Warsaw, Poalnd

Spring

Late afternoon sun calling home all of the working people for a little supper and the promise of better days forward.

Join me on my personal website for much more current work and prints Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

In the heart of the desert near the Libyan, Algerian border. There is a city, called The City of Rock. It has the most unbelievable rocky structure that I have ever seen in my life. We heard about this place long ago from the Toureg people. The valley that the city is located in is called Maghidet and the Rock City itself is named Maghatghat. After approximately two hours from Alawinat village, I went with my mate Majed and four Toureg friends in a 4X4 car. We reached Maghatghat !! We could only pass through one way to the Rocky City, which was narrow. Around 10 clocks at night, we stopped to camp. Seeing was almost impossible when we turned the car headlights off. Until that time, we still had yet to see the surprise. I went to sleep early to discover the rocky city by early morning. One hour before sunrise, we woke up. We enjoyed the sunlight hitting Rock City, making it shine! I've never felt like this before!!

At night, the Toureg people asked us to never go far away from the camp and told us about some people that got lost in this Rocky City!!

Lack of resources about the rocky city ! only few people share photo of it on the internet !!

Lack of resources about the rocky city ! only few people share photo of it on the internet !!

www.superstock.com/resultsframe.asp write on search Maghidet .

© 2011 Mansour Ali Photography™ | No use allowed without my explicit permission.

Poznan, Poland

Winter

First snow of 2018 and I spent the morning wandering through my neighborhood of Jezyce chasing snow flurries and catching the winter atmosphere.

Join me on my personal website Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

Climb, lover climb 217.365

Warsaw, Poland

Spring

Join me on my personal website for much more current work and prints Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

Warsaw, Poland

Spring

This city is crazy alive, vibrant, sophisticated in its infancy and chaotic in its growth. There is a palpable energy here that is electric and abrasive, but fluid as it takes and gives and takes and gives. Warsaw is the metropolis of the now and the once Phoenix of then, risen and thriving.

Join me on my personal website for much more current work and prints Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

'08 shit dog.

Sometimes you just have to go old school. I can sit and write on paper endlessly. Unconscious journaling. I never knew there was a name for it.

A lovely evening of fireworks and candles in the snow. Candles lined the Kanmangafuchi abyss. Participants were able to write on a candle and place it somewhere along the trail, or in the field just before the entrance.

Poznan, Poland

Autumn

Join me on my personal website Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

FASHION DETS:

AiRHARE | @bunnyworldorder / @killocantlose

• Lani Set [Wearing Hoodie]

• AxH - Arima Set [Wearing Tote]

[ Tinted%20Dreams/89/177/4001 ]

DAZED x The Grand Event | @DazedOnllne

• Aaliyah Set | [ The%20Grand%20Event/239/133/49 ]

[high v.] | @secondlifehighv

• autograph marker | [ Fart/118/153/32 ]

[PREVIOUSLY AT SMOKEFEST]

* Marker comes with BOM autograph layers & an interactive script to write on a particular person.

MJN Cosmetics | @nev.faith

• Big Bang Lashes | [ tinyurl.com/MJNBigBang ]

Hala Gwardii 177.365

Warsaw, Poland

Winter

Join me on my personal website Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

"Dearest,

Last night I had the strangest dream, of a future where people wrote with machines, where pen and paper were all but forgotten"

--

"Hi

sup

I had a crazy dream

lot wat

There were no phones and people had to write on paper

wtf

ikr

gtg ttyl!"

--

Pen: Parker Duofold Maxima (1950s)

Ink: Parker Quink (1940s)

Phone: iPhone 6s

Warsaw, Poland

Warszawa, Ochota District

Spring

Just when I though it was safe to spring....winter returns.

Wet...wet...wet...but still pretty.

Join me on my personal website for much more current work and prints Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

Gym 173.365

Warsaw, Poland

Winter

Bitter cold start but the sun returned to warm it all up a bit. Lovely day spent getting to know my new city...and I am beyond thrilled to do so. Really loving the vibe here in Warsaw. Come visit, if you haven't...or come back again if you have! :)

Join me on my personal website Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

unseen 183.365

Warsaw, Poland

Winter

So much passing by, once in a while I catch something that sticks.

