Zone d'identification
Cote
Titre
Date(s)
- 1955 - 1980 (Création/Production)
Niveau de description
Série
Étendue matérielle et support
ca. 4300 photographs, 40 transparencies, 12 contact sheets, and ca.2700 negatives.
Zone du contexte
Histoire archivistique
Throughout his career as a student and collector of Inuit art, George Swinton amassed a sizable study collection of photographic images. These images are primarily of works of Inuit art and are usually identified by location of origin, even if the name of the artist is not known. A proportion of images are identified by theme, such as ‘mother and child’ or ‘animals-sea mammals’. While he began photographing artists at work from the time of his first trip to the Arctic in 1957, a large proportion of the images described here appear to have been collected as part of the process of research for his books Eskimo Sculpture (1965) and Sculpture of the Eskimo (1972) and include a large selection of images of historical artefacts. Other images pertain to George Swinton’s work as a curator or curatorial consultant for important exhibitions such as “Eskimo Sculpture” at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 1967, the Tiktak solo exhibition held at Gallery 1.1.1. at the University of Manitoba in 1970, and “Sculpture/Inuit: Masterworks of the Canadian Arctic”, a major touring exhibition sponsored by the Canadian government. A sizable collection of images was also amassed as part of Swinton’s work as a consultant to major collectors, such as the Toronto Dominion Bank, and a large number of private collectors.
Source immédiate d'acquisition ou de transfert
Zone du contenu et de la structure
Portée et contenu
The images described here date from [ca.1955] to [ca.1980] and include photographs taken by George Swinton during his first trips to the Arctic during the 1950s. The images consist primarily of black and white photographic negatives and prints with a much smaller number of colour images. The subjects are Inuit sculpture and prints or drawings, with a small number of fur and fabric hangings also depicted. There are also some images of artists, workshop interiors and community landscapes. The images are literally a snapshot of Inuit art during the 1960s and 1970s with a large number of those images consisting of items then held in private collections. Information pertaining to the provenance of works of art is often found with the images. The images described here were arranged under the following headings:
Negatives - Beothuk Negatives, Cape Dorset, Arctic Bay, Pond Inlet, Baker Lake, Belcher Islands, Lake Harbour, Coppermine, Eskimo Point (ICI), Igllolik, Ivujiuik, Pangnirtung, Pelly Bay, Port Harrison, Sugluk, Wakeham Bay, Repulse Bay, Rankin Inlet, Canadian Handicrafts Guild, Povungnituk, Great Whale River, Tiktak Exhibition, Alma Houston Collection, Eskimo Museum (Churchill)
Prints – Cape Dorset, Pangnirtung, Payne Bay, Pond Inlet, Port Burwell, Port Harrison, Wakeham Bay, Whale Cove, Canadian Guild of Handicrafts, Chesterfield Inlet, Clyde River, Fort Chimo, Frobisher Bay, George River, Great Whale River, Greenland, Hall Beach, Historical, Igloolik, Repulse Bay, Various Lifestyle, Carving Technique, Dorset Culture, Thule Culture, Rankin Inlet, Tiktak, Repulse Bay, Pelly Bay, Baker Lake, [Private Collections], Community Views, Rankin Inlet Potters, Tiktak Gallery 1.1.1., Artists-Baker Lake, Artists-Cape Dorset, [“Eskimo Sculpture” at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 1967].
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
Accruals
Mode de classement
An attempt has been made to preserve George Swinton’s original numbering systems and arrangement of materials leading to a somewhat idiosyncratic arrangement of items and a lack of uniformity in the numbering scheme. All of George Swinton’s numbers have been copied from the original envelopes even when it is not known what those numbers pertained to (this information appears in the ‘notes/captions’ field of the image database).
Zone des conditions d'accès et d'utilisation
Conditions d’accès
Conditions de reproduction
Langue des documents
Écriture des documents
Notes de langue et graphie
Caractéristiques matérielle et contraintes techniques
Instruments de recherche
Zone des sources complémentaires
Existence et lieu de conservation des originaux
Based on George Swinton’s notations on the negative sleeves, a number of the photographic negatives described here may duplicate images that formed part of the Swinton ‘Slide Collection’, which now forms part of the research collection of Inuit Curatorial at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. In other cases, negatives held by one institution may duplicate prints held by another. For instance, the Winnipeg Art Gallery Archives holds negatives depicting bone pieces created by the Beothuk of Newfoundland and it is thought that these are duplicated by prints of Beothuk artefacts held by the archives of the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Existence et lieu de conservation des copies
Large numbers of George Swinton’s photographic images have also been accessioned by other institutions including the Art Gallery of Ontario (ca. 200 images of Inuit sculpture and arctic life; 337 images of Swinton’s St. Petersburg Study trip taken in the early 1980s; ca.600 personal photographs; and a study collection of ca.1600 photographic images of contemporary Inuit sculpture and Inuit artists) and the University of Manitoba (a large number of personal photographs; Inuit carvers and artists at work during the 1970s; 425 photographs of George Swinton’s arctic tour, 1989; 665 slides including Swinton’s course slides; and ca.3500 negatives of Inuit art and artists, ca.1960-1990).
Unités de description associées
Zone des notes
Note
For the most part, the photographer is unidentified though a large proportion of images are believed to be George Swinton’s own. However, many prints bear copyright stamps for other photographers or major institutions such as Canada’s National Museum of Man.
Identifiant(s) alternatif(s)
Mots-clés
Mots-clés - Sujets
Mots-clés - Lieux
Mots-clés - Noms
Mots-clés - Genre
Zone du contrôle de la description
Identifiant de la description
Identifiant du service d'archives
Règles et/ou conventions utilisées
Statut
Niveau de détail
Dates de production, de révision, de suppression
Langue(s)
Écriture(s)
Sources
Note de l'archiviste
When the fonds was arranged and described, a large number of photographic prints were found to be missing from labelled boxes and envelopes and their current location is not known. These items pertained to the following communities or topics/themes:
Artists-Port Harrison, Spence Bay, Sugluk, Alaska, Amautik, Arctic Bay, Baffin Island, Belcher Island, Broughton Island, Unujivik, Povungnituk.