Joe Johnny, Port Hardy Carver

I met Joe Johnny, Port Hardy carver, on an afternoon that had no particular hurry in it. I had come north for a community portrait offering at the new big house on the reserve, and somewhere in that stretch of days I found myself in Joe's carving shed, camera down at my side, sitting and listening more than photographing. The pictures we made that day are all digital, which felt right, quiet, unhurried frames of a man surrounded by the work of his hands.

An afternoon in the carving shed

The shed smelled of cedar and old cutting oil, of sawdust worked into the floorboards over years. Joe sat among adzes and knives hung by the handle, blades he has kept and sharpened and reground more times than he could count. There is a particular stillness to a room where someone has worked for a long time, and I wanted the portraits to hold some of that stillness rather than interrupt it.

Carving tools and stories

We talked for a few hours, and the portraits happened in and around the talking. That is usually how the good ones come. Joe spoke about the tools first, which blade for which cut, how a handle wears to fit one hand and no other, why a well-kept edge matters more than a new one. From there the conversation wandered, the way it does, into life and family, the weather off the water, the work that shaped his days. I have always believed that the tools a maker keeps say a great deal about them, something I keep returning to in the way we think about our own tools and process at the studio.

You do not rush the wood. It tells you where it wants to go, and you follow it.

— Joe Johnny

Meeting a master carver

There is a difference between photographing someone and sitting with them, and this was firmly the second thing. Meeting a master carver in his own space, you come to understand that the skill is only part of it, the rest is patience, memory, and a lifelong attention to material. Joe's carvings carry that weight, and you can see more of his work and the pieces he has made through the gallery that represents him. My job was simply to make honest frames of the man himself, at rest between one piece and the next.

Portraits made together, not taken

I keep saying we made the portraits together because that is truthful. Joe decided where he wanted to sit, which tools stayed in frame, how much of the shed came along. I worked slowly, the way I do with all of the portrait work that comes out of the studio, letting the afternoon set its own pace. When a portrait is a shared thing, the person on the other side of the lens is present in a way you cannot direct. You can only wait for it, and be ready when it arrives.

Part of a wider project

This sitting grew out of my time with the community, and it belongs alongside the wider set of Port Hardy big house portraits I made during that visit, you can learn more about that big house community portrait offering and share it on. Afternoons like this one are the reason I keep this kind of work close to the heart of the studio. If you would like to see more of what comes out of these sittings, there is always something new in the journal.