Join me on my personal website Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

Warsaw, Poland

Autumn

Quick trip to the capitol to secure an apartment. Mission accomplished and now we move! Small exploration of our new home and loved every step.

Join me on my personal website Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

The Burger Joint at Le Parker Meridien Hotel, New York City

Poznan, Poland

Winter

First snow of 2018 and I spent the morning wandering through my neighborhood of Jezyce chasing snow flurries and catching the winter atmosphere.

Join me on my personal website Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

Warsaw, Poland

Winter

Recently, my fiancee and I moved to Warsaw from Poznan and I am currently learning how to navigate this city and enjoying every step along he way. Here are a fw little life vignettes that caught my eye along the way. If you have questions, please ask> i am happy to answer when I can anything about my life here in Poland. Thank you for watching!

Canon Gear courtesy of my partners at Digital24.pl. Thank you!

Join me on my personal website Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

This is an image of my favourite writing instruments up to date, which I use with my Moleskine notebooks.

I was intrigued with the contrast showing on the Rotring Core rollerball pen on the bottom left side so I composed the whole image around it.

=====

Montblanc Meisterstück No. 149 fountain pen:

I think this is the largest type of the Meisterstück series - I bought it at a duty free shop at Amsterdam Airport in 1989 on the way home from a business trip. I wanted a fountain pen that I knew I could use throughout my life.

Tombow XPA ballpoint pen:

I got this pen this summer. I wanted a compact and tough, reliable ballpoint pen, and one without a cap, so that I could start taking notes easily even when I'm standing up, like during an outdoor field trip or a speech at a cocktail party - this one fits all those conditions. It's a pen that's designed for outdoor, heavy duty use, and its ink (or the tube of the refill) is supposed to be so special that you can even write on a damp piece of paper, though I haven't tried that yet. You pull the back end of the pen towards you and the pen point comes out rather than knocking the end.

Faber-Castell Grip 2001 pencil:

Currently my most favorite writing instrument.

Rotring Core rollerball pen with Signo 0.38 black ink:

Comfortable to use. (In my opinion, the Signo 0.38 is the best gel ink for Moleskine notebooks.)

Second biggest cliche on Flickr.

Did I mention I love TWLOHA?

exclusive pose Available here

Lyrics: Hot for teacher

Oh, wow, man, I said

Wait a second, man

What do you think the teacher's gonna look like this year?

Fuck man!

Uh!

Oh yeah!

T-T-teacher stop that screamin'

Teacher don't you see?

Don't wanna be no uptown fool

Maybe I should go to hell

But I am doing well

Teacher needs to see me after school

I think of all the education that I've missed

But then my homework was never quite like this!

Ow! Got it bad,

Got it bad,

Got it bad,

I'm hot for teacher!

I've got it bad, so bad

I'm hot for teacher!

Hey, I heard you missed us

We're back! (Hey!)

I brought my pencil

Give me something to write on, man!

Whoa

Uh!

Ooo-oo-ooo

I heard about your lessons

but lessons are so cold

I didn't know about this school

Little girl from Cherry Lawn

How can you be so bold?

How did you know that golden rule?

I think of all the education that I've missed

But then my homework was never quite like this!

Whoa! Got it bad,

Got it bad,

Got it bad,

I'm hot for teacher!

I've got it bad, so bad

I'm hot for teacher!

Whoa!

(Guitar Solo)

Oh man, I think the clock is slow

(What are you doin' this weekend?) I don't feel tardy

Class dismissed!

Ooh-yeah!

I've got it bad,

Got it bad,

Got it bad,

I'm hot for teacher!

Whoa!

Oh! Ooh, yes I'm hot

Wow!

Whoa!

Oh! Ooh, yes I'm hot

Wow!

Oh my God!

Woo!

