Peter Pitseolak, a photographer, artist, and writer was born on Nottingham Island, Nunavut on Nov 1902 and died at Cape Dorset, Nunavut on 30 Sept 1973. A camp leader, he recognized early that traditional Inuit life was disappearing and strove to record its passing, writing diaries, notes and manuscripts, drawing Inuit customs and legends, and photographing the life around him. He took his first photograph in the 1930s for a white man who was afraid to approach a polar bear; and in the early 1940s, while living in Cape Dorset working for fur traders, he acquired a camera from a Catholic missionary. With help from his wife Aggeok, he developed his first pictures in a hunting igloo, using a 3-battery flashlight covered with red cloth as a safelight.

He photographed over a 20-year period, and after his death more than 1500 negatives, images increasingly valued as an insider's record of the final moments of Inuit camp life, were purchased from his widow for the National Museums of Canada. A fine artist as well, he is credited with Cape Dorset's earliest contemporary works on paper: watercolour drawings executed in 1939 for John N.S. Buchan, later 2nd Baron Tweedsmuir, at the time a fur trader with the Hudson's Bay Co. Shortly before his death, Pitseolak put down in Inuit syllabics the story of his early life (published in 1975 as People from Our Side, with oral biography by D. Eber) and an account of near disaster among the ice floes (published in 1977 as Peter Pitseolak's Escape from Death, D. Eber, ed).

Peter's wife, Aggeok, was both a graphic artist, and a craft artist. His adopted children Mark Pitseolak and Annie Pitseolak are sculptors in Cape Dorset. Peter's daughter Mary is a graphic artist, and a sculptor.

Exhibitions

• A Tribute to Cape Dorset Male Artists, Inukshuk Gallery
• Arctic Mirror, Canadian Museum of Civilization
• Canadian Eskimo Art: a representative exhibition from the collection of Professor and Mrs. Philip Gray, Fine Arts Gallery, Montana State University
• Canadian Eskimo Lithographs: Third Collection, Presented under the auspices of the Cultural Affairs Division of the Department of External Affairs Canada
• Cape Dorset, Winnipeg Art Gallery
• Cape Dorset - Selected Sculpture from the Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg Art Gallery
• Cape Dorset Graphics *70, (annual collection)
• Cape Dorset Graphics *71, (annual collection)
• Cape Dorset Graphics *72, (annual collection)
• Cape Dorset Graphics *73, (annual collection)
• Cape Dorset Graphics *74, (annual collection)
• Cape Dorset Graphics *75, (annual collection)
• Cape Dorset Prints and Sculpture, McMaster Art Gallery
• Contemporary Inuit Drawings, Macdonald Stewart Art Centre
• Contemporary Inuit Drawings, Muscarelle Museum of Art College of William and Mary
• Drawings by Peter Pitseolak of Cape Dorset, The Innuit Gallery of Eskimo Art
• Early Cape Dorset Prints: Kenojuak, Pitseolak, Lucy, Kananginak, Kopapik, Houston North Gallery
• Eskimo Art, Embankment Gallery
• Eskimo Fantastic Art, Gallery 111, School of Art, University of Manitoba
• Eskimo Sculpture '69, Robertson Galleries
• Exhibition and Balloted Sale of Canadian Art, Art For All
• From Icebergs to Iced Tea, Thunder Bay Art Gallery
• Im Schatten der Sonne: Zeitgenossische Kunst der Indianer und Eskimos in Kanada/In the Shadow of the Sun: Contemporary Indian and Inuit Art in Canada, Canadian Museum of Civilization
• In Cape Dorset We Do It This Way: Three Decades of Inuit Printmaking, McMichael Canadian Art Collection
• INUA: 50 Works from the Cappadocia Collection of Inuit Art, McMaster Art Gallery
• Inuit Art from the Art Centre Collection, Macdonald Stewart Art Centre
• Inuit Art From the Glenbow Collection, Glenbow Museum
• Inuit Drawings, Inuit Gallery of Vancouver
• Inuit Games/Inuit Pinguangit/Jeux des inuit, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
• Inuit Graphic Art from Indian & Northern Affairs Canada, Winnipeg Art Gallery
• Inuit Graphics and Drawings from 1959-1990, Arctic Artistry
• Inuit Graphics from the Past, Arctic Artistry
• Inuit Ivories from the Collection, Winnipeg Art Gallery
• Inuit Sculpture and Prints from the Collection, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
• Inuit Traditions in Graphics: 1961-1987, Arctic Artistry
• La deesse inuite de la mer/The Inuit Sea Goddess, Musee des beaux-arts de Montreal
• Looking South, Winnipeg Art Gallery
• Noel au Chateau - Art inuit de la collection Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, Macdonald Stewart Art Centre Guelph, Ontario presented at Chateau Dufresne
• On the Land, The Arctic Circle
• Peter Pitseolak, La Galerie Inuit
• Peter Pitseolak (1902-1973) Chroniqueur Inuit de Seekooseelak/Inuit Historian of Seekooseelak, McCord Museum/Musee McCord
• Peter Pitseolak: Photographer of Seekooseelak, Circulated in the Northwest Territories by the Notman Photographic Archives, McCord Museum
• Photographs by Peter Pitseolak, McCord Museum
• Recent Acquisitions of Early Inuit Sculpture, Arctic Artistry
• Selections from the McMaster Art Gallery Collection, McMaster Art Gallery
• Spoken in Stone: an exhibition of Inuit Art, Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies
• The Cape Dorset Print, Presented at Rideau Hall by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada
• The Coming and Going of the Shaman: Eskimo Shamanism and Art, Winnipeg Art Gallery
• The Swinton Collection of Inuit Art, Winnipeg Art Gallery
• The World Around Me, University of Lethbridge Art Gallery

Collections

• Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Victoria
• Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
• Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa
• Canadian Guild of Crafts Quebec, Montreal
• Canadian Museum of Civilization, Hull
• Dennos Museum Center, Northwestern Michigan College, Traverse City
• Department of Foreign Affairs, Ottawa
• Eskimo Museum, Churchill
• Glenbow Museum, Calgary
• Inuit Cultural Institute, Rankin Inlet
• Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, Guelph
• McCord Museum/Musee McCord, Montreal
• McMaster University Art Gallery, Hamilton
• McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg
• Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon
• Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
• New Brunswick Museum, Saint John
• Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University, Sackville
• Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, Yellowknife
• Red Deer and District Museum and Archives, Red Deer
• Sarick Collection, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
• Tom Thomson Memorial Gallery and Museum of Fine Art, Owen Sound
• University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, Lethbridge
• Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff
• Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg