[Majik Imaje]

Hello, from 200 miles above the Arctic circle in a tiny whaling community of only 750 Inupiaq Eskimos, live the Oldest continually inhabited settlement or village in all of North AMERICA! Point Hope Alaska !

Life can accurately be traced back to over 3,000 years to this one spot of land.

We live from the ocean, currently as this present moment over 700 people are camped out 7 miles out on the Chukchi Sea in the Bering Strait of Upper Alaska

We sleep out side @ 50 below zero, with no tents for 2 months ! This is how we obtain our food !


Tuzroyluks crew, cruising for a bowhead whale!


A typical whaling camp miles out on the ocean ice pack, this is home for two months or longer, depending on conditions of the ice.

During the 1980's we noticed the Ice, was getting closer and closer to land, during the 1990's we we whaling from land as there was no ice.

But today, we have had the best ice in decades, for the last 4 years in a row ! Go Figure!

http://majikimaje.com/watching1.jpg

Hello, my name is David. I am an electrican originally from Boston, I was working in Alaska and I was sent to this tiny village for just 3 weeks, to wire two construction camps, when the job finished, i quit the company and stayed.

I had to melt tons of snow to obtain the necessary precious water, to mix chemicals and process this film and process these prints!

Come learn the Eskimo way, from the comfort of your home or offce,



I promise you sme spectacular images and "text" you will simply never believe !

Hundreds of people are involved in blazing a trail out to the ocean ice, with picks, axes, and every sort of tool imaginable to chop, smooth out the ocean ice so we can bring all the necessary equipment and supplies out to the edge of the ice.



All of this incredibly hard work, .. .. .. "just to eat"!




.. .. .. .. "and these people, never complain!"

[Richard530]

David,
Yes, they certainly are majik imajes!! I am in awe. Welcome from another newcomer!
Keep Shooting,
Richard

[j sotelo]

I wanted to see your images so I went to your website. Toooooo Muchhhhh stuff its hard to get around, you should make it more simple. I just looked at a couple of pictures and left the site. those couple of pictures I saw were very good.

[Majik Imaje]

Well I am just an electrican that was obsessed with photography, I have never had any classes at all.

I have been processing my own color in my own darkrooms since 1969, so I am extremly familiar with Color processing techniques. I have moved around too much. and thus have owned and built 17 color darkrooms. Here is a small portion of #15,

Web design I am terrible at, and it shows. but for your convienience I can offer you a sneak preview of a work in progress that is finally coming together.

HERE

But this is the digital age, ha ha! there is just no way, a digital camera could ever function @ 50 below zero mounted on a tripod for weeks/ months at a time. My camera(s) were encased in ICE!they always worked, except for one .

Never will I own or touch or possess that Brand Name agaiN ! it constantly failed but none of the other cameras ever failed! go figure. Out here on the ice, all the manufactures hype or advertising doesn't mean squat! Results are all that count!

My camera of choice ?? Mamiya RB 67 - that has been my creative tool since 1973
I also threw away my light meter back then also, I haven't used one since .

If you are fiddling about with meters and menu's and gadgets, you will never learn the ART of photography, Photography is all about using your eyes and 'seeing" and understanding what your looking at. Namely "light" Learn HOW to read light and you will never need a light meter! It is very simple technique I have been using for decades which presents me with a high degree of confidence. I Only create ONE IMAGE or exposure. I know what I want before I expose that frame of film, I know what the results are going to look like based on..........."experience" !

The photo of the little Eskimo girl was created out on the ocean ice @ 40 below zero, She is / was sitting on the seat of a snowmobile as I approached her. She was very familiar with seeing me on a daily basis. Kathy Rock Age 10. As I brought up the camera to compose and create this image, she smiled, I said NO! Please do not do that. I want you to "pretend" I am not even here, look right past me. I spent 1/2 hour with her, and only squeezed that shutter release ONCE.



The same is true for practically every image that I will post, This is the original and only copy. As it was processed using "snow" because I had no water to process this film.
When I purchase "paper" I do not buy one box of 100 sheets or 25 sheets. I will order 5 cases of paper ! thousands of sheets at a time, all processsed in 2 trays & washed in another. digital just can't provide the "soul' that film is capable of . That is evident when you look at certain images.

[stepheno]

That has got to be the best intro post I have ever seen welcome to Pixalo

[P-E]

What a welcome

[Majik Imaje]

Sleeping outside @ 50 below zero with no tents is not an easy task for this city boy.


But I fell in love, with these people, this land, the Arctic. Changing film was an excercise in pure torture, something as simple as change a roll of film, Agony, unheard of pain, it would take a long long time, for my fingers and hands to recover from that simple task. This was a day I will never forget, as this was the last frame on the roll of film, I screamed when I found out, time to change film, again!



The life of the Inupiaq people is hard work, just to get food! just to eat. We only take that which we need to eat! We waste nothing, even zip lock baggies are used over and over again, we wash them out, save them. they have so many uses at whaling time.



18 WHALING captains and their respective crews are spaced out 1/2 -3/4 a mile apart on the lead opening. 1/2 - 3/4 of a mile BACK is where the women do all the cooking in tents, The tents are for the women and the "boyer' The hunters are at the edge of the ice 24/7 for two months !



