Beginnings

I’ve always loved taking pictures for as long as I can remember. I remember being fairly young and getting my mom to buy me disposable film cameras. In high school I took tons of snapshots my myself and my friends, trying to document it all. While I was in my first year of University, I splurged on my first dslr. 2011 is the year I started taking more serious portraits of other people and putting myself out there more, by showing my work to online communities. Since then, I’ve been getting requests to be hired as a photographer. Despite that, I do limited work. I work hard to find the balance between my love for photography and it becoming a “chore,” or just a job. It’s been one of the hugest challenges of being a photographer for me.

I think one of the reasons I’ve had a fascination with documenting with photographs is because I have no photographs from my childhood. I have seen less than a handful of baby pictures of myself. We moved a lot when I was young so I think that made it harder for my mom to get pictures of my siblings and me. I want people to have photos of and for themselves, of their families and loved ones. Time passes quickly and I find pictures help with remembering special moments.

I believe another reason for my love of photography (especially photography of First Nations people in Canada) is the lack of representation of Aboriginal people in mainstream media. Growing up, I found it so bizarre and disheartening that we “didn’t exist” in movies, magazines, and even books. I could never find anyone who looked like me, that looked like a Cree woman on t.v. The only place I saw people like myself was on the news, and it was often negative. One of my goals is to get images of us (First Nations/Inuit/Metis peoples) “out there,” for people to see that yes we do exist, we are beautiful, we have stories, lives, aspirations, and accomplishments.

Jenni

Chayla

Photography and social media have provided the most beautiful gift, a platform for us to share stories, and to network with other like-minded individuals. The amount of talented Aboriginal people I have been exposed to thanks to social media has made me so grateful and proud of who I am. The world is changing, our presence is becoming louder, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

 – claudine bull