Peter Pitseolak
Peter Pitseolak was born in 1902 on the southeast coast of Baffin Island at Cape Dorset. During his lifetime, he lived through the enormous changes his people, the Seekooseelakmiut, experienced over the next half century, during which they moved from a nomadic hunting life to that of a settled community. Now the people of Seekooseelak produce some of the most exciting carvings and prints that come out of the Arctic.
Early in his life, Pitseolak became aware that the traditional way of life of the Seekooseelakmiut would soon disappear. He spent much of his life recording the old ways in every means that came his way – drawings, paintings, prints, recordings, and in an invaluable body of photographs which span the period from the early 1940s to his death in 1973. Pitseolak, and his wife Aggeok who worked closely with him, took photographs at home in Cape Dorset and even out on the land where, Aggeok recalls, “he would put the camera on top of the igloo until the film was all used up (in order not to subject it to temperature changes).... Only after he finished the film would he take the camera inside and take out the film…. We would develop on top of the sleeping platform with the three battery flashlight. – Dorothy Eber