"The Landing" recognized by NiCHE

My New Zealand grandson enjoying his first Yukon campsite. Photo: E. Neufeld

I am pleased to share the news that my art installation, The Landing, in this summer's Yukon Arts Centre show Traversing Yukon Landscapes, has won third prize in the NiCHE (Network in Canadian History & Environment) competition "Snapshots of the Field 2013." An international event, the competition addressed the ways that environmental historians do their work. I've attached an excerpt of their announcement of the winners.

First and Second went to serious projects that did lots of hard work. I split third prize with a Scandinavian woman who likes muskox. I think we got the thinking outside the box award or "we're not sure what you're talking about but it looks cool."

Claire Campbell and Graeme Wynn were the judges and offered the following remarks on the submissions.
 
"One of the great things about being environmental historians is that we have to reach beyond texts, beyond archives; we have to raise our gaze from our desks and our laptops and actually look at the world we study. This summer, dozens of environmental historians from around the world submitted photographs and screenshots of where their journeys had taken them, from mountain trails to coastal seashores, from museums to mining sites, from New Zealand to Germany. And with these photographs came brief but eloquent descriptions about the scholarly, and personal, experience of these places.
 
Our warmest thanks to all the contributors for giving us one of the more enjoyable tasks of the past few weeks. We look forward to next year’s contest ….
 
Choosing the “best” of these was extraordinarily difficult, because of this range but also because each was clearly so important in its own way and to its creator. (We each had lists of potential winners twice as long as the contest rules allowed.) That said, we were particularly intrigued by the following submissions:
 

Nicole Bauberger's paintings and my installation.  Photo: Paul Gowdie

The third prize was a tie between Dolly Jørgensen and David Neufeld, whose submissions transcend the lines between inside and outside, public and private history, humans and nature. Both ask us to consider how we communicate our knowledge and experience of the environment; how effective these means are; and what happens when we explore other types of expression. Seemingly simple single photographs are layered with meaning and given resonance by the accompanying texts, which convey highly personal reflections about encountering our scholarly work in other places."