Occupational health nurse Julie Bidwell remembers that the men she worked with at a chemical company would ask her not to tell them how to do their work.
“We know how to do our jobs,” they said. “Show us what will happen if we don’t do them right.”
So when Bidwell came to the Centre for Agricultural Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan, she applied that lesson to farm accidents.
In industry there are usually many witnesses to accidents, but on the farm often there is one person working alone. If that person has an accident, he or she doesn’t want to talk to others about it.
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“There’s a veil of silence around farm injuries,” said Bidwell. “People feel silly, embarrassed, careless and guilty.”
There is a lack of information about how accidents happen because farmers don’t share their stories. Bidwell came up with the idea of a photo exhibition of farm accident survivors that would tell their stories so others could learn from them.
The show, Offguard, is at the Kenderdine Art Gallery in the College of Agriculture on the Saskatoon campus. It will tour community halls and galleries in the province over the next two winters and Bidwell hopes many rural people will see it.
The 20 individuals featured are volunteers, all selected by Bob Elian of the Saskatchewan Farmers with Disabilities group. Bidwell said the only gap in the project was not finding any family with an injured child willing to tell the story.
“It’s just too painful.”
The individuals were photographed by senior students in the university’s art history course and their stories collected by senior nursing students under Bidwell’s direction. Beside the two or three photos of each accident survivor are their names and the story of their accident.
Bidwell said students found the project “quite astonishing” and that they felt privileged to be allowed an intimate moment with the farmers.
Kent Archer, curator of the Kenderdine gallery, said the result is “quality examples of documentary photography and genuine works of art. But they are also an attempt to communicate what’s going on out there.”
Photos are on display at the Kenderdine gallery until Sept. 2 from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday to Friday and Sundays from 12:30 to 5 p.m.