In the bathroom in Faces they have painted the walks black so you can write on them with chalk! Cool. P1190442

Polaroid Impulse

Polaroid 600 write-on film

The lake before you originally stretched from Division to Grand. First named Mirror Lake, this shallow water feature (between two and five feet deep depending on the season), has been known over the years as Manito Pond, Mirror Pond, and the Duck Pond. In the past, Mirror Pond was more than just an attractive piece of landscape. At the corner of 18th and Division there used to be a canoe rental. There was a dance hall across the lake on the opposite shore. People enjoyed ice skating and hockey in the winter on this lake.

In an advertisement booklet enticing people to move and buy property in this area, the Spokane Washington Improvement Company boasted "Winter Sport on Manito Lake - Healthy Invigorating exercise and perfectly safe as the lake is but two and one half feet deep," with a photograph of ice skaters on the lake.

So, where does the name Manito come from? Manitou is an Algonquian word meaning "great spirit" and may be spelled Manitou or Manito. The Algonquian religion tells of a supernatural power that permeates the earth, and is manifest in everything around us. Most famously it appears in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's narrative poem, "Hiawatha," in the section called "The Song of Hiawatha." Longfellow writes,

On the Mountains of the Prairie,

On the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry,

Gitche Manito, the mighty,

He the Master of Life, descending,

The poem goes on to relate that Gitche Manito, the Great Uniter, called together all of the Native American tribes to one place.

Gamla Bíó is a handsome eclectic style cinema building on Ingólfsstræti in Reykjavík city centre.

Elías Þórsson writes on grapevine.is: “One of Reykjavík’s most exquisite buildings, Gamla bíó (the Old Cinema), is one of the those rare spots that makes you forget you live in a village at the end of the world. Instead, when you enter it, you feel like you live in a cultivated city somewhere far away. It was built by the Danish entrepreneur Peter Petersen in 1926, who in a very colonial-overlord sort of way, named it Reykjavíkur Biograftheater, and built an apartment for himself on the top floor. The first movie to be screened there was the 1925 epic, ‘Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ,’ which stars Ramon Novarro (who was murdered by two male prostitutes in 1968). In 1980, the old hall ceased being a cinema and came to house the Icelandic Opera. Now, with opera performances having moved to Harpa, it hosts concerts and conferences, and Petersen’s apartment has been turned into the rooftop terrace bar, Petersen Svítan.”

lichen everywhere! My grandmother and her siblings used the slate from these pastures to write on when they were in elementary school.

"I will not shoot into yon sun without better reason... I will not go to 150mm unless I desire headlight flare... I..." Ah, but you get the idea... {hanging head in shame} lol I still had to tell on myself and share it, just the same (one of the last of the faux pas from this batch that I'll complain about, I promise... lol). Yes, it took a LOT of Rx, including the removal of most (no, not all... there's still evidence of reconstructive scarring... lol) of the headlight flare, a new sky layer that still had to be toned down to look acceptable with the lighting, and a bit of color work. Still doesn't look quite "right" but I have been guilty of fiddling too much on occasion... Proper lighting angles would have made all the difference in the world, especially considering how nice a day this was... Chalk one up for poor planning! ;-)

Thanks to Duane Rapp for passing along the link to a free desktop utility, as well: photoephemeris.com/ . I shall do the same and intend to make good use of this neat lil program for planning lighting angles (or even sun/moon alignments on any given day). Much obliged!

Each day it gets colder, darker, and harder.

I love the cold, especially when you can write on the windows from the warmth of your breath.

I love the dark, especially when i'm in the dungeon of a room that i live in.

I hate when things keep getting harder, especially days like this.

breathe me.

I'm tired.

I have homework.

and biggest i just want tomorrow to begin and today be far in the past.

Warsaw, Poland

Winter

Join me on my personal website Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

Poznan, Poland

Winter

Join me on my personal website Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

Poznan, Poland

Winter

Heavy, wet snow filled the city the other night and I decided that it would be a good idea to explore. Fun, but I was soaked Not nearly cold enough for it to be anything close to our normal winter.

