Publisher: The Anchorage Press.
Dimensions: 10 x 19 in.
Pages: 80
An Homage to the Atlantic Salmon Rivers of Eastern Canada
Photographs by Thaddeus Holownia
Essays by Harry Thurston
Designed by Andrew Steeves
Edited by Amanda Jernigan
Silver Ghost is a collaborative homage to the Atlantic salmon and its rivers. Holownia and Thurston have over the past several years explored, through the complimentary media of photography and literary prose, the intersection of the cultural and natural history of Salmo salar — a task these two Maritime artists are uniquely qualified to undertake.
The title evokes both the physical and spiritual nature of this most magnificent of game fish and its native rivers. It also refers to the medium of black and white photography used here to fix the fleeting images of this elusive species and its mercurial habitat. Finally, the title alludes to the looming fate of the Atlantic salmon if the current anthropogenic forces of extinction are not reversed.
Thaddeus Holownia has travelled to the many salmon rivers of eastern Canada, in all seasons, to capture their essential qualities. Employing his signature, large-format 7 × 17″ view camera, his images memorialize and celebrate the riparian habitat of the Atlantic salmon: its geology, forests, pools and runs, as well as its cultural artifacts. Among the rivers being featured are the Pinware in Labrador, Humber in Newfoundland, the Margaree in Cape Breton, the Miramichi, Upsalquich and Restigouche in New Brunswick, River Philip in Nova Scotia, the Grand Cascapedia in Gaspe, and the Penobscot in Maine.
Thurston’s extended essay will examine the elements of salmon rivers — of air, earth, and water — that combine to create the ecological conditions necessary for the nurturing of Atlantic.
