Arctic images in context: Rereading the Padleimiut photographs in Richard Harrington’s The Face of The Arctic

Abstract

The article explores how Richard Harrington’s travelogue The Face of the Arctic (1952) responds to and represents the changing Canadian Arctic at the beginning of the Cold War, with a focus on Harrington’s famous photographs of the Padlei famine that were essential in changing the public’s image of the region at the time. Whereas scholars so far have downplayed the complexity of these photographs, this study offers a rereading of the Padleimiut photographs that draws on W. J. T. Mitchell’s concept of imagetext. The analysis of these photographs in relation to the text they appear alongside, the article argues, facilitates a more dynamic understanding of the images and their meaning. As such, the present study exemplifies how Arctic images are dependent on their specific contexts and on contextualizing interpretations.