Join me on my personal website Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

Constellations Quartet 1985 – Dadamaino (1930-2004)

“After cutting away canvases until hardly anything was left but the frame (1958), I began to rationalize my approach, creating an order, although one in keeping with the nature of the works […]. Arriving at a certain point, after solving the problem of chromoreliefs, later I reduced the monochrome reliefs and monomodulars (1974), I asked myself of the geometric and/or modular formation were not a screen behind which to overcome fear and have courage. I took up paper and colours and drew, sometimes stiffening and turning away from the problem […] I kept on working with more determination until I had stripped the research down to nothing but lines […]. Ten, fed up with always taking measurements and making lines […] I started to write, on paper first, and then on canvas. It was a sort of writing of the mind, of my mind: makeup of lines that were sometimes dense and heavily marked, at others imperceptible and skipping, sometimes long and sometimes very short, without any planning in advance, but sensitive of the pressure of the hand that was set free, running and tracing without premeditation. But it is clear that if the hand is guided by the mind, in this case it was guided by the unconsciousness.”

(Dadamaino, “L’inconscio rationale, 1976)

Warsaw, Poland

Spotted while exploring the neighborhood and vicinity of my new home. Really digging the city vibe and life of Warsaw. Looking for soul.

Join me on my personal website Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

Rush hour 152.365

Warsaw, Poland

Winter

First week of having relocated form Poznan to Warsaw. Every little thing is suddenly brand new again.

Join me on my personal website Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

One day You will take my heart completely and make it more fiery than a dragon.

Your eyelashes will write on my heart the poem that could never come from the pen of a poet.

~Rumi

The Challenge Factory winner - FRUIT challenge.

Poznan, Poland

Autumn

Canon EOS 6D II 50mm 1.2f

Join me on my personal website Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

Poznan, Poland

Winter

Join me on my personal website Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

Warsaw, Poland

Autumn

Quick trip to the capitol to secure an apartment. Mission accomplished and now we move! Small exploration of our new home and loved every step.

Join me on my personal website Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

Cresent 141.365

Poznan, Poland

Winter

The edge of Okrąglak captured walking home last night just as it started to snow. If you ever visit Poznan, you cannot miss this building as it sits dead center of the city, is round in shape and is glaringly different from all of the older buildings surrounding it. Plus, if you drop in and get inside, it has the craziest spiral staircase around. Worth a shot for sure!

Join me on my personal website Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

Mattia Preti (Taverna, February 25, 1613 - Valletta, January 3, 1699) - Convito di Baldassarre (1668) - oil on canvas 204 x 307 cm - National Museum of Capodimonte, Naples

Pittore italiano, tra i principali esponenti della stagione matura del barocco italiano e, più in particolare, del caravaggismo e della pittura napoletana del Seicento.

Nel mezzo di un fastoso banchetto organizzato da Baldassarre – re babilonese vissuto nel VI secolo, figlio di Nabucodonosor -, durante il quale mille dignitari bevono dai grandi vasi d’oro rubati dal padre al tempio di Gerusalemme, compare una mano misteriosa che scrive in alto su una parete della sala parole incomprensibili «Mane, Thecel, Phares», (tradotte da Preti in «Conto, Peso, Divisione»): soltanto il profeta Daniele si mostra capace d’ìnterpretarle come presagi della prossima fine di Baldassarre e della divisione del regno babilonese fra Medi e Persiani (Daniele 5,1-30)

Italian painter, one of the main exponents of the mature season of Italian Baroque and, more particularly, of Caravaggism and Neapolitan painting of the seventeenth century.

In the middle of a sumptuous banquet organized by Balthazar - Babylonian king who lived in the 6th century, son of Nebuchadnezzar -, during which a thousand dignitaries drink from the great golden vases stolen by his father from the temple of Jerusalem, a mysterious hand appears and writes on the wall of the room incomprehensible words "Mane, Thecel, Phares", (translated by Preti as "Conto, Peso, Divisione"): only the prophet Daniel shows himself capable of interpreting them as omens of the imminent end of Balthazar and of the division of the Babylonian kingdom between the Medes and the Persians (Daniel 5,1-30).

My tattoo represents to me all the words I have written and all the words I will write on my adventures. All I want is ink stained hands. The beads belonged to my great grand mother.

