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“Hello world” I am late to this whole blogging experience but looking forward to utilizing all the potential this not so new technology has to offer as I am changing my photography style, moving to multimedia and video.
Please view my website www.gignouxphotos.com where you can view my almost decade long career and see how it progresses into the next decade, I have just included the text that accompanies the images as you can see my image son my site. I really look forward to hearing all your comments! Be ruthless but honest!
Throughout my travels over the past ten years, I have focused on the environment and refugees.
I have noticed the environment degrade at a faster rate that I could have possibly imagined. In my lifetime, what were once pristine beaches, rolling fields or forests, are making way for new suburbs as the world’s population hurtles towards the ten Billion mark. I decided to do something in my own way, document the changes. I cannot stop the development or progress, but I can bring awareness to somebody who might be able to.
The Canadian Rangers
Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper during a visit to Ellesmere Island stated, “Sovereignty is not a theoretical concept, you either use it or lose it.”
Harper was referring to the race for the abundant resources trapped under the Arctic Ice. It has been estimated that 25% of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas reserves lie under the ice. Russia, Denmark (Greenland), Norway, USA (Alaska) have territorial claims.
Russia has challenged the status quo by planting a flag 4,200 meters under the North Pole and claiming the Lomonosov underwater mountain range as an extension of Russian territory.
Under International law, however, territorial waters stretch twelve miles from the coastline. Canada’s dilemma is the Arctic islands are too far from one another, creating international shipping lanes, called, “ A strait for international navigation.” According to Donald McRae, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, “Canada must demonstrate that the waters are an integral part of Canada and the Northwest Passage do not constitute an international strait.”
Canada’s claim lies in the fact that waters separating the northern islands are frozen for most of the year, joining the islands and keeping them inhabited, as the Inuit hunt and sometimes live on the ice – in effect turning it into an extension of land.
The above, however, would not be enough in an International Court to prove sovereignty. This explains Harper pledge to build seven new Arctic icebreakers and a deepwater port on Ellesmere Island.
An important part of Canada’s sovereignty’s claim will be protected by the patrols of, The Canadian Rangers.
The Rangers was created in 1947 to patrol Canada’s remote areas, providing law and order, protection against poachers and codify Canada’s sovereignty.
I propose photographing a Ranger recruit from the settlement of Kugluktuk, situated on the Arctic coast of the Northwest Territories. The activities of the Rangers are a perfect vehicle to allow visualisation of the main issues concerning the Canadian Arctic, sovereignty, the environment and culture.
I will spend a week before the patrol commences documenting through portraits and reportage, life in an Inuit community. What are the present and future challenges? Has traditional Inuit culture been lost or is it being reborn as young Inuit are regaining pride in their language and through the Rangers, are relearning the skills of surviving in the Arctic. Is it all in vain due to the rapid change in the physical environment?
As the ice pack recedes, resources are becoming accessible, provoking a military and economic boom. Suddenly, once isolated northern communities are going to mirror the comparable Russian Arctic communities.
Already Tupac and Puff Daddy emblazon the tee shirts of hooded teenagers but this generation want to break the curse of alcoholism and drug abuse that scourged their parents and grandparents. The Inuit youth still embrace North American culture but realise if they are going to overcome the cultural difficulties suffered by previous generations moving from a nomadic to urbane society, they must regain their identity.
I want to capture the uniqueness of the Rangers, using old Lee Enfield Rifles, as modern automatic weapons do not perform well in the harsh Arctic environment. I want to show the viewer just how difficult it is to run a smooth military operation while dodging icebergs, polar bears and fierce storms. Obviously, the summer conditions are not as harsh but if possible, I would like to capture the contrasts between both seasons.
I want to document the agility of the Rangers who are able to wait patiently over a seal hole in what is called a, “ Stock still” position.
An unlikely scenario is the Inuit Rangers looking for drug dealers or illegal immigrants in the far north as simulated by last summer’s, Operation Nanook. On the humanistic side, I would like to witness a search and rescue of a lost hunter, as what happened to Bill Wolki, an experienced Polar Bear hunter on Parry peninsula in the Northwest Territories.
