In 1967, amateur photographer Helena Keizer and her partner, Edward R. Turner (Canadian harpsichord maker, researcher, lecturer and graphic artist), bought a 27-foot ketch "Interline Forwarder" and joined a small live-aboard community in Coal Harbour, Vancouver, BC.
In June 1970, her neighbour Carol George, invited Helena to join her and her friend Martha on a trip North. Martha was a young Inuk woman living in Vancouver, who was returning to her home village in Taloyoak, Nunavut (formerly Spence Bay) with her two children to visit her mother, Kakotinik, for the summer. The trip lasted 3 months, from June to early September 1970.
As a guest, Helena enjoyed the generosity of Inuit families and created a visual record of her unique experience in the central Arctic, mostly Boothia Peninsula and Kugaaruk, Nunavut (formerly Pelly Bay). She photographed the people, landscape, plants, tools and activities, including seal hunting, fishing, a step-by-step butchery of a seal, Inuit families camping in tents out on the land for the summer fishing season, a demonstration of a few of the famous Inuit string figures, ivory being carved, Inuit art, Northward Airlines pilots and planes, boat building, Inuit hunters, dog teams, etc. Helena photographed, among others, Inuk sculptor Karoo Ashevak. The locations include Bathurst Inlet; Taloyoak (formerly Spence Bay); Long Lake; Pelly River; Kugluktuk (formerly Coppermine); Kugaaruk (formerly Pelly Bay); Wrottesley Inlet; Cape Adelaide; Ulukhaktok (formerly Holman Island); Richardson Islands; Cambridge Bay; Middle Lake; Port Radium and Yellowknife.
The textual documents consist of hand-written letters Helena sent to her partner as a sort of diary of the trip and provide important contextual information to the photographs. After her return to Vancouver, she typed the letters, adding a few more details, clarifications, and some extra anecdotes, as a first draft for a possible book. These additional 200 pages are also part of the collection, as well as some memorabilia (postcards, exhibitions catalogues, invitations, etc.).
Helena Keizer's photos in the North were taken with a brand new camera she bought before the trip: an Asahi Pentax 35mm Single Lens Reflex with a through-the-lens metering system. Her camera kit included a set of extension tubes for extreme close-up photography, a wide-angle lens for interior shots and a modest size telephoto lens. She used the telephoto lens mostly for her portraits using only natural lighting.
![Fonds Helena Keizer [document iconographique, document textuel]](/images/equiv.png){kind=small}