cool..thanks for writing…i just wanted to make sure we had not somehow made a mistake at our end…keep going…this is great work you are doing….

cheers, david

The captions I found more problematic. Referring to Poplar Point as uninhabited while showing the people living there doesn’t make any sense. The caption to #7 references “facts not in evidence”–an issue (the dangerous road) which is unseen, not part of the photo and not otherwise discussed in the essay.

#9 looks more like winter haze than smog. Smog is more orange colored.

i think that is what i was suggesting in my 1st post….it begins with the pics themselves and the strength (or ideas) within the pictures and from that comes the story….and btw, the pictures are even more beautiful in real life :)

Imants: “Essays of this nature can be small completed units but still part of a larger body of work that is in progress.”

I totally agree and think that’s what I have. I’m just not done with the story.

http://vimeo.com/50385365

Aaron, I will be sure to come back and see what images might get added back in.

i did not edit your essay…let me look at it carefully again…let me know soonest what you feel should have been included…normally we clear all essays with the photographer…not sure why this did not happen this time….we are not beyond reproach here at Burn….i have been traveling and just did not see the edit..what i see here looks brilliant , and i saw this final…but just don’t remember from the EPF what was not included here now….my editing team is in a time zone that has them at about 4am..when they wake we will discuss and see if changes can be made…if we change we will give you an extra day or two on top with the essay to your satisfaction….

cheers, david

as we have stated here many times, we cannot publish what the photographer does not show us…..you may be absolutely correct…

later….now i see that some pics eliminated ..i don’t know why…i have been on road trip and did not edit this story…i will look again now….if i see something that i think should have been included, i will put them back in…

Essays of this nature can be small completed units but still part of a larger body of work that is in progress.

As a Canadian Metis, born in Alberta, I’m utterly disgusted, ashamed, and appalled by the oil sands project. Some folks refer to Fort McMurray as “Fort McMoney”. I have lots of relatives working in the oil patch making obscene amounts of money.

Shame on all of us. While we decry the destruction, the pollution, the global warming, the pipelines, but we are addicted to oil. We drive bloated vehicles that waste too cheap fuel, we fly around the globe in jet aircraft for pleasure, we demand cheap food from anywhere around the globe. Virtually any product or human activity you can think of depends on oil.

The sad truth is that we won’t change our behavior unless we are forced to by economic collapse or ecological disaster. Meanwhile, all we can do is try to document the rape of mother earth as best we can as a warning to future generations.

I wonder what the world will be like in a few hundred years.

Aside, all criticisms are much welcomed as they can help inform me of how the work is being interpreted and how possibly to continue with project, which is valuable. I think this is one of the great aspects of Burn, that it can offer dynamic dialogue.

The dead animals are meant to illustrate a continued practice of a way of life, while being symbolic of of a loss.
Jim: In more recent edits there are not as many…. but they are definitely integral :)

I get where you’re coming from but, “Just concentrating on his pictures and enjoying them as things upon themselves is enough for me.” Your first comment is in some conflict with this one.

Besides isn’t it more interesting when discussions get into the anthropology and sociology a little bit as well?

I love these pictures; I think Aaron is remarkably gifted and there is much joy here. Just concentrating on his pictures and enjoying them as things upon themselves is enough for me. I just had to say that, in case my previous thoughts were misconstrued.

I thought the story was about the Cree and Dene people and how their lives have been affected by oil sands project. This includes their hunting trapping lifestyle. He may or may not have succeeded in one persons mind or the other… but to suggest the animal photos don’t fit somebody has to be trying very hard not to see.

This is the second essay of Aaron’s I have seen here; it has secured his position with me as my second-favourite Winnipeg-born photographer. (First place is for me…held in reservation. Hahaha!) He shoots square format with an amazing eye, style and technique. I swoon both at the sumptuousness of his compositional skill, and the silent observation he shows here (and had showed us in his previous essay).

Alas, I have to take Jim’s side here against Bob. Elkaim’s artist’s statement doesn’t flow from the pictures. “Fort McKay is marketed as a success story” he says, and that is exactly what I see…without the complicated and opposed truth these people sense, and which in all likelihood exixts. Indigenous folk carrying on their lives to the fullest; plenty of meat hunted; weddings at the town hall; birthdays and the like; funerals. With the exception of the image of the town covered in smog – which on its own could have contained Elkaim’s argument just fine, thank-you very much – I don’t see the dark mystery and other-sidedness of the resource issue.

Yet that image alone does make my anger seeth. Think of how, when the particulates settle on the snow, it will blanket the North that much darker, and the reflective ability of the insulating surface will be that much worse, and the warming cycle that much quicker! There is such a fine-tuned ecological balance at play in the North, so similar to the balance these people make to survive the environment. Wrecking that equilibrium will affect us everywhere else, but these people will be the frontline, beta-testing witnesses. Is that the complicated truth these people speak of, I wonder?

He just buried the lead. That’s all, Jim.