Acts of Seeing: Sanirajak

Photo by John MacDougall

May 9, 2008, I was in the Inuit hamlet of Sanirajak, on the shore of Foxe Basin in Nunavut. I took a lot of pictures. I like this one for its content. There’s a lot going on here: three kids, three snowmobiles, a husky pup tied to a hockey stick stuck in the snow, the long runners of a wooden sled, a polar bear skin stretched on a wooden frame, leaning against the house. I love the red jacket of the kid running in the foreground, and the metallic red, green, and blue of the snow machines, and the yellow boots of the little kid looking down at the pup. But what makes the picture, for me, at least, is that magnificent polar bear skin drying in the arctic air, a reminder that this is wild country where the polar bear still roams. 

Acts of Seeing: Almond Tree

Photo by John MacDougall

January 29, 2024, we were cycling in Portugal. I came around a bend and there was this beautiful old almond tree in full frothy blossom. At least I think it’s an almond tree. Please tell me if it isn’t. I want to know. I love the twisted black trunk. Like great old poets and great old painters and great old movie directors, it’s still producing beauty. What a wonderful day that was! See that cyclist on the road in the distance? That’s Lorna, leading the way, as usual, while I straggle behind, stopping to savor the views and take pictures. 

Acts of Seeing: Campbell's Pond

Photo by John MacDougall

This is a photo of Campbell’s Pond that I took recently. I love this area – the golden reeds and rushes, the tranquility. It’s part of Prince Edward Island National Park, near Dalvay Lake, not too far from where Lorna and I live. Can the camera catch a feeling? I think so. You have to work at it. I took at least a dozen shots of the pond that day. This one was the last in the series. As soon as I took it, I knew it was the one that came closest to expressing my reverence for the place. 

Acts of Seeing: Middelburg

John MacDougall, Middelburg (2025)

I took a ton of pictures on our recent trip to the Netherlands. It’s a very photogenic country. I love Dutch canals, Dutch architecture, and Dutch boats. This photo contains all three of those ingredients. The location is Middelburg, one of my favorite Dutch cities. I love the russet color of the boat and the way it matches the door of the building on the far left. Those buildings, with their tall, white window frames and auburn roof tiles – so beautiful! The whole scene is beautiful. I wish I was back there, cycling along the canal, looking, looking, looking. 

Taking a Break

Photo by John MacDougall

This evening, Lorna, our grandson, Will, and I fly to the Netherlands to do some cycling. We’ll be gone two weeks. I’m taking Ian Frazier's The Fish's Eye (2002) with me. I’ll post my review when I return. The New Yorker & Me will resume on or about September 20th. 

Acts of Seeing: Trinity

Photo by John MacDougall

May 18, 2012, a brilliant day in Trinity, Newfoundland. Walking around this spruced-up, freshly painted fishing village, I felt like I was in a movie set of a fishing village. There was hardly anyone around. The sun was shining through a spattering of white clouds. The light was clear as could be. I love those white picket fences. There are four of them – two in the foreground, and two farther down the street. I love the bundle of wooden poles leaning against the shed. I love the dab of red on the belfry of the church steeple. Look behind the church. You can see a tiny slice of sea. 

Acts of Seeing: Iqaluit

Photo by John MacDougall

A friend from Iqaluit recently visited us here in Stanhope. Her presence took me back twenty years to my own Iqaluit days, when I roamed the town, hunting for interesting images. One of my favorite walks was along the beach, where I could look at one of my favorite Arctic things – Arctic canoes. I took countless pictures of them. This one, for example, dated March 30, 2008. I love the curved bow and the dark blue-green with black trim and the orange rope and the chunk of snow sitting on top. This canoe is just biding its time, waiting for summer, when it can go down the bay.    

Acts of Seeing: Via Claudia Augusta

Photo by John MacDougall

I took this May 16, 2025, on the Via Claudia Augusta cycle route between Salerno and Trento. It’s one of the most beautiful trails I’ve ever biked. It takes you through the Adige River valley, filled with acres and acres of apple orchards and green vineyards. The sky was blue; the sun was shining. We came upon this old red wagon piled with dead twigs and branches. What a great subject! ! Unposed, unembellished, unimpeachably real – the Ding an sich, the thing in itself.    

Acts of Seeing: Daffodil

Photo by John MacDougall

Many years ago, I randomly planted a bunch of daffodil bulbs on our property, including in the woods and along the driveway. This one popped up a couple of days ago, its yellow harmonizing with the colors of my old lobster buoy collection. I don’t do anything to nurture the daffodils. They’re completely on their own. Yet every May they manage to appear, pushing up through the undergrowth to shout hello, it’s spring. 

Acts of Seeing: John Arch's Pond

John Arch's Pond (Photo by John MacDougall)

This is a photo of one my favorite places – John Arch’s Pond, Prince Edward Island National Park, Canada. I took it a couple of months ago. The pond is not far from our home. Lorna and I walk or bike by it almost every day. The picture could be called “Cattails in Winter.” I love cattails with their brown furry spikes. Those leaning dead spruce in the background on the left were blown down by Hurricane Fiona in 2022. Farther in the background are the dunes that mark the northern edge of the pond. Beyond the dunes is the beach and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 

Acts of Seeing: Praia de Tavira

Photo by John MacDougall

Praia de Tavira, Portugal, February 6, 2024. We came out onto the magnificent beach, and there she was to greet us: fish net plumage, mannequin legs, one lime green high heel shoe, shiny CD eye, mesh crab pot head and beak, and spiky green reed hair. The coolest beach sculpture I’d ever seen. I took her picture, the intense blue Portuguese sky showing through her fine mesh basket head. I thought of you, Picasso. 

