Life on the edge of Canada’s eastern shores

In 1971, Melin­da Blau­velt became the first woman accept­ed into the Yale School of Art MFA pho­tog­ra­phy pro­gram. That same year, she col­lab­o­rat­ed with Walk­er Evans to help curate his ret­ro­spec­tive exhi­bi­tion, Forty Years. In doing so she becom­ing deeply immersed in his inti­mate chron­i­cle of ten­ant farm fam­i­lies strug­gling to sur­vive dur­ing the height of the Great Depres­sion in Hale Coun­ty, Alabama.

The expe­ri­ence shaped her view of what pho­tog­ra­phy could be and do. ​“Walk­er and I spent count­less hours search­ing and dis­cussing his archives and design­ing the exhib­it,” Blau­velt remem­bers. ​“Look­ing at his pho­tographs of por­traits, signs, and build­ings, as well as watch­ing him pho­to­graph on road trips was an extra­or­di­nary edu­ca­tion in learn­ing what Walk­er meant by hav­ing an ​‘eye.’”

Dur­ing the sum­mer of ​’72, Blau­velt took those lessons to heart, pur­chas­ing a used 4×5 Dear­dorff cam­era for an immer­sive project whol­ly her own. She head­ed north to work with the Que­bec Labrador Foun­da­tion, which placed Amer­i­can stu­dents in remote vil­lages on Canada’s east­ern shore to work at day camps with local children.

Blau­velt land­ed in Brantville, a small fish­ing vil­lage in New Brunswick, where she lived with French-speak­ing Aca­di­an vil­lagers, Ulysse and Jean­nette Thi­bodeau, and their three young chil­dren. The Thio­bodeaus wel­comed Blau­velt with open arms, includ­ing her in fam­i­ly meals, beach adven­tures, wed­dings, and birth­day par­ties with extend­ed fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends.

“The com­mu­ni­ty was tiny, inclu­sive, and meant peo­ple were relat­ed to one anoth­er,” she says. ​“Every­one was eager to embrace the Americans.”

By day, Blau­velt ran the day camp, play­ing games, giv­ing swim lessons, and mak­ing pup­pet shows. She spent her free time read­ing books from a list Walk­er Evans pro­vid­ed to ensure she was ​“prop­er­ly edu­cat­ed” in the works of Thomas Mann, Vir­ginia Woolf, and Gus­tav Flaubert.

And then there were the pho­tos: slow, thought­ful, col­lab­o­ra­tive works col­lect­ed the new book, Brantville (Stanley/​Barker). The book brings togeth­er Blauvelt’s por­traits of the com­mu­ni­ty made over four trips between 1972 – 74, offer­ing a look inside a way of life that is quick­ly reced­ing into the past.

“The view cam­era was ini­tial­ly a curios­i­ty but every­one want­ed to par­tic­i­pate,” Blau­velt recalls. ​“If I saw some­thing I liked — teenagers sun­bathing on buoys, chil­dren play­ing near tar-papered hous­es, old barns, boats, and majes­tic fish­ing nets — they were patient while I made a photograph.”

Although Blau­velt couldn’t devel­op the film until she returned home, the kids delight­ed in per­form­ing for the cam­era. ​“The col­lab­o­rat­ing and pos­ing seemed more impor­tant to them than the idea of the pho­to­graph itself,” says Blau­velt, who recon­nect­ed with many of the peo­ple she pho­tographed when they were shown at the Beaver­book Art Gallery in New Brunswick.

“Fifty years lat­er, the sense of com­mu­ni­ty, gen­eros­i­ty, and trust that I encoun­tered when Jean­nette Thi­bodeau wel­come us to Brantville with a tub of boiled lob­sters for break­fast seems rar­er and more pre­cious than ever,” she says. ​“The pho­tographs and this book are theirs as well as mine.”

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