It is very easy to hallucinate out here on the ice. i was constantly falling over, See that ice on the other side of the lead? It is moving very quickly from right to left in this image. DO NOT WATCH THAT ICE MOVING. because if you do, at some point in time, that ice will STOP and you will experience the sensation of moving in the opposite direction. I would always fall over, much to the enjoyment and laughter of the hunters watching this dumb city boy.


Plenty of hot food, all day long, every day, fresh doughnuts, duck soup, caribou soup,
But when you eat hot food out here @ 50 below, your body gets lazy and after a while your going to start to become cold because your body cannot generate enough body heat to stay warm.

Eskimo Technology is time tested for thousands of years and it works !
50 below zero with a 40 mph wind brings that wind chill factor to close to 100 below zero. Eskimo's get just as cold as you or I would, but we have time tested tricks that work out here in the middle of frozen no where.
and you would never guess what we do to KEEP warm and STAY warm !



How do you suppose that over 700 people obtain delicious fresh drinking water way out here, 7 miles out from land ? We melt snow to wash dishes, and such, but how do you suppose we get all the delicious fresh drinking water, from all this frozen salt water Ice ??

Simple we take the salt out of the ice ! but how ?

[Boofers]

Welcome

[simpbow]

Hello & welcome

[Sonsey]

Hi Majik, it's good to have you at Pixalo!

[Majik Imaje]

Majik Imaje is / are the initials, .. .. .. of my four sons !

MarkAndrew, Jesse, Isaiah, Khristopher = M A J I K

Isaiah, MarkAndrew, Jesse, EVES = I M A J E



Lets go back, to the ocean ice. ! This is where it all happens,

The most spectacular lifestyle you have ever imagined, how do you think we get fresh drinking water way out here?



How do you think we stay warm enough to sleep outside @ 50 below zero with no tents ?

Are you cold ? see that hacksaw? Pick it up, slice long thin stips of Raw Frozen Caribou Meat. Swallow them whole, do not chew, now FILL YOUR STOMACH!
your stomach has to work very hard, to digest all that raw frozen meat or fish, this is "quaq' it will get you so warm and hot! At 30 below zero we are talking clothes off because we are TOO HOT!

when you eat like this, your body starts to generate body heat the likes of which you have never imagined. WARNING: do not attempt this and try and stay inside. you will end up suffering immensly.

These are time tested methods dating back thousands of years and they work!

How do you make fresh doughnuts way out here ?



Any doughnuts yet ?

How in the world do you get dough to "rise' way out here ?
The tents are warm, but drafty, so to get this dough to rise that woman will place the dough in a clean plastic bag, and place it on her back and put her Parky on, the body heat from her back will cause that dough to rise perfect !

[j sotelo]

well let me grab a coffee and go over this again... it seems to me you have very good stories and they go with the pictures..I like that. Very good majik, very good pictures especially since white is difficult to balance. welcome

[Majik Imaje]

Well I am / was Old school, film, - frozen film! This was a first for me, processing frozen film, I wasn't going to let that film warm up in the house, no way, too much sweat and I wasn't going to risk having anything such as condensation ruin this film so I put frozen film right into the process without defrosting it. Well I developed a method, of putting water in the tank at 101.5 for 30 seconds to warm up the thin film and then put the developer in at 1/2 degree above the correct processing temp and it all worked out very well, but to obtain archival film quality you must WASH film in running water for quite a long time, I had no running water, again I had to develop a new way to wash film and evidently it worked because 27 years later this film is still in pristine condition!

Gorgeous freee 11 x 14 color enlargements delivered down to the ice for everyone to keep. This made everyone v ery happpy, especially me ! because I knew what I was getting had great value.

I was trying to help them in any way possible to retain their RIGHTS to hunt and eat their food as they have done for the past 2,000 years or longer.

Point Hope used to have a population of over 10,000 Inupiaq Eskimos. Then the Yankee whalers and Portugese whaling companies arrived, and through disease and mass starvation 190 people survived.

The whales were all decimated and these people had no food, the walrus herds were wiped out for the valuable Ivory, The caribou were exhausted and none were left in the area, 190 people...

When I arrived in 1982 the population was up to 450

Today there are over 750 Inupiaq living in the village, others live in Anchorage or surrounding cites such as Fairbanks.

The culture is dying, and it must be preserved,



GOOGLE: Project Chariot and you will see first hand how the federal government was going to nuke Cape Thompson some 23 miles away from this village to make a deep water port.

they did not even inform these people as to their intent. !! !! !! !!

One man HOward Rock from Point Hope put a stop to the whole thing.

The government was kind enough to bury all the radio active waste in the middle of their hunting grounds, and all the elders are gone, all my closest friends died so young from cancer from the infected caribou.

tisk tisk tisk.. such sadness to the oldest people in North America..

This is point hope.. this is hoME !



That is all there is... of this tiny piece of land 23 miles out into the ocean on a tiny hook.

Tigara, in the olden times, now Tikigaq - Point Hope.

Our back yard is larger than most states and even some countries



The world famous Whale Bone Graveyard, there is only one, in the entire world.

Sigh, when the snow is melted and I walk in here, it is so devastating for me, to see the names of over 150 people that I knew oh so very well, like family, this is a very close friendly communtiy. I could never leave this paradise of the far North !