As long as the sun shines

These words are part of the treaty (treaty 8) which promised to protect and nurture the lands on which the indigenous population used to hunt and fish. The lands were granted to them back in 1899 for “as long as the sun shines”. Betraying the faith, the government gave away more than 90000 km 2 of that territory to international oil corporation. Ian Willms, a Canadian photojournalist has been following this systematic destruction of the forest lands & the lives of the peoples living there. His photographs are being showcased in Indian Photo Festival 2020 at Hyderabad, India, Portraying the sad devastation of land and lives of indigenous people.

While talking with him over the net, he said, “The Canadian oil sands are the largest, most environmentally destructive oil development on Earth. Giving rise to rare cancers, birth defects, lupus and other ailments which are occurring at alarmingly high rates.” He says further “Intense forest fires, driven by climate change, devastate the land that has yet to be impacted by
industrial development. Traditional Indigenous economies of hunting and fishing have been decimated, leaving First Nation band members with few options for employment outside of the very industry that’s consuming their traditional territory. In Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, locals will describe this process as a “slow-motion cultural genocide.” Meanwhile, the oil industry cities like Fort McMurray experience unprecedented economic growth.”

Ian is a freelance contributor to National Geographic, The New York Times, TIME, GEO, The Guardian and many others. His works have garnered support and accolades from The Eugene Smith Fund, World Press Photo, Sony World Photography Awards, Pictures of the Year International, The Canada Council for the Arts, the Lange-Taylor Prize et al, and been shown in
solo exhibitions at Visa pour l’Image, Lumix Festival for Young Photojournalism, Contact Photography Festival, Coalmine Gallery in Zurich, Switzerland, F3 Gallery in Berlin, Germany and Half King Gallery in New York, USA.

His widely published photographs encompass the subjects like elections and epidemics, delinquency and industrial collapse and resulting economic upheaval, migration and refugees, Greyhound Bus transport, train disasters and murder, Indigenous people and climate change disasters.. Geographically he has worked in Haiti, Honduras, Germany, France and many other countries and extensively in Canada.

Raised by a single mother Ian lived in subsidised apartment building for at-risk women. He tells us “so most of the people surrounding me while I grew up there recovering from spousal abuse or addiction on mental health issue. This was very critical part of my formation as an empathetic person. As a three-year-old I was thinking ‘why doesn’t these kids have drinking water? I was thinking about this stuff that I decided that I was going to devote my life in some capacity to having some kind of possible impact on inequality, environmental degradation that is why I became a documentary photographer. If I didn’t do documentary I probably be doing some form of activism. I fell into photography and it’s sort of became means to my end”

While talking, Ian willms’ young face reflects a positive aura of a gentle but persistent, almost ruthless crusader battling against skewed odds. His persona projects the calm compassion, a deep desire to understand and help, to do his part in the fights against inequality, against environmental degradation in the name of development detrimental to indigenous people and nature. A wisdom born out of close proximity to suffering, a passion which arose in early childhood to do something good, collaborating in documenting the mindless atrocities. His images document the devastation of pristine physical landscapes and the resulting impacts on the human emotional landscapes. The pictures show the ground level realities, human suffering from perspective of individuals going through neglect, alienation and geographical isolation.

Asked about his education in journalism Ian says,

“About Loyalist College, I can tell you with a certain degree of confidence that I have never drunk so much beer in my life.” He further reminisces, “Loyalist College was a lot of fun. Their curriculum could be behind the curve sometimes but I loved the people there. Time I spent there was incredibly motivating for me as a young photographer. As loyalist college is not in Toronto it is in a fairly small city of population of 50,000 people. You are kind of couple of hours from Toronto and if you are a student you may not be able to afford a car you are kind of stuck in a place and between 50 and 100 photographers who are stuck there with you. In addition to drinking a lot of beer you also spent a lot of time doing photography, a lot of time together talking about photography and when a new project comes for a photographer or world press shows their work you talk about that with your peers. This community element is sort of almost like a symposium. There was constant exchange of ideas with many people and that was really most important to basically and they had courses like International photojournalism. the work that was taught by people who honesty hadn’t really done very much of that work it was like there were showing us stuff but mostly We were learning from old Masters so they were introducing us to people like Eugene Smith, Mary Ellen mark, Eon Arbus, Gordon parks. All of these very influential classic photography Masters”

I inquired about his mentors

“At Loyalist, Patti Gower and Frank O’Connor were definitely a really essential influence. When I was younger I used to get a lot of guidance from Donald Weber. He teachers now. Lots of my mentors where photographers who were dead. W Eugene Smith, Mary Ellen mark is a big one like one photographer has most preferred influence about how I conduct myself as a person. Today you can contact the photographer you thought pretty amazing. Try to meet with them.”

