Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- 1971-2012, predominantly 1972-1976 (Creation)
Level of description
Collection
Extent and medium
39.5 cm of textual and graphic material
394 photographs
1 35mm film strip
1 audio disc
2 audio cassettes
4 audio reels
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Born in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1940, Pamela Harris completed her Bachelor of Arts in English Literature at Pomona College in 1962, and moved to Toronto in 1967. A self-taught photographer, her work has consistently engaged with issues of social activism and feminist themes. In 1984, she embarked on perhaps her best known project Faces of Feminism, spending the next several years photographing women across Canada. The resulting work was exhibited extensively around Canada, and a selection of 75 photographs was published by Second Story Press as the book Faces of Feminism in 1992.
Pamela Harris first visited Spence Bay in September 1972. In 1973, she spent another four months in Spence Bay, Northwest Territories (now Taloyoak, Nunavut) photographing the people and landscape of the community, conducting interviews, and establishing a community darkroom where she taught local residents (mostly Inuit craftswomen) how to process film and print their own photographs.
In addition to the monograph Another Way of Being, published in 1976, Harris’ Spence Bay. N.W.T. photographs were exhibited in 1974-76 at The Photographers' Gallery in Saskatoon, the David Mirvish Gallery in Toronto, and the Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art in California. Photographs taken and printed by the Spence Bay residents as part of the darkroom project and natural dyes workshop were exhibited in 1974 at the Arctic Women's Workshop, a craft conference and exhibition held at the TD Centre in Toronto. An interview Harris conducted with Theresa Quaqjuaq, one of the Inuit women who participated in the darkroom project with Pamela Harris, was recorded and included in the 1973 Women’s Kit, a teaching aid Harris produced for the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) to be used in high schools and colleges for teaching women’s history in Canada. Excerpts of this interview, as well as an interview with Pamela Harris, were also aired on CBC Radio.
A small settlement near Boothia Peninsula (formerly Boothia Felix) in the Kitikmeot Region, Spence Bay was established by the Hudson Bay Company as a trading post in the 1950s, and settled by Netsilik and Dorset people. According to Harris, the population was about 400 in 1972-1973, most of whom had settled there within the past fifteen years, and many of whom spoke only Inuktitut. Her portraits of the people she met during her stay there and photographs of the landscape she encountered document the traditional ways of life and the rapid changes it underwent due to the cultural influences of the south.
Archival history
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
AGO credit line: Gift of Randall McLeod, 2012
Content and structure area
Scope and content
The collection comprises archival material related to Harris’s photographic work from her time in Spence Bay, as well as that of the darkroom project she conducted while living there. The archival collection consists of Pamela Harris’ original contact sheets; her active and passive correspondence; documentation, publicity and text panels related to her exhibitions of Spence Bay photographs; audio recordings of interviews with people she met and worked with in Spence Bay; and related materials from the 1973 Women’s Kit. It includes the 28 b&w photographs taken by the Inuit women participants of the concurrent natural dyes workshop and the related text panels exhibited at the Artic Women’s Craft Conference and TD Centre in 1974, as well as documentation of their work in the Darkroom Project and the resulting exhibition. It also includes a questionnaire designed and distributed by Pamela Harris and colleague Paul Carter to other documentary photographers during this same time period.
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
Accruals
Further accruals are not expected.
System of arrangement
Conditions of access and use area
Conditions governing access
Access to Series 1: Correspondence, file 2-9 [Theresa (sic) leaving Q.] is restricted as noted below. Access to Special Collections is by appointment only. Please contact the reference desk for more information.
Conditions governing reproduction
Copyright is held by the creator. Copyright belonging to other parties, such as that of photographs, may still rest with the creator of these items. It is the researcher’s responsibility to obtain permission to publish any part of the collection.
Language of material
- English
- French
- Inuktitut
Script of material
Language and script notes
Physical characteristics and technical requirements
Photographs include 44 b&w prints, 28 mounted on board; 179 b&w contact sheets; 167 colour slide transparencies.
Finding aids
Allied materials area
Existence and location of originals
Existence and location of copies
Related units of description
Notes area
Note
Titles of series, files and items are supplied by the artist, unless otherwise noted. — Variations on spelling of Inuit names as noted. A guide to registered birth name and name of choosing is available for reference (see Series 2: Darkroom Project Files, box 2-13). Wherever possible these names were used, however common spellings of names do not necessarily relate to this guide, in which case the most commonly found spelling of a name was used.
Alternative identifier(s)
Access points
Subject access points
Place access points
Name access points
Genre access points
Description control area
Description identifier
Institution identifier
Rules and/or conventions used
Status
Final
Level of detail
Full
Dates of creation revision deletion
Language(s)
Script(s)
Sources
Archivist's note
Prepared by Marilyn Nazar, 2013, with assistance by Molly Kalkstein. Updated by Amy Furness, April 2017
Uploaded and adapted by Nirvana Chainani, 2019.