 
|
The development of commercially produced photographic paper
and small roll-film cameras allowed everyone to record their own vision of the Klondike
gold rush and the Yukon. Photographic supplies were readily available along the route to
the Klondike from photographic studios and even trading posts when, only a year before,
potatoes were a luxury. At least five Klondike photographers were amateurs who sold
photographs to subsidise their income and Ernest Keir and George Hicks were two of them. Both
Ernest Keir and George Hicks were Klondike stampeders who
subsidised their trip to the Yukon with photo sales. Mining, not photography, was their
main occupation, but photography may have been more lucrative. Both men kept diaries and
described daily activities that related to their photographs. George Hicks took stereo
pictures of the route to the Klondike and his little cabin near Dawson City. He left the
Yukon in 1899. Ernest Keir took photographs whenever he had the supplies to do so and left
the north in 1900.
Kodak camera (Dawson City Museum 1995.366.1)
© Government of
Yukon Heritage Branch 2001. All Rights Reserved |
|
|
