RIT prof treks in Kent's footsteps
Jan. 27—PLATTSBURGH — Photographer Denis Defibaugh had seen a number of artist Rockwell Kent's books such as his 'Moby Dick' book.
Not the trade edition, but the three-volume set printed by Lakeside Press, Chicago, 1930.
"It's just amazing," said the author and RIT professor of photography emeritus.
"Amazing volume of books. It's fairly large sized. I'm guessing it's probably 14-by-20 or 14-by-18, something like that.
"It comes in an aluminum slipcase. They are just amazing prints in that book. It has nothing to do with Greenland. I was really interested in that, and I found out about the Kent Museum in Plattsburgh and went there about 2012."
Defibaugh met with then Plattsburgh State Art Museum director Cecilia Esposito, and they kind of hit it off.
"She goes, 'Let me show you something,'" he said.
"She pulls out these two wooden boxes of lantern slides. I didn't really know what was in there. She goes, 'Just take a look of what's in here.'
"I opened them up, and I pulled one out and I put it up to the light. It was like a jewel case. It was like looking at diamond ring or something. It was so beautiful, and I got so excited."
There was also a photograph from Greenland.
"I go man, 'I want to follow up on this,'" he said.
"From the moment I saw those photographs, I was interested in doing a project that would take me to Greenland, to take me to the same place Kent was to do kind of a comparative study of past and present."
The result is the exhibition, "North by Nuuk: Greenland After Rockwell Kent," which opens Feb. 1 and runs through March 11 at the Burke Gallery, Myers Fine Arts Building, SUNY Plattsburgh.
FABULOUS FOUR
Defibaugh knew the expense of the Greenland project. To make it feasible, he knew he had to snag an award or grant from the National Science Foundation.
He assembled a team — Susan Vanek, a SUNY Binghamton PhD anthropology student, who was working in Greenland; Dr. Jette Rygaard, a professor of Institute of Culture, Language & History Department of Language, Literature & Media at the University of Greenland; and Axel Jeremiassen, a PhD history student also at the University of Greenland.
"If it wasn't for him, the project would have never been completed and done at the level it was done," Defibaugh said.
"That was the best thing that happened to me for this whole project."
Defibaugh went to Greenland in 2016 and started the project taking a leave of absence, then a sabbatical from RIT.
With the exception of a few short stays stateside, he finished the project in August of 2017.
IN KENT'S FOOTSTEPS
In Greenland, Defibaugh lived in four different places — Nuuk, Illorsuit, Sisimiut and Uummannaq.
"The reason for that was kind of the footsteps of Rockwell Kent thing or after Rockwell Kent," he said.
"Kent, the first time he was in Greenland, he was in the Nuuk area. Nuuk is the capital of Greenland. He sailed with two friends from Canada over to Greenland and ended up shipwrecked."
Starting in New York, Kent met his friends in Newfoundland and they sailed across Baffin Bay and Davis Strait to arrive in Greenland.
"It was very foggy, kind of dangerous crossing," Defibaugh said.
"They went in a fjord to basically anchor for the evening, and a big storm came up and basically sank the boat (The Direction).
Kent set out overland to find help.
"That was his first experience in Greenland," Defibaugh said.
"While he was out walking looking for help, he just fell in love with the county, just the landscape and everything. He ended up finding a fisherman in a kayak."
Most of Defibaugh's time was concentrated in Illorsuit because that's where Kent lived.
In each community, the team introduced themselves, talked about the project, and introduced the Inuit to Kent, whom some knew but a lot didn't.
This community talk was replicated in all four communities.
"The public was invited," Defibaugh said.
"Some were very successful. Some were not successful at all. In Illorsuit, we had a large group of the community."
FACIAL RECOGNITION
When he could, Defibaugh did a slide show and showed more of Kent's images besides the ones pinned on walls.
"That's what they loved," he said.
"They could care less about my photographs. They loved looking at Kent and trying to recognize people. They would get all excited when they said who was who. They could identify a number of the people in the photographs that Kent took, which was kind of nice."
In Sisimiut, Defibaugh showed a slide of Kent, his right-hand person, David, an Inuit.
There was a smaller, unidentified female in the photograph.
"I said I know these three people, but I don't know who this girl is?" he said.
"This woman in the back raised her hand and said, 'I think that's my grandmother because she was called the round one. She was a round girl.' "At the end of presentation, she came up, and we started talking."
Hardly anyone came to the team's talk in Uummannaq.
In Nuuk, 15 residents showed up.
"The funniest thing, the smallest town had the biggest turnout," he said.
Defibaugh also led photography two-week workshops to students in each of the communities that culminated in separate student exhibitions.
"It was a great experience for the most part," he said.
"The students did a great job with making photographs. Nikon gave us about 25 cameras to have the students use. We probably maybe worked with130 students during these workshops."
FULL CIRCLE
"North by Nuuk" features 52 framed prints in a range of sizes that depict Greenland's culture, environment, people, hunting, fishing and sled dogs.
In his artist statement, Defibaugh writes:
"North by Nuuk provides an engaging and revealing view of change and continuity in Greenland. The future of Greenland is unclear. As climate change continues to dramatically affect the ice cap, settlements are slowly being abandoned, and population continues to decline. Separated by eighty-five years of evolution North by Nuuk... documents the modernity of Nuuk, Greenland's capital, the primal and social landscape, traditions, culture, and people of relatively untouched remote arctic communities."
"It's a pretty big show," he said.
"There's going to be some Rockwell Kent work. There's a lot of different things to look at."
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