Adding to the story would be the knowledge of an eighty-year-old Ranger who passes on wisdom and the deeply ingrained ethic of Ningiatug, or sharing. In many ways, without the Inuit, Canada would not have the north as European traders would not have been able establish trading posts for furs and whaling while without the Canadian state, the Inuit would not have Nunavut, covering one fifth of Canada’s land mass. Again, both parties need each other and their futures are intertwined.
I would like to include the essay to not solely focus on the military aspect but on the culture of the Inuit, how it stands today and where it might be going in the future with the challenges of global warming and future development due to the race for resources.
I am currently working on a global environmental project, focusing on the usual suspects – heavy industry but also looking at ourselves, as we are the main culprits. I certainly enjoy my mobile phone, laptop, central heating on those cold winter nights and sometimes, yes, I drive a car although I live in a city that has a public transport system. I have focused on three areas, the Chesapeake Bay, the Ural region in Russia and the Tar Sands of Northern Alberta.
The Chesapeake Bay
The Chesapeake Bay is situated on the East Coast of the United States with six states comprising its watershed, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia and Virginia.
The Bay’s health barometer is the crabbing industry. If the crabs are doing OK, then the bay is doing OK.” Crabs are an integral part of the culture, Maryland is known throughout North America for its delicacy, “Blue Crabs”
In 1948, the Bay had 60,000 crab pots and by 1988, there were 665,000. By the 90’s the catch had plummeted by 2/3 bringing a 40% decline in cannery employment.
The finger cannot be pointed at the usual suspects, heavy industry. Since the 1980’s the steel industry has collapsed. Sparrows Point outside of Dundalk, Maryland is working at 20% of its capacity mixed with tougher Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards, the culprits are Homo Sapiens.
The real reasons are not comfortable as the offenders are the agricultural industry and us.
The North American lifestyle of ever expanding suburbs and shopping malls demands more and more tarmac allowing rainwater to carry discharged oil from oil gaskets, air conditioning fluids and plain rubbish into the draining system that empties into the Bay, creating algae dead zones, starving aquatic life of vital oxygen.
The Kent Straits is the first point of land for the ten mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge, once pristine farmland and wetlands has been transformed into designer outlets and holiday homes now empty after the 2008, “Credit Crunch”
2007 was the worst crab harvest on record devastating the communities of Smith and Tangier Island as watermen (crab fishermen) were forced to sell their boats and leave their four century old communities to look for work in Baltimore or Washington DC. The states of Maryland and Virginia responded by banning dredging the bottom of the Bay from October to April and limiting the catch to 51 bushels a day.
Another offender is factory chicken farming that spans across route 50 and 13, especially around Salisbury, Maryland. Each “Chicken shed” battery farms 300,000 chickens emitting ammonia fumes from large industrial fans but a problem in common with property developers is, “Ditching” where large ditches are dug to allow an outflow from the farms and new developments.
“Industreality”
“Industreality” is the product of a three month residency during the summer and autumn of 2009 in collaboration with the University of the Urals, The NCCA and Yekaterinburg based photographer, Den Marino (www.denmarino.com)
“Industriality” focuses on the Ural Industrial Region, Russia’s Industrial heartland, spanning from the Arctic to Kazakhstan. I based myself in Yekaterinburg, the last city in Europe before Asia and the booming financial and industrial core.
During the Soviet period, The Urals was a, “Closed Region” to foreigners due to its military industrial complex. The Ural’s industrial history started during Peter the Great’s reign when copper was found in Karabash and Ore was found around Yekaterinburg.
During Soviet times, new cities like Magnigorsk sprung up from the steppe in a grandiose imposing style, symbolising different Soviet leaders.
Stalin and Brezhnev housing was designed to make humans small amongst the industrial urban landscape, there was no care for the natural environment or the health of the workers, so long as the quotas were met!
The 90’s are known as the lost generation as the Soviet Union collapsed, with it, a seventy year old economic system of command economics. Some towns died, others survived while some adjusted and prospered.
The project has been split into three sections, Industreal landscapes, Industreal towns and Ural Mash.
Karabash
Karabash has the Russian Copper Company’s main smelter and has been described as the most polluted town in Russia.
