Interview with Ned Pratt

Fresh out of art school in the late 1980s, Ned Pratt honed his skills as a photojournalist working for The Express in St. John's, Newfoundland. His portfolio has since grown to include a range of subjects from industrial to architecture, food, fashion, landscapes and portraiture. Yet his passion for fine-art photography endures. Pratt's photographs of austere Newfoundland landscapes have been exhibited throughout Canada, the United States and Japan. And both public and private institutions, including the Ford Motor Company of Canada, The Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and the Canadian Art Bank have his work in their collections.

		PHOTOGRAPHER Ned Pratt For more than 20  years, Ned Pratt's work has touched on everything from photo-journalism to food and fashion, and his fine-art photography is held in both The Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography and Canadian Art Bank collections. To read more about the  characters he met, check out the October 2009 issue of Canadian Geographic. To view more of Pratt's work, visit: www.nedpratt.com
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Q You shot a lot of portraits of this Viking during your time in the Northern Peninsula. Who is he? What's the story behind him?

A I don't know Mike Sexton at all apart from the role he plays as Bjorn the Beautiful at L 'Anse aux Meadows. I photographed him once a long time ago for Chatelaine as part of a fashion shoot for sweaters.

There was this bucket of water beside him by the entrance to a sod hut and I said "would you mind wetting your face, because that would give your skin a bit more sheen?" And he said "that's a great idea!" So he splashed a bunch up over his face, and this was early in the spring, so everything was cold, and as he did this his face sort of grimaced and he stopped for a minute and growled "Jesus Christ!"

That's when we found out the water was rancid. The bucket had been soaking a seal pelt the day before, but Mike didn't run to wash it off. It helped to make him look utterly pissed off and Viking-like in the portrait.

So when I met him on this shoot in the Northern Peninsula for Canadian Geographic he sort of looked at me and said "you!" And I sheepishly said, "ya, its me."

Q Did you meet any other interesting characters during the shoot?

A There's a photograph of a guy with potatoes in his hands, and that was a really nice encounter. He was just a very nice, gentle man farming potatoes by the side of the road. I pulled the car over and got out and awkwardly asked him if I could photograph him, explaining the situation.

He was just very giving. These quick encounters that you have can be very satisfying. It means something to the people you're photographing. It's not like photographing a lawyer who might see being photographed as a necessary evil. With this it's almost an honour, and so you get this totally different kind of photograph filled with the pride the subject contributes to it.

Q Have you lived in Newfoundland most of your life?

A Most of my adult life. I came back here after finishing university. I got married here and it's where I started out as a photographer.

Q What do you find interesting about the landscape?

A I think many Canadians don't realize the landscape in Newfoundland varies a great deal. On the east coast the land is essentially flat then cuts down into the water at a severe 90-degree angle. On the west coast the meeting of water and land is more gradual.

My work is mostly here on the east coast. I like the simplicity of the landscape. I like the way simple human structures jut up out of it. You can see how fragile they are, and you have a sense of the fact that the land doesn't care that we're here.

Q Who are some of your favourite photographers?

A You know, it's funny, sometimes you like a photographer because you don't like them. Like, I really like Diane Arbus's photography but I've always struggled with the way she manipulated her subjects and their environment and the viciousness of it. So I really like her work an awful lot, but not in the way that I want to emulate it. It tells me about the power you hold as a photographer to manipulate a situation and sometimes make an inaccurate comment on something.

Q Do you have any favourite Canadian photographers?

A I like a lot of John Reeves's portraiture. In the studio portraiture I do I try to emulate his lighting and the simplicity of his portraits. Gary Wilkes at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) taught me my first intro to photography class. He would ask really interesting questions that made me think about the responsibilities you have when photographing a person.

Q How did you get started as a professional?

A I studied fine art photography in Halifax at NSCAD. When I got out I kind of fell into being a freelance photographer to make ends meet. It wasn't my intention starting out. I thought I was going to go straight into the art world, but like everyone else you find out that it's not all that easy.

Q Did you find that your photojournalism influences your work as a fine art photographer?

A Oh, definitely. All the fine art work has a background in my experiences in commercial photography, both the editorial and the more commercial side of things.

The first job I ever had, which I very luckily got right out of school, was for a newspaper called The Express here in St. John's. So I went right in to editorial work after school and that was quite an education. You learn about deadlines and see how your work gets manipulated for other people's purposes. And you learn about composition and what editors select.

Interview by Graham Lanktree