John Eide

By the mid-1970s, I realized my work was becoming a little too loose and I needed to tighten up my process. So I packed the 4x5 and hundreds of sheets of film in my Volkswagen Squareback and drove to the Newfoundland ferry. On the trip across the Cabot Strait from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland I ask a couple of young Newfoundlanders where all the tourists went. I marked these spots on my map and then avoided those places because I wanted to go where the tourist didn’t go. I wanted to find the real Newfoundland.

I found Newfoundland to be what I imagined Maine was like 20 years earlier. I found the landscape harsh, but yet beautiful. I found myself in towns inhabited by women of all ages, young children and old men. The waters had been fished out. All the men of working age were building roads in other parts of the province or on mainland Canada.

I photographed there in the summers of 1975 and 1976.