On its approach, Karabash is surrounded by the foothills of the Urals, covered with forests of birch and an apparently clean recreational lake, complete with an ice cream van. Turn the corner, a treeless landscape of “Dead Zones” with stinging white clouds full of pollutants, so harsh, your throat and eyes sting and your clothes have to be thrown away once you leave town.
Karabash is only working at half capacity as economic reforms have made half the workforce redundant, forcing families to abandon their once state owned, wooden “slum apartments” for opportunities elsewhere.
The remaining population toil in the “Hot Production” plant but have been moved to higher ground, a little further away from the plant, where the air might not sting so much but only 27% of the population is considered healthy. The Russian Copper was obliged to move the population as a condition of securing loans from European banks as a certain percentage of the loan had to be earmarked for environmental programs.
Moosliumovo
During the Yeltsin era, KGB files were opened and suspected nuclear accidents were confirmed.
Moosliumovo is a small village just outside the steel town of Chelyabinsk on the Russian Steppe.
In 1959, the townspeople woke up to a terrible explosion that
Shook their houses and shattered their windows, but the true heartbreak was waking to discover all their animals were dead, worse was yet to come.
Children started dying from the contaminated water as the authorities had dumped nuclear waste into the river, while life expectancy dropped dramatically as leukaemia, cancer and failing immune systems took their toll.
Today, the town is deserted but for a few unfortunate families, who were not able to access a fund that had been set up to move them out of the area.
Refugees
Roots
By Alan Gignoux
I decided to photograph the Saharawi people in traditional dress. For over three decades, a large majority of the Saharwi population have been dispersed between the refugee camps in Tindouf, Western Algeria, Spain, the Canary Islands and Mauritania. Despite this dramatic and tragic exile, the Saharawi people continue to maintain their customs behind closed doors.
For example, they have kept up the daily ritual of drinking the delicious sweet tea, which is enjoyed in the company of friends who are assembled on cushions. They chat, play traditional Azawzn music, and maintain close links with family inside the occupied territories, sending them annual remittances.
On the street they wear Western clothes, are integrated into the Spanish economy and culture and enjoy living in Spain. They do not feel they are living on the fringes of society. They share the same hopes and aspirations as their fellow Spaniards.
Spain, the colonial power, granted citizenship to all Saharawi born before 1976—this was the year Spain abandoned the Saharawi people and betrayed their aspirations for independence by secretly agreeing with Morocco and Mauritania to divide its former colony. The conflict in the Western Sahara is one of the least well known conflicts. The United Nations is involved in trying to broker a long lasting peace deal, but that is a delayed and low priority process.
Morocco, the sole occupying power since Mauritania withdrew in 1979 has been successful in creating a “Moroccan imprint” on the re-branded “Southern Morocco” with an aggressive strategy of “Moroccanising” Western Sahara.
During my visit to the occupied zone in Western Sahara, I found a landscape littered with unfinished settlement projects with roads leading to nowhere; abandoned power lines; and “New Towns” (Laayoun –previously Al-Auin– has the enchanting Moroccan tiles that lure many a tourist). The brightly coloured buildings and desert architecture cannot disguise the fact of empty cafes or the Saharawi refugee camps far out of town and well out of the way of prying eyes. There is also a heavy police presence, not unlike the ‘North’ as Morocco is known as.
I spent more time engaging with plainclothes police officers while they verified my identity – they just seem to appear from nowhere. Due to the heavy police presence, the intifada is a very muted affair but I was informed during my stay, unknown to me, that the phosphate conveyor belt was destroyed.
A “Cult of personality” with portraits of the King looms everywhere in the occupied zone. It adds to the already uncomfortable feeling of being watched. Endless symbols of the Moroccan state adorn walls, gates, houses and taxis. The Moroccans have even changed all town and street names.
When I arrived in Dakhla, I detected a part of the answer to why Morocco is reluctant to give up its occupation of Western Sahara. Fishing boats from all over the globe dock in its port, and there is offshore oil (the real reason why Morocco will not allow a referendum).
One of the positive aspects to Dakhla was that there was more of an atmosphere of openness, which was absent elsewhere. Saharawis were more willing to talk about what life was really like under occupation, though they had become resigned to the fact that they were now “Moroccan Saharawi.” The Diaspora, however, dreamt of returning to a free and democratic Saharwai Republic of Western Sahara.
