, with the pair having previously travelled to isolated communites in Maine and West Virginia.
“It’s a tough life up there but that’s the way they want it and that’s the way they like it,” Brewster says. “If my photos accomplish what I’m trying to, it ends up looking like determination and resourcefulness in their faces and not stubbornness, or sadness about the state of the town.”
Photos from the Uranium City project are available online at ianbrewsterphotography.com.
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2012/03/22/uranium-city-is-small-town-canada-taken-to-the-extreme/
“I have this idea of writing a place into existence,” says the 35-year-old Armstrong, a professor at Wellesley College outside of Boston. He wrote his dissertation on vanishing cities across Canada and the United States, and wanted to continue his work with the Saskatchewan Heritage Foundation through Uranium City. “So how do you take it from being just a sad, abandoned place to having a really rich narrative and history that might otherwise have been evacuated?”
Brewster documented the surrounding community with his Kodak film camera, focusing on the people left behind rather than the deteriorating remains of Saskatchewan’s most northerly settlement.
“It’s an interesting context and I think it’s interesting to look at that abandonment style of photography for a little bit, but I feel you could get carried away with the sadness of it and [with] looking backwards to what was lost and sort of see what wasn’t lost and what was gained by having people leave,” says Brewster, 34, whose photography can be seen on his website. “And for the people who are up there, I think what was gained from having people leave was a bit more privacy, a bit more freedom.”
Once a booming industry town of 10,000, Uranium City was quickly abandoned in the early 1980s after the closure of the surrounding mines, and quickly became a haunting reminder of the flourishing community that once was. (This year marks the 30th anniversary of the mine’s closure.) What is left of the city is threatened by the discontinuation of water and hydro services but, according to Brewster, the remaining residents are committed to keeping the area alive.
“The idea of the abandonment wasn’t as interesting as the people who stayed,” Brewster says. “You know, I don’t really view this as a story about the town and all the people that left, I view the story more about the people that have stayed and why they stayed and that was sort of the more interesting aspect of it for us.”
“I had never been in a place that had so much life and character in it with so few people that was so far away from everything,” Armstrong says. “The characters that we met, they’re just one in a billion.”
The new project also marks the continuing efforts of Armstrong and Brewster to focus on the people — not just the buildings — of towns left to the dust, with the pair having previously travelled to isolated communites in Maine and West Virginia.
“It’s a tough life up there but that’s the way they want it and that’s the way they like it,” Brewster says. “If my photos accomplish what I’m trying to, it ends up looking like determination and resourcefulness in their faces and not stubbornness, or sadness about the state of the town.”
Photos from the Uranium City project are available online at ianbrewsterphotography.com.
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2012/03/22/uranium-city-is-small-town-canada-taken-to-the-extreme/
