Umiujaq photographers show their land

Mina Esperon won the jury’s second prize in Umiujaq’s photo contest with this photo showing a spectacular sunset.

Lukassie Tooktoo won the jury’s third prize in Umiujaq’s photo contest with this photo of cuestas, unusual land formations which will be included in the future Tursujuq park.

A winter scene taken by Joanne Novalinga won the jury’s first prize in Umiujaq’s photo contest.

People in Umiujaq, the eastern Hudson Bay community closest to Nunavik’s future Tursujuq park, got out their cameras and snapped photos of their favourite places this year.

More than 60 residents of this community of about 450— young and old— entered a contest for photos of landscape in and around Umiujaq, and four entrants picked up prizes, with cash awards worth $300 to $500, at a ceremony held Aug. 17 in the community.

Jack Niviaxie won the top “public’s choice” award with a photo of a rainbow at the Nastapoka Falls.

A winter scene taken by Joanne Novalinga won the jury’s first prize, a blazing sunset image of canoers fishing in the Richmond Gulf won the jury’s second prize, and Lukassie Tooktoo won the jury’s third prize for his photo showing snow-covered cuestas reflected in the Richmond Gulf near Umiujaq.

The jury included representatives from the Quebec government, the Kativik Regional Government and Nunavik’s Avataq cultural institute.

At the awards ceremony, the audience was treated to a half-hour slide show of all the entries in the contest— and heard from the contest promoter, Fabienne Joliet, a French geography professor from Angers, who received money from France’s polar institute to sponsor the contest.

“What is your favourite landscape?” was the theme of the contest which invited people in Umiujaq to submit photos of lands bordered by the Nastapoka River to the north, Clearwater Lake to the south and over to the Nastapoka Islands in Hudson Bay.

For Joliet, a landscape is “any place is a place where you’re happy to be, where you feel good because this place is pleasant, and you can do what you like to do.” It can neither be a picture of a thing or an animal, or a person who may appear in your landscape.

Joliet told Nunatsiaq News earlier this summer that she hoped entries would provide some insight into how people look at the land.

Among the photo entries, Joliet found several common features. About half were taken near Umiujaq or the Richmond Gulf’s cuestas.

Most photos showed lakes, rivers or the Hudson Bay, and many of these showed the Nastapoka River, whose protection from possible hydro-electric development remains uncertain.

Light played a role in many submissions.

And two-thirds were taken in summer, and there was lots of green in the images— probably because most of the photos were taken right before the contest deadline of Aug. 10.

Joliet plans to print up the submitted photos into an album for the community to keep— and that these photos may also find their way into the planned interpretation centre for Tursujuq Park.

Over the coming year Joliet is sponsoring a similar photo contest in Kuujjuaraapik and Whapmagoostui, the twin communities located right to the south of Tursujuq.

For more information— or to enter a photo— contact
Fabienne Joliet
Agrocampus-Ouest
2, rue Lenôtre
49045 Angers cedex 01
France

e-mail: {encode=”fabienne.joliet@agrocampus-ouest.fr” title=”fabienne.joliet@agrocampus-ouest.fr”}