Overland Travel.” “Boreal Boogie Woogie” is equally colorful.
The photographer uses film and a medium-format Pentax camera, then scans the film making a high resolution digital file which is imprinted onto paper imbedded with color. This process is environmentally quite friendly, using only heat and a few ounces of distilled water. Ketchum believes that film is still superior to an image made digitally.
The museum has cleverly added artifacts and mounted animals from its vast collection, many of which have never been on exhibit before, to enhance the exhibit.
Snowshoe hares and Alaskan ermines are on display along with snowy owls and Rock Ptarmigans, and a menacing wolverine. A huge Kodiak brown bear reared up on hind legs dominates the east end of the exhibit
space, next to a glass-beaded man’s caribou leather outfit, to show just how big the bear is. His claws are something to behold.
Also included are miniature carvings of a seal and polar bear made from a mammal’s tooth, finely woven and decorated Inuit and Aleut baskets, and a beautifully crafted midnineteenth century Tlingit adze.
But the piece de resistance for me is the almost 20-foot-long Inuit kayak, c. 1850, made with sealskin over a cedar frame. It is so magnificent to look at, and imagining someone paddling it in Arctic waters stirs the imagination. The kayak was donated to the museum years ago and was restored recently through a charitable remainder trust from Clarence and Ida Classen.
A board member of the Illinois State Museum had seen Ketchum’s work and thought this particular grouping would be a good fit for the museum, according to ISM curator Bob Sill. Aperture has published his book Rivers of Life: Southwest Alaska, the Last Great Salmon Fishery and partially funded this exhibit.
Among his many achievements, Ketchum has served as curator of photography for the National Park Foundation and wrote the defining history of conservation photography in North America, American Photographers and the National Parks. His work is also in Regarding the Land: Robert Glenn Ketchum and the Legacy of Eliot Porter.
North to Alaska continues through March 28. Dr. Eric Grimm will discuss “Global Warming: Past, Present, and Future—Why Florida Should Care about Greenland” on March 10 at 7 p.m. at the museum.
Ginny Lee of Springfield is a photographer and environmentalist.
View more photos from the exhibit at illinoistimes.com.