Unravelling - Living in My World ~ Week Two

VIEW LARGE ON BLACK

instead of looking at life as a series of goodbyes, i need to get back to that long-held belief of mine that it is a book with enough blank pages for me to write on about new beginnings. for a long while i seem to have lost that ability to see through and beyond the maze and the haze. i hope you won't fault me for that. i am stepping out once again, to say "hello, world!", to try seeing it as i used to see it - filled with beauty and endless possibilities. the just gone-by days will not be forgotten, no matter how tearful they might have been. they have now become a part of who i am. and who i am is someone who has been blessed with your friendships. it has been such an invigorating feeling to realize that you all understood and that even in my arrested moments, so many of you were always there, ready to reach out in case i needed a comforting hand. for that i shall remain your ever grateful friend. and i don't use the word "friend" lightly - never did, never will.

i have also decided to do 52 weeks of "self" expression, this being the first. i believe that a lot of creative distractions are just what the "doctor" has ordered :)

Midtown Forest 176.365

Warsaw, Poland

Winter

Join me on my personal website Erik Witsoe or contact me at ewitsoe@gmail.com for cooperation. Thank you.

I also write on Medium and you can find me here: Erik Witsoe.

If you like my work, you can support me by giving me a like on my Facebook Erik Witsoe Photography and 500px and Twitter Instagram and also Google + Thank you for stopping by!

I don't remember the name of this club in Wudaokou, but I know that it served free beer on Monday (the Chinese Tsing Dao), even though I don't like beer...

You could also write on the wall, and we also left our track!

Project 365, 2022 Edition: Day 117/365

At the end of a very long day of writing, when I almost forgot to take a photo for the project, this is what came to mind. Windows handwriting recognition allows me to write on a graphics tablet, which is closer to the experience of writing with pen and paper. For creative rough drafts, I prefer this to using a keyboard.

Thank you to everyone who visits, faves, and comments.

Remembering Selma Huxley Barkham: friend, historian and geographer.

Selma was an extremely loving and talented woman and through her research added a great deal to Canadian History. You can read more about her amazingly interesting life here in a tribute to her by her daughter, Oriana Barkham Huxley and granddaughter, Serena Barkham:

ON INTERNATIONAL WOMEN"S DAY & HER BIRTHDAY:

Remembering Selma Huxley Barkham: historian and geographer specialising in Basque connections to Canada

by Oriana and Serena Barkham

The yellow tent was up and straining on its guy ropes in the Labrador wind. The black flies were viciously biting. Rain poured down. They were cold and soaked to the bone. But Selma Huxley Barkham, with her two youngest children in tow, was ecstatically happy. She had found what she was looking for: eroded pieces of red roofing tiles scattered on the shores, in vegetable patches and in gardens.

The locals called the red tile ‘red rock’, and some, as children, had used it to write on school slates. But Selma knew that the tiles had been brought in ships across the Atlantic from the Basque Country in the sixteenth century. On the way over to Terranova, the New Found Land, the tiles were used as ballast. On the return journey, the ships hulls were filled with barrels of whale oil, and sometimes with dried or green salted cod. The tiles were left in Terranova where they were used to construct roofs over shelters, and the ovens where whalers boiled down whale oil.

Selma now knew her excursion to Labrador in the summer of 1977, funded by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, to identify Basque whaling sites in the 1500s & 1600s, was a success. In each port she had so painstakingly identified as having been used by the Basques in the 16th and 17th centuries, she had found tiles. Years of interest, meticulous research, and gruelling hours in archives had brought her here.

Selma’s first awareness of the Basques was as a child in the 1930s, when she and her brother Thomas were given a cesta punta, a curved wicker-work basket worn on the hand, to play the world’s fastest game, Jai Alai. Rodney Gallop, a friend of her parents and author of a still seminal book on the Basques, had brought the cesta puntas to their home in Bosham Hoe, Sussex. Selma also knew her father Michael Huxley, founder of Geographical magazine, had studied Spanish in San Sebastian/ Donosti. And her family were aware of the Basque children brought over to Southampton, some ending up in Hayling Island near Selma’s family home, fleeing the violent Spanish Civil War in 1937.

