Harris Island lays among the Tusket Islands, south and west
of Wedgeport, Nova Scotia. It is a staging location for lobster fishermen who
fish for lobster around the southern waters of the Tusket archipelago. My Pothier family come from Wedgeport and
lobster fishing is a feature of our life. My late brother Gerard felt a close
attachment to both Wedgeport and the Tusket Islands, particularly Harris Island
where my late uncle Vernon Pothier had his shanty. Some time toward the end of
the 1970’s Gerard decided to do a photo documentary about the lobster fishers on
Harris Island. Aided by our late cousin Donny Pothier and Vernon Pothier Gerard
made his study.
The images he created were completed in the form of a portfolio book. The photos were hand printed at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design on multi-grade resin coated paper and dry mounted on board. The group were ring bound and presented in a hand made canvas covered box.
The photographs are black and white and done in the prevailing documentary style evolved from picture magazines like Life and Look, but with the narrative quality of National Film Board films and stills. Gerard had sold some photos to the National Film Board Stills Division and had an eye for images that might interest them. The pictures also have a kind of pictorial focus, images of fishermen and dory’s, influenced by local photographers Wallace R. MacAskill and the more contemporary Serman Hines, as well as the marine romanticism of Peggy’s cove genre painter William Degarth.
Now some fifty years in the past, Gerard’s pictures bring back to life a mode of lobster fishing that is now gone. His Harris Island study is a collection well worth preserving.
Please follow the link below to my Google Drive to see the
collection.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11T06xYO_-XUrV4Z_ct1OfX9jdgbO6K6K/view?usp=drive_link
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