Visiting Cantung Mine

My Scholarship entry - A 'place' I have visited

Canada | Monday, July 8, 2013 | 5 photos

I am a 26-year-old photographer and writer with a passion for the Arctic and northern issues. I’ve been photographing communities and people in northern Canada on a part time basis for the past two years. As a professional writer, working for a local newspaper in Whitehorse, Yukon I’ve had the chance to access many incredible stories, but I would love the opportunity to take my photography to a higher level and tell those stories visually, especially with the chance to focus on the Arctic wilderness.

I am particularly interested in the effects of the dual issues of climate change and globalization on northern people and communities. With my photography, I try to show the lives of people who live in Canada’s North. In March I visited the Cantung mine site outside Watson Lake on the Northwest Territories/ Yukon border. In the 1960s it was a booming mine town, but now the mine is run by fly-in workers who commute from as far away as Newfoundland and Thailand. Even so, it is still one of the Northern Canada’s only producing underground mines.

The Greenland scholarship would be a huge chance for me to improve my photography and help shed light on very little known part of the world.