Tin Can Hill

Photography on cotton rag paper.

30x23.50x1"

Limited edition 1 of 10.

When I walked Tin Can Hill I was simply following the dogs — it's where Yellowknife residents go, a familiar path above Old Town overlooking the bay. What stopped me that morning was the hoar frost. It had transformed everything: the scattered remnants of the hill's past, the low shrubs, the bare branches — all of it coated in white crystal, the scene flattened into soft, muted tones by the winter light.
I learned later that Tin Can Hill took its name from Yellowknife's early residents, who used it as a dumping ground for whatever they no longer needed. The north has a way of absorbing those traces — folding human history back into the landscape until the two become indistinguishable. The hoar frost does the same thing, briefly. It makes everything equal, everything beautiful, everything temporary.

Part of my Life in the Knife series, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.