North of Ordinary: The Arctic Photographs of Geraldine and Douglas Moodie

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Geraldine Moodie, "Inuit woman ice fishing, Fullerton Harbour, Nunavut," 1905

Collection of Glenbow

North of Ordinary: 

The Arctic Photographs of Geraldine and Douglas Moodie

Organized by Glenbow

Curated by Susan Kooyman

This exhibition celebrates the remarkable photography of Geraldine Moodie (1854-1945) and Douglas Moodie (1849-1947) during their time living in Canada's North (now Nunavut) from 1903-1909. Geraldine was western Canada's first professional woman photographer, running successful studios in Alberta and Saskatchewan in the 1890s, where she became well known for her portrait photography. Geraldine's husband Douglas was a senior officer of the North-West Mounted Police. When Douglas was assigned to establish a NWMP detachment in Fullerton Harbour, on the western shore of Hudson's Bay, Geraldine accompanied him and brought her photographic equipment. The two Moodies were an inspired and complementary pair; she set up a studio in the police detachment house and took intimate portraits of the local Inuit community, while he (trained in photography by his wife) documented the landscape and his work with the Mounted Police.

North of Ordinary draws on an extraordinary 2015 donation to Glenbow of almost 500 vintage negatives (including glass plates, nitrate and lantern slides), as well as the photographers' diaries, reports, and photo registers. This gives us an almost-unheard-of opportunity to use the Moodies' own words to describe their work. Most of the photographs in this exhibition are accompanied by quotes and stories from Geraldine and Douglas' diaries about the people or places in the images.