From Atturri to Urola (the east part of the Cantabric Sea)

Shab, such wonderful images. You have an expert eye for casual portraits, and if I may say so, your landscapes are beautifully, classically stark, all the more so for being so well done in pure black-and-white tones.

Your subjects look to me very much like Les Acadiens - the Acadian French fishermen and farmers and other country folk I photographed as a teen newspaper reporter in eastern Canada in the 1960s. From the same blood stock, maybe. Bretons and Normans. Their ancestors emigrated to la Nouvelle-France (in English, New France, now Quebec in the early 1600s until the mid-1700s, For political reasons and the racism so sadly prevalent in that long ago age, many were deported from what is now Nova Scotia to Louisiana, then a French colony, by the English in the 1750s.

Some of the hardiest ones trekked back to Nova Scotia, but they found their properties had been taken over by English settlers, so they moved on to New Brunswick, which took them a few years. Their descendants still reside in three Atlantic region provinces, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and parts of Nova Scotia.

The Acadians have a rich cultural life and many of the "older" generation (mine) still speak fluent French and continue to honor many of their old customs, notably festivals and religious holidays. Food is superb, different in many ways from that of the French in Quebec as fresh seafood is still abundant and continues to be fished from the Atlantic, altho' it's now no longer as cheap as I remember it from the mid-'60s when for three months I would pig out on fresh boiled lobster for $1.75 a pound at the table.

But this isn't about food, rather your photographs which to my eye bear so many similarities to those I made almost six decades ago. Being young and half English I was regarded as somewhat of an outsider. So I didn't get many close-ups as luckily you can do. Some locals were wary of me and reluctant to pose.

When I left Canada in the 1970s I donated many original negatives to a provincial archive for safekeeping and to let future generations access them and see what their forebears did back then.

Alas, in 2006 when I was last in Canada and wanted to access my negatives, I was told they could no longer be found. Oh, well. I did keep my family photos, of grandparents, aunts and uncles and a few nieces and nephews, many of them now no longer with us, so I still have this archive tho' my problem now is who to leave them to as I live in Australia and my partner is Malaysian Chinese with family in Asia but no connection to mine in French Canada.

Posting them may be an option, but gee-golly-gosh! the work involved in the scanning alone. Still, I suppose I had best get busy and do it, then the keyboarding and captions. Hm. Something to keep me busy and occupied until I'm 90, at least...

Please keep posting. You are an inspiration to many of us and your work will surely have great historic value. Well worth doing.
 
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DownUnder said:
Shab, such wonderful images. You have an expert eye for casual portraits, and if I may say so, your landscapes are beautifully, classically stark, all the more so for being so well done in pure black-and-white tones.

Your subjects look to me very much like Les Acadiens - the Acadian French fishermen and farmers and other country folk I photographed as a teen newspaper reporter in eastern Canada in the 1960s. From the same blood stock, maybe. Bretons and Normans. Their ancestors emigrated to la Nouvelle-France (in English, New France, now Quebec in the early 1600s until the mid-1700s, For political reasons and the racism so sadly prevalent in that long ago age, many were deported from what is now Nova Scotia to Louisiana, then a French colony, by the English in the 1750s.

Some of the hardiest ones trekked back to Nova Scotia, but they found their properties had been taken over by English settlers, so they moved on to New Brunswick, which took them a few years. Their descendants still reside in three Atlantic region provinces, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and parts of Nova Scotia.

The Acadians have a rich cultural life and many of the "older" generation (mine) still speak fluent French and continue to honor many of their old customs, notably festivals and religious holidays. Food is superb, different in many ways from that of the French in Quebec as fresh seafood is still abundant and continues to be fished from the Atlantic, altho' it's now no longer as cheap as I remember it from the mid-'60s when for three months I would pig out on fresh boiled lobster for $1.75 a pound at the table.

But this isn't about food, rather your photographs which to my eye bear so many similarities to those I made almost six decades ago. Being young and half English I was regarded as somewhat of an outsider. So I didn't get many close-ups as luckily you can do. Some locals were wary of me and reluctant to pose.

When I left Canada in the 1970s I donated many original negatives to a provincial archive for safekeeping and to let future generations access them and see what their forebears did way back then.

Alas, in 2006 when I was last in Canada and wanted to access my collection, I was told they could no longer be found. Oh, well. I did keep my family photos, of grandparents, aunts and uncles and a few nieces and nephews, many of them now no longer with us, so I still have this archive tho' my problem now is who to leave them to as I live in Australia and my life partner is Malaysian Chinese.

Posting them may be an option, but gee-golly-gosh! the work involved in the scanning alone. Still, I suppose I had best get busy and do it, then the keyboarding and captions. Hm. Something to keep me busy and occupied until I'm 90, at least...

Please keep posting. You are an inspiration to many of us and your work will surely have great historic value. Well worth doing.
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Thank you so much DownUnder, for your words.

It is very interesting to read a part of your life in 1960... it makes me think and I like it so much...

I didn't know anything about Les Acadiens... thank you for talking about them. The people who appear in my portraits are mostly Basques and I try to capture the faces, the culture, the life... of the Basques in a limited way.

I hope you will get to keep your families portaits "alive"... your life is so "interesting".

And thank you once again for your words, they help me to keep working in this project, like all the "Likes and Hearts" that people gives in the pictures... thank you all of you!
 
Xabier, you have touched my heart with these photos. This is obviously a project of love. I salute you, your photos and your world. I also thank you for bringing this joy to me in viewing your work.

You can brand me clueless and unobservant and give me a good hard kick in the ass. I had managed to overlook this thread until today. But I have thoroughly enjoyed reading and viewing the project as a whole. Again, thank you.

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

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Dogman said:
Xabier, you have touched my heart with these photos. This is obviously a project of love. I salute you, your photos and your world. I also thank you for bringing this joy to me in viewing your work.

You can brand me clueless and unobservant and give me a good hard kick in the ass. I had managed to overlook this thread until today. But I have thoroughly enjoyed reading and viewing the project as a whole. Again, thank you.

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

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Dogman... it's a deep pleasure to know you feel this project in this way... For me, the fact of knowing that these photographs provoke those feelings in you is the most I aspire to. Thank you very much for sharing your words, I collect them with great affection. (I have used google translator)
 
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