I had invited a photographer friend from Ottawa to stay with us in Yellowknife, and one night we went out looking for the Aurora. The cold was extreme and the sky was nothing but clouds — freeze-up does that, the condensation from the lake turning to ice keeping the sky perpetually veiled. The Aurora wasn’t coming.
So we drove out onto the Ice Road instead. Eight kilometres across Great Slave Lake, connecting Yellowknife to the small Dene community of Dettah on the far shore. Built each winter as the ice thickens and erased each spring when it softens, the ice road is one of those things that sounds impossible until you are standing on it.
And that’s what I remember most — standing on the ice in the extreme cold, marvelling at the engineering of it, at the sheer audacity of building a road on a frozen lake. Behind me Yellowknife gleamed. Above us stars were beginning to peek through the clouds. We never did see the Aurora that night. We didn’t need to.
Part of my Life in the Knife series, Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories.
This photograph is printed on Hahnemühle fine art paper with a white border and is available as a Limited Edition Fine Art Print.
Print is 13” x 20” - Edition of 10 $525
All prints are hand signed by the artist, numbered and are accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity with a matching hologram.
Larger Sizes also available. (Please enquire.)
I had invited a photographer friend from Ottawa to stay with us in Yellowknife, and one night we went out looking for the Aurora. The cold was extreme and the sky was nothing but clouds — freeze-up does that, the condensation from the lake turning to ice keeping the sky perpetually veiled. The Aurora wasn’t coming.
So we drove out onto the Ice Road instead. Eight kilometres across Great Slave Lake, connecting Yellowknife to the small Dene community of Dettah on the far shore. Built each winter as the ice thickens and erased each spring when it softens, the ice road is one of those things that sounds impossible until you are standing on it.
And that’s what I remember most — standing on the ice in the extreme cold, marvelling at the engineering of it, at the sheer audacity of building a road on a frozen lake. Behind me Yellowknife gleamed. Above us stars were beginning to peek through the clouds. We never did see the Aurora that night. We didn’t need to.
Part of my Life in the Knife series, Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories.
This photograph is printed on Hahnemühle fine art paper with a white border and is available as a Limited Edition Fine Art Print.
Print is 13” x 20” - Edition of 10 $525
All prints are hand signed by the artist, numbered and are accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity with a matching hologram.
Larger Sizes also available. (Please enquire.)
