The Majesty and Tragedy of Newfoundland and Labrador //Peter Ralston

Grand Bruit - a Newfoundland ghost town
photograph by Peter Ralston

·       "  For years I have dreamt of Newfoundland and Labrador; I have always wanted to go there, but my operating principle has long been to focus myself here in Maine. That “go deep” mindset definitely comes from the artistic model I witnessed over five decades of knowing Andrew Wyeth...and my work with the Island Institute, raising a family and my profound infatuation with the coast of Maine was more than sufficient to keep me happy and busy.I witnessed over five decades of knowing Andrew Wyeth...and my work with the Island Institute, raising a family and my profound infatuation with the coast of Maine was more than sufficient to keep me happy and busy.

Yet there was always the call of the North…out of sight but never fully out of mind. There was never any doubt in my mind that someday I would get there.

I just did." -Peter Ralston

The photographer and founder of the Island Institute has written HERE of the "Majesty and Tragedy of Newfoundland and Labrador".  Once called the Colony of Unrequited Dreams,  the tragedy of The Mortal Sea, as W. Jeffrey Bolster's Bancroft Prize-winning book calls it, is captured in Peter Ralston's arresting photographs of the beautiful fishing hamlet of Grand Bruit, on the southwest coast of Newfoundland, where the collapse of the cod fishery compelled? the Canadian government to pull the plug and withdraw all support of the town.  My friend the adventurer Richard Hudson photographed many of the ports and hamlets of Labrador during his voyages there aboard Issuma, which completed the northwest passage in December 2011.  Ralston explains his motivations and objectives in his moving essay.

abandoned fishing village in Labrador.  photo by Richard Hudson/Issuma