photographs
Steveston
"The photographs made then, at that time, in that fishing village that I visited for the first time in the early 1970s, was my introduction to the Japanese-Canadian experience of dislocation and displacement.
At the mouth of the Fraser river I remember a slow dance of meeting, listening and photographing. I see myself with my large wooden camera on tripod, black focusing cloth flailing out and over me... photography as street theatre, photographing as focusing." Robert Minden, from the 'Afterword', p 107, Steveston, 3rd edition, Ronsdale Press, 2001
“For twenty-five years, Robert Minden has been using the still photograph as a meeting place for conversation. His portraits of Doukhobor Canadians, his intimate studies of family and friends, are monuments of Canadian photography. Steveston was the beginning, and this important body of work, now enriched with rediscovered images, illuminates a community and an approach to community that have much to tell us.”
—Martha Langford, Founding Director of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography
The photographs were made in Steveston, British Columbia 1973-1975, using a wooden 5 X 7 Deardorf view camera with reducing back to yield 4 X 5 negatives.