As a young adult in the early 1950s, while working as the librarian of the Arctic Institute of North America at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, Selma fell in love with Brian Barkham. An architect from Bartlett’s, University College London, he was at McGill doing an MA in French Canadian rural architecture. His undergraduate thesis had been on rural architecture in the Basque Country. Brian took Selma to Euskadi/The Basque Country for a late honeymoon in 1956, introducing her to friends there. Among these was the priest Don Pio de Montoya who told her about the Basque fishermen who had been going to what is now Canada for centuries. When Brian died tragically at the age of 35, leaving Selma a widow with four children between the ages of two and nine, she started working for Historic Sites Canada. One of the projects she worked on was the French Fort in Cape Breton, Louisbourg. Some of the documents from the 18th century related to a French Basque merchant’s house, Lartigue.

Selma’s health suffered during Canada’s six-month-long winters. She developed recurring pneumonia. In 1969, the idea of searching for more on the Basque seafarers’ connections to Canada, led her to move to Mexico. It was cheap, warm, and there she, and her children, could learn Spanish, which was essential if she were to carry out research on documents in Spain. To survive, Selma found herself a job teaching English at The British Council School in Guadalajara. After three years in Mexico, she took her four children by boat across the Atlantic, on a half cargo, half passenger ship – the Covadonga – to Bilbao. There was a short stop in Miami to avoid the worst of a hurricane. Arriving in the Basque Country, Selma had no income, no job and four children, but she was determined to try and find out about these Basques who had been to Canada.

From Mexico, she had booked the family into a hostel in the older quarter of Bilbao, as it was around the corner from the Municipal Archives, where she had hoped to start her research immediately. Here she came across an archivist, who was, at first, rather unhelpful and disdainful of ‘this British woman’. He told her that if she hoped to do any research on early documents, she would have to study palaeography with him at the University of Deusto, where he taught History. Most native Spanish speakers could not, and cannot, read the very convoluted Spanish handwriting of the 16th century with all its abbreviations as well as difficult loops, let alone a female foreigner. While she took the course in 1972, she started working once again as an English teacher, to be able to scrape by, and at the same time she started her own research at the Archives.

Selma was told that most archives along the Spanish Basque coast had been burnt during the Napoleonic wars, but perhaps she should try the archives of the Consulado del Mar in Burgos? There, a kind, very helpful archivist, Floriano Ballesteros, introduced her to the 16th century insurance policies stored there. He also recommended she try looking at the copies of notarial documents from the coast that were held in the Oñati archives.

For 400 years, legajos (books of notarial documents) from towns across the province of Gipuzkoa, had lain in the attics of the 1543 University of Oñati. Don José María Aguirrebalzátegui, one of the village priests, had rescued many over the years, filling three huge university rooms with legajos.

When Selma arrived, Don José María showed her the three rooms of books of notarial documents. There was no index, but he gave her the key to the archives. In 1973, she moved, along with her four children, to Oñati, because she could see that there were years of work for her there. For hours on end, often till the early hours of the morning, Selma sat turning over each page in these thousands of ancient books. During their school holidays, she also sat her four children down around her. She taught them to recognise some of the formulae used in these 16th century documents, as well as the key word ‘Terra nova’. Most of the documents were to do with local problems, neighbours arguing over property boundaries, for example. But a few, mixed in amongst so many others, were to do with The New Found Land/‘Terra nova’.

Because of these ‘Terra nova’ documents, and a desperate need to have something to live on, she persuaded the Public Archives of Canada to give her contracts to collect and microfilm documents referring to Canada, found in archives throughout the Iberian Peninsula. Being extremely honest, she and her children only lived on a six-month contract every year, because she felt this gave her the freedom to devote the other six months to her own research.

Though based in Oñati, Selma spent months in Burgos, where Floriano let her and her four children, duly kitted out with white gloves, sift through the Consulado’s insurance policies, again looking for the word ‘Terra Nova’. She also often visited the archives in the Real Chancilleria de Valladolid, the Archives in Simancas, the General Archive of the Indies in Seville, the archives in Oviedo, Setubal, Lisbon, Aveiro & Oporto in Portugal, and parish archives in many other Basque towns.

