Mike Raine, the resident photo wizard at this paper, keeps this quote
from Edward Steichen posted at his desk: “The mission of photography is
to explain man to man and each man to himself.”
This issue of the Producer has four pages packed with photographs and
perhaps they will accomplish the above-noted mission if you consider
them in the proper frame of mind.
This is the third consecutive year we’ve published a special photo
tribute to prairie harvest, but this year’s project was a little
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problematic.
Simply put, there wasn’t much of a harvest in vast areas of Alberta and
Saskatchewan. Gone were the usual visions of wide swaths, grain pouring
into bins and cattle grazing belly-deep in grass.
More than one staffer assigned the task of harvest photography
encountered empty landscapes that looked more like moonscapes.
Fortunately for our project, and thus for our readers, they also
discovered people making the best of their situations – a true prairie
proclivity.
That’s why we chose this week’s cover photo of the sun breaking through
clouds and shining down on harvest. It’s also the reason for our theme,
“the best of now and here,” which is based on a wee poem found in a
compilation of daily quotations amassed by M.J. Ryan.
As you will see on pages 82 to 85, the unique challenges of this year’s
harvest were not ignored, nor were farmers who fared well this year.
Staff members collected photos from the four western provinces, and we
were fortunate in receiving submissions from freelance photographers
too. Space doesn’t permit us to show the entire 2002 collection – not
if we want to give all of them their due – but our website at
www.producer.com can show you a wider range.
All our photographers encountered stories, long and short, from their
subjects: the farmer who will only harvest stones this year; the men
who volunteer time to show agricultural history to visitors; the farmer
who acknowledged about late-season rain, “the most important thing it
brought was hope.”
We hope you enjoy our efforts this week in explaining man to man. I’ll
close with one more quote by G.K. Chesterton. Think about it the next
time someone notes prairie farmers’ penchant for living in optimism but
speaking with pessimism: “Do not free a camel of the burden of his
hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.”