Acts of Seeing: Grado

Grado, June 18, 2023 (Photo by John MacDougall)

I have a taste for boats and reflections. Both elements coalesce in this shot, taken one sunny morning in Grado, Italy. Lorna and I were biking around town, seeing what there was to see. The fishing boat is a beauty – sleek contour, great white-green-and-blue paint job. But it’s the foreground, with its gorgeous liquid reflection, blending the colors of the boat and the apartment buildings behind, that makes this picture one of my favorites.  

Acts of Seeing: Bombardier Snow Bus

Bombardier Snow Bus, Rankin Inlet, 2006 (Photo by John MacDougall)

I’m partial to ruins and wrecks. September 10, 2006, I was nosing around the town of Rankin Inlet on the west coast of Hudson Bay, when I encountered this rusted hulk of an old Bombardier snow bus. I love its curved shape and four round windows, golden Arctic wheat growing up around it. Most of all, I love the texture of its flayed steel skin. Flecks of yellow paint. Was that its original color? Once upon a time, it was a functioning snow bus, carrying kids to school, miners to work, researchers to field projects – who knows what it was used for? No doubt, it has a story. But I will never know it. I wonder if it’s still there.   

Acts of Seeing: Quickstop

John MacDougall, Quickstop, Iqaluit (2007)

I relish the “service station” shots of Garry Winogrand, William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, and others. Many years ago, in Iqaluit, Nunavut, I tried my hand at taking a picture of the gas bar in our neighborhood. The low Arctic sun was shining just right on the pump island, sort of spotlighting it. There was a snowmobile there, gassing up, which added a distinctive northern element. I love the colors – the greens and blues and dabs of red. You can see a hill of snow-covered tundra in the background. The scene has a certain cold beauty – at least to my yearning southern eyes. I miss the place. 

Acts of Seeing: View from Dublin Coastal Trail

Photo by John MacDougall

Tourism Ireland might be puzzled by this choice. Why a picture of a desolate stretch of railway track when there are scenes so much more “picturesque” to pick from? Ireland is a photographer’s dream. On our recent bike trip, we took hundreds of photos. But this shot appeals to me for some odd reason. It’s a view from the Dublin Coastal Trail. I love the gleaming rails, the touches of pink in the green vegetation, the vine climbing the mesh attached to the steel post supporting the electrical wires, the green fencing, the deep indigo of the graffiti on the old stone wall. And beyond – Irish sea, sky, clouds, island. I love it all.

Acts of Seeing: Qamman Point

Photo by John MacDougall

September 21, 2005, I was nosing around Qamman Point, a few kilometres outside Sanirajak, Nunavut, with my friend George Qulaut. I spotted this beautiful eroded whale vertebra. It seemed like an Arctic still life just waiting to be photographed. I love the combination of textures: bleached bone, orange lichen, coarse tundra. That’s George in the background, keeping an eye out for polar bears.  

Acts of Seeing: Kimmirut

Photo by John MacDougall

September 12, 2007, I was in Kimmirut for a meeting of Qikiqtani Inuit Association. Every chance I got while I was there, I roamed the hamlet, hunting for interesting images. I watched as a boat called the Misty Michelle was launched and loaded for a trip to a soapstone quarry to get some carving stone. What I like about this picture is the clear afternoon light, the human activity (nine people aboard the two boats, including a kid with red boots perched precariously on the deck edge), the silvery water, the brilliant red dot of a buoy, the freshly painted whiteness of the Misty Michelle, and – most of all – that sublimely textured rock backdrop, with its slanted seams and subtle shades of white, gray, black, and ochre. 

Acts of Seeing: Forget-Me-Nots

Photo by John MacDougall

Yesterday evening, walking Bagnall Lane, near the old Sea Sound trailer park (now empty and abandoned), I found a dense patch of forget-me-nots. The light from the overcast sky wasn’t great, but I took a picture anyway. These are the first forget-me-nots I’ve seen this year. Tiny blue flowers with yellow centers growing in the grass along the edge of a gravel road – what a discovery! I was elated. 

Acts of Seeing: Montreal Bridge

Montreal Bridge, 2024 (Photo by John MacDougall)

What is beauty? That old question again. I took this shot when I was in Montreal recently. Lorna and I were biking a trail that ran along the St. Lawrence River. It took us past an old bridge made of rusty steel beams. The rust, the rivets, the splotchy spray paint (beige on olive green with random rust marks showing through), the stenciled “BRIDGE” in an interesting industrial font – all of this spoke to me for some odd reason, and I took the picture. Berenson's “tactile values” comes to mind. The bridge roused my sense of texture. I wanted to capture it. 

Acts of Seeing: Birch Chandelier

Photo by John MacDougall

Rained yesterday. Temperature dropped below zero. Everything encased in ice. This morning the sun came out. Woods turned to crystal. There’s a path that runs along the edge of John Arch’s Pond to the beach. I went in there. Bent-over birches like fabulous chandeliers. Branches fused in cascading luminosity. What a scene! I couldn’t get enough of it. By afternoon the ice melted. Trees dripped water. Scene dissolved.