The information she gathered from these different archives provided Selma with specific information on individuals, their families, their homes, their movements, their ships, their voyages, their towns all along the Spanish Basque coast in the 16th and early 17th centuries. In parish records, Selma found records of births, deaths, marriages and baptisms. Through insurance policies in Burgos, she found insurances of ships and their voyages. Through notarial archives, she found contracts, wills (some of which were written in ‘Terra nova’), powers of attorney, loans, donations, policies, proceedings, agreements. Through lengthy lawsuits in other archives, she learnt among other things of disagreements between crew members, claims made by widows of fishermen who had died in ‘Terra nova’, ships that had sunk on the other side of the Atlantic.

Over the years, Selma meticulously made notes and collated the information she so painstakingly compiled, including information about the ships themselves, where they were from, when they were built, who owned them, who kitted them out, who insured them. About the ships’ voyages: many were used not only for the ‘Terra nova’ run, but also for the ‘Carrera de las Indias’ i.e. Mexico & the Caribbean. And some of the ships ended their days in Newfoundland, in the Indies, off Iceland or our UK shores having been embargoed by the King of Spain – Felipe II – for the Armada. Selma also pieced together the names of many of the sailors, whalers, shipowners, their wives, their relationships, where they lived and where they died.

Fascinated, Selma visited Basque towns, caseríos (Basque farmhouses), churches, ports, shipyards, which she found mentioned in her documents. She met local clergy, townsfolk and dignitaries, learning more about these towns, some of which still had fishermen going to the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. She became involved in conservation, saving or trying to save, town centres and ancient caseríos from destruction. She was asked to give talks to locals interested in their history, to schools, and universities. She met archivists, linguists, anthropologists, historians, archaeologists, shipbuilders, cartographers, topographers, fishermen, whalers, academics, and other experts.

Selma had noticed that every now and then the scribes writing in the 1500s would insert a word in Basque in the Spanish text. She concluded that some of the scribes would be simultaneously translating what fishermen were telling them in Basque.

The 1970s was not an easy time to live in the Basque country. The Basques, their language, their culture, were being viciously repressed by General Franco’s regime. Children at school were physically punished if they spoke Basque. Selma and her family knew many people, from boys of 17 to mothers of 50, who, simply for speaking their language or putting up a Basque flag, were taken before dawn from their homes and families by violent civil guards with Alsatians, imprisoned, tortured, disappeared. The Barkhams sometimes stood in silence alongside their Basque friends in Oñati, who held pictures of the disappeared. They too celebrated with a bottle of Codorniú the end of the dictatorship in 1975.

Selma began to write articles on her discoveries. Given the breadth of her research, she wrote on various topics, women’s lives in the 16th century, merchants, trade routes, corsair activity, early Labrador ports, toponymy, etc. In this magazine, in 1973, she wrote ‘Mercantile community in inland Burgos.’ v. 42, no. 2, November, p. 106-113. In 1977, ‘First will and testament on the Labrador coast.’ v. 49, no. 9, June, p. 574-581.

Amongst the thousands of documents in different archives which Selma analysed, besides finding the word ‘Terra nova’, she also sometimes found names of specific ports, such as Samadet, Los Hornos, Chateo, Buttus.

If you look nowadays at a map of the Canadian Atlantic Coast, you will not find these place names anywhere. ‘Terra nova’ simply means the New Found Land, and could refer to anywhere at that time along that North Atlantic seaboard.

So, Selma went to libraries and archives in Spain, France, Portugal, the Vatican and England, to look for early 16th century maps & rutters (mariners’ handbooks of written sailing directions). Through this cartographic research, she managed to piece together such an accurate picture of where these Basque fishing and whaling ports in the New Found Land were, that she was able to pin point them on present day maps of Nova Scotia, Québec, Newfoundland and Labrador. She gave talks on her findings from this research on Basque topographical names in ‘Terra Nova’ at various international conferences.

