Cranbrook photographer Brian Clarkson has taken more than a million photos throughout his 58-year career, but he still remembers exactly what his favourites are.
He's travelled around the world taking pictures of interesting places and people, but a few photos stand out to him.
"I can count them on the fingers of one hand," he said.
Clarkson is a familiar face around town, having photographed local events and weddings. He ran a local photography business for decades, and worked as a photojournalist for a variety of news outlets across Canada.
He presented some of his iconic photographs and the stories behind his work at Key City Theatre on Nov. 15, including his top five favourite photographs ever taken. The top five were auctioned off, raising over $6,500 for a stand-alone hospice house in Cranbrook. Clarkson has been passionately devoted to end-of-life care in recent years.
While Clarkson has a diverse photo repertoire, it's the people that he's really passionate about. He enjoys connecting with them and bringing their stories to life. One of his favourites is a photo of six children collecting fish from the rice paddies in Cambodia in 2002. They were so thrilled that Clarkson was going to take their picture that they started a playful fight.
"When I came along with the camera, they were excited cause somebody was going to take their picture and one punched one, and it broke out into this free-for-all and I took a couple of pictures for it," he said.
As Clarkson began to walk away, the boys yelled over at him. When he turned around, he saw they were standing together holding hands. He snapped a photo.
Decades later, the raw authenticity and youthful spirit of the boys still shines through the photograph, capturing the community spirit and strong bond of the Cambodian people.
There was a wonderful cross-pollination of cultures on his journey to Cambodia. The locals taught Clarkson about the intricacies of rice paddy farming, including a local project aimed at increasing crop yields. He met a number of wonderfully generous people there who showed him warm hospitality and friendship.
The Cambodians learned just as much about the world through him as he did from them. The locals were fascinated by his camera and profession, and were eager to learn about him.
On his travels Clarkson was struck by a number of unusual serendipitous encounters. In Cambodia, he became acquainted with a man from Saint Paul, Minnesota and the two quickly realized that their sons both played hockey and sourced equipment from exact same store.
He met a man from Jaffray on a trip photographing the Cambodian silk-making industry, and they discovered Clarkson had actually taken his passport photograph not long before.
"The world is full of friends we haven't met yet," Clarkson remarked.
Clarkson's all-time favourite photo was taken in Terra Cotta, Ontario in 1969. He had just started a job at a camera store and on his days off he would explore the area in his car. On a pleasant fall day in October, he found himself at a farm and he attempted to get a photo of a man driving a horse-drawn surrey down a dirt road. The man moved too quickly and he ended up missing the shot, but he did manage to get a nice landscape picture of some horses grazing in a pasture.
Later, when the man looped back around in the surrey, Clarkson stopped to ask directions to Orangeville. The two talked briefly before going their separate ways.
Clarkson had that photo developed a year later, while he was working as a photojournalist for the Brampton Times, only to discover that the farm belonged to his boss and that his boss was the man in the surrey.
"He said he often wondered what became of me," Clarkson recalled.
Originally from Nelson, Clarkson had a keen interest in photographs right from the time he was a child.
"I was always sensitive to pictures. Whenever I picked up a book or a magazine, I'd always go to where the pictures were," he said.
In school, he joined a photography club that his gym teacher started, and the group turned one of the broom closets into a dark room. From that moment onward, he was hooked.
"I was just struck. It was like a bolt of lightening. Just the power of it, the fact that I had created these images. It was stunning," he said.
"That was the start."
When he was a teenager, he began working as a photographer for the Nelson Daily News. He hadn't been working there long, when the Canadian Press requested a photo and story from him about a former opal miner named Prosper Ralston, who was living in the basement suite of an old hotel in Nelson.
Clarkson learned that Ralston was born and raised in Canada, but had spent most of his life mining in northern Australia. He was incredibly musically gifted and was a skilled harpist. He had lived a prosperous life with his family, but an addiction led him lose everything, leaving him with nothing but the clothes on his back and one of his harps.
In 1967, Clarkson photographed the man at the very end of his life in his dimly lit apartment, playing his beloved harp. Tears streamed down Ralston's face as he gazed into space, reflecting on what he'd lost.
The photograph left a permanent imprint on Clarkson.
"It brought back a lot of emotion. What if?" said Clarkson.
The final two photographs from Clarkson's 'top five' were both taken on a trip to Haiti. One depicts a sick child being treated by a doctor at a hospital. The photo is a close-up of the doctor's hand gently caressing the child's face. Clarkson said he was struck by the "care and sensitivity" of the doctor and the contrast between the youngster's smooth skin the physician's rough and weathered hand.
The other was taken in the Jalousie neighbourhood of Port-au-Prince. The area is famous for its brightly coloured buildings, which hide blemishes and imperfections, like its lack of electricity and running water, and its non-existent sewer system. The government spent $1.4 million U.S repainting these buildings in 2013, trying to make them look more appealing.
As Clarkson snapped a photo of the cheery looking buildings, he came to learn that the project was quite controversial with the locals, sourly referred to as the "the botox treatment." It was criticized heavily for its attempts to hide the problems of the community behind a coat of bright paint.
Clarkson found that there was terrible poverty in Haiti . He worked alongside doctors, taking photos as they helped treat local people stricken by malaria and infections. He and a group of volunteers spent time clearing a rural field, just so an air ambulance could land and transport a woman with abdominal issues to a larger hospital. The work was rewarding nevertheless, providing an essential service for people that would normally have been out of reach.
Clarkson's exhibit "Bookends" is on display at the Key City Theatre until Dec. 20.
