Portraits of the North

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Pat Kane, “Maryann Mantla, Gameti,” 2017

digital print on wood-fibre veneer, 36” x 24” (courtesy of the artist)

Good portraits are often boring. A beatific child, an old man in a jaunty cap – they are clichés. Great portraits, though, concentrate the entire weight of a subject’s life into physiognomic details – the arc of an eyebrow, the set of a jaw, the energy in the shoulders when a subject inhabits her body squarely again after slumping in a chair. Great portraits are intimate, surprising, familiar, weird – all the things that humans are. 

Pat Kane’s portraits, on view at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife until Nov. 30, have many great moments. Culled from his 14 years of working in the North as a photojournalist, they include winsome images of elders in Gameti, a small Tlicho community in the North Slave region of the Northwest Territories. 

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Pat Kane, “Rosie Mantla, Gameti,” 2017

digital print on wood-fibre veneer, 30” x 20” (courtesy of the artist)

Commissioned by the band office, the images radiate the unmediated mirth, shyness and depth of their subjects, as well as the joy of pure surface. In the portraits of Rosie and Liza Mantla there’s a beguiling interplay of nylon jackets, silk headscarves and wrinkled skin. In fact, Kane was so taken with surface that he photographed Maryann Mantla from the side to capture the jewel tones and floral pattern of her headscarf. Inadvertently or not, he created an iconic image – the northern granny.

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Pat Kane, “Angela Code, Tania Larsson and Melaw Nakehk'o, Lutsel K’e,” 2016

digital print on wood-fibre veneer, 32" x 48" (courtesy of the artist)

Kane, a member of the Timiskaming First Nation in what is now Quebec, prioritizes depictions of Indigenous empowerment. Angela Code, Tania Larsson and Melaw Nakehk’o stand on the edge of Great Slave Lake. They are guardians, and with a rifle slung over a shoulder, also soldiers  – embodying steadiness, purpose, grit. 

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Pat Kane, "Anita Chicot, Tathlina Lake," 2015

digital print on wood-fibre veneer, 16" x 24” (courtesy of the artist)

Kane’s interpretation of empowerment goes beyond displays of emotional strength. His vision is more nuanced, showing itself in his subjects’ ease, their temperaments perfectly suited to their environment. Anita Chicot chainsaws through a tree trunk. Centred inside a spray of woodchips, she is sheltered by the peak of the roof and the open curve of antlers. Even without her camouflage clothing, she’d be utterly ensconced.

At first, the absence of the damaging effects of colonialism is glaring, especially from a photojournalist whose ethos involves big-picture truth-telling. Also glaring is the lack of accompanying text. 

But Kane makes these omissions purposefully. He wants the images to speak for themselves. 

“The story of colonialism has been told too much,” he says. “People already know it. I couldn’t add anything more to that conversation. It’s important to show happiness and joy as people don’t see it that often.”

Happiness, though, can be hard to make interesting. Suffering is easier, its impact immediate. A few of Kane’s cheery portraits are not complex enough, and might be more at home in a tourism campaign. 

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Pat Kane, "Makenzie Zouboules, Yellowknife," 2014

digital print on wood-fibre veneer, 18” x 12” (courtesy of the artist)

Yet many others beautifully blur the distinction between photojournalism and contemporary art. Kane’s portrait of Makenzie Zouboules, for example, is icy and forlorn, almost ethereal. Appearing superimposed on a snowy background, she’s a symbolic counterbalance to the integration of his Indigenous subjects. 

It’s a shame Kane’s work is shown without curatorial support. Many images are good enough to stand on their own, but viewers would benefit from discussions about diversity, representations of Indigenous people and the North, and the bridge between art and journalism. Kane’s work deserves more. ■

Faces of the NWT is on view at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife from June 1 to Nov. 30, 2019.