Tell us about Boreal collective & NAMARA represents

“it was very important part of my photography career. We started Boreal collective in 2010 and the idea was to challenge this kind of conservative Canadian idea of photojournalism and our country we wanted to do to long form documentary photography. We wanted to do it in a style more emotional and conceptual and there is no appetite for this type of work in Canada. So we started boreal collective to Foster and grow this kind of photography presence in our Canadian photojournalism landscape. I was one of the founding members. There were six founding members. I stayed with them for 9 years. I left because I think that running a collective like that is kind of younger persons game. If done by younger people it has a younger perspective.”

“Namara represents is a commercial agency not a photography agency, it started like that when I was more involved with it.”

Asked about the role played by the documentation and photojournalism, and other activist in mitigation of this industrial rampage he says,

“Role of photography, visual documentation in ecological disaster is important. But in a story like this it is also needed to work in consort with scientists to explain full scope. ”

He continues, “These are not economic centres, not heavily populated; have to face indigenous peoples racial bias. They feel that if we were white people living in Toronto suburbs, we would get top priority for government. Logistics for journalists, stay, groceries, are expensive. Difficult to do journalism there due to economic factor.”

He narrates his approach to a project very succinctly, “I look at it like in this case the centre point is oil sands, indigenous sovereignty & from that centre point all these branches different locations, different ideas, different moods, feelings all kind of grow. It’s like a mind map. A list of things to talk about with others. There are certain photographs that are obvious, others less obvious driven by emotional landscape so like there is physical landscape. When I was not physically there of thinking about it researching it writing about it, & organising the pictures & showing them to the people there & getting their opinion this collaboration is very imp.”

About his advice to budding Social photojournalists he explains,

“That’s a tough one you have to kind of listen to your heart & listen to your instinct. What is calling you, motivating you, where the fire is coming from & pursue that with almost recklessness. Because you know you can never have a whole plan like how it will go. You want it intensely & for a no. of years that was what this work was; it was something I absolutely have to
do. And you know in last few years it has garnered some success & that’s great but even if it never garnered that success I would still follow through with it. Having your own emotional vulnerability in your work is great way to prove that you have concerns questions, not being afraid to show your emotions. A lot of photos I take have the projection of my own feeling. There is emotional honesty there.”

I wondered, “How to empathise with the related communities, population, individuals?”

“I try to have very sincere connection with people I photograph, it is very important to me to be welcomed in a place like this, very important that there is certain enthusiastic concern with people I photograph especially because I am white & I am photographing indigenous community. I have to be more respectful, that closeness. It is natural product of that approach because we all are in agreement & communicating, we may be friends or friendly with each other.”

When questioned, “Do you manage a neutral perspective?”

He told me, “I don’t believe it is possible to have totally neutral perspective. We all have opinions & they are shaped by our experience. I think what is more important is that we are aware of those biases & very aware of origins when we talk to somebody. We give an appropriate amount of weight & attention & credence to their experience & their perspective & not just hear what they say & see what they do from our perspective. I won’t call it a neutral perspective just perspective that tries to be fair, understanding.”

When I inquired about mitigation, he replied, “Big part of what I am trying to do is to create a human document of the place. It is important to show that human beings are interacting; individual lives are being impacted on, at very intimate level. Like I photographed this gentleman Warren John Simpson as he died of cancer in home. This is the kind of story that gets to people. And create outrage in public. It makes a project like that very politically dangerous for the leaders who advocate for it. This is a kind of tactics to try to curb this destruction is to show this disasters.”

About the changes over the years, he is sanguine, “It is changing. Canada is in an era of history right now when indigenous peoples are having their voices heard but it is changing in 10 years I have been doing this project. I have noticed the change, getting more recognition having more victories, government is responding in different ways, than before, more attention is paid Discussion is changing in Canada & the way Canada perceives economic future, in regard to how they must approach indigenous leadership & how they will develop resources like this in future with that in mind is changing.”

“I hope that the work I am doing today is part of that shift in this country. Everybody works together, every journalist, academician, scientist has something to say about the project like this contributes to the public understanding & shifting of opinion.”