Selma poured over UK admiralty charts, looking at the depths of ports, searching for prevailing winds. She located on maps the places she thought ships had foundered, two of which were in

Red Bay. She then gave a talk in January 1977 to the underwater archaeological society in Ottawa, where she had maps with Xs marking where exactly she thought the shipwrecks she had found in documents had sunk. It was there that Parks Canada archaeologists got all excited and asked her not to let anyone else know lest the wrecks be located by ‘treasure divers’. Though the Public Archives of Canada, for whom Selma worked, had already passed on information about her finds in Spain and on the Atlantic seaboard of Canada to Parks Canada.

The year after Selma’s 1977 excursion to Labrador, Parks Canada sent a team of underwater archaeologists up to Labrador to look at the places Selma had told them several ships had sunk, in Chateau Bay, in Red Bay, among others. Her research was so exact that a diver found one of her wrecks the first day of diving in Red Bay. This one was not as deep as the Chateau Bay ones, and the town itself was accessible by road, which is probably why they focussed on Red Bay.

The discovery of the ship San Juan was announced to the press at the Public Archives of Canada in Ottawa for whom Selma worked, and not at Parks Canada for whom the divers worked, because it was Selma’s pioneering historical-geographical research which had found the wreck.

Selma’s extensive research also shed light on trade routes, fishermen turned corsairs in times of war, contact between the Malouins, Bristolmen, Irish, Icelanders, and with First Nations in Canada. She discovered what the Basque fishermen and whalers took aboard ship; that several generations of fishermen and often people from the same villages all went over together on the same ships; learnt about accidental overwinterings, the seasons they went over, the renting of their shallops which they often left in Labrador for the following year, hidden so they would be less likely to be borrowed by members of the First Nations. She was entranced and thrilled when she found sketches of ships in the documents, or a will that had been folded over so that when it arrived back at the notary’s office in Euskadi/The Basque Country, after several months at sea, the part on the outside was dark where it had rubbed against something on the long trip home. 500 years later, this will written in the New Found Land was found sewn into the legajo, with clear signs of being folded, the dark outer square obvious.

Selma’s research was groundbreaking in many ways. For it, she received the gold medal from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (1980), the first woman to receive this medal. Then followed the Order of Canada (1981), the Lagun Onari (2014) from the Basque Government, the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador (2015), various honorary doctorates, and the International Prize of the Sociedad Geográfica Española (2018), amongst other honours, for her exceptional work, ‘a classic piece of historical-geographical research’.

Though the 16th & 17th centuries became alive for Selma because of her research, the present was also equally interesting to her. She started exchanges of Basques with Newfoundlanders, of Basques and Mi’kmaqs, groups of them visiting each other’s countries. She worked up and down the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland with locals talking about their villages’ links with the Basques, about 16th century wills written on their shores, about contact between Basques and Inuit and Montagnais, and other First Nations, about shipwrecks. She helped them put up historical plaques in their villages. She organised conferences for 11 years on the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland, bringing in experts in different fields to talk about local history, ecology, geology and cartography. She got in touch with the James Cook society, as James Cook had charted the Straits of Belle Isle, and brought speakers over. She keenly felt her historical research could help the local economy. And it has. Historical tourism now brings many visitors to Newfoundland and Labrador because of her work. One of the sites Selma found all those years ago, which she first explored on that expedition in 1977, is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Selma Huxley Barkham’s work has been picked up and used by archivists, historians, cartographers, topographers, anthropologists, archaeologists, conservators, museographers, linguists, and more. Albaola is re-building a ship which she found by piecing together information from documents from three different archives, and by working in different countries on early maps to find where the port of Buttus was, and then by looking at depths and prevailing winds to find where it had sunk. Selma’s work, her 50 publications in Spanish, English, French and Portuguese, her many lectures, and her generous sharing of her research, has led to a wide variety of further work in her field. Unfortunately, she has not always been duly credited.

Selma’s work is seminal. As the citation for the gold medal of the Canadian Geographical Society states: ‘This medal is an occasional award intended to recognise a particular achievement in the field of geography, also to recognise a significant national or international event. In this case, the Society felt Barkham deserved this recognition on both counts.