Richard Harrington: Arctic Photography 1948–53

“I am often asked what is the most memorable photograph I have ever taken. This is difficult to decide because many photos meant personal involvement. My Inuit photos to me are most meaningful. They were taken under difficult conditions. I came to know the people. We lived together and shared hardships.” —Richard Harrington, 1998. German-born Richard Harrington (1911–2005) was a renowned documentary photographer. He traveled to more than 120 countries, and his work has appeared in the Toronto Star, Life, Look, National Geographic, Paris Match, Der Stern and Parade Magazine. Some of his most memorable photographs were captured between 1948 and 1953, when Harrington took five expeditions to the Arctic. His work documents not only the transitioning lifestyles of the locals, as western influences encroached on traditional ways of living, but also a terrible famine that struck the Padleimuit in the Northwest Territories in 1950 — when the caribou, the main source of food for the Padleimuit, did not follow their usual migration path. The moving photographs from this series document dignity, acceptance and love in the face of starvation. Richard Harrington: Arctic Photography is a curated selection of some of Harrington’s most stirring and compelling photographs from his years in the Arctic. With an introduction by renowned curator and artist Gerald McMaster and a short biography written by Stephen Bulger, the primary representative of Harrington’s estate, this collection of masterful photographs is an important and timely re-examination of Harrington’s work in the face of a changing climate and renewed Indigenous activism.