An Eye for Nature (Copy)

Harry and Rebecca sketching and making notes, c. 1920

Harry Ricker spent a good deal of his life outdoors studying and photographing nature. His collection contains hundreds of carefully catalogued negatives that ranged over a forty year period starting from the turn of the 20th century.

“Duchesne Apr. 5. 1924”

Harry Ricker

While many of his works were used as visual aids for his classes on Science, Agriculture and Nature Study, one can clearly see the love he had for the medium and simply capturing the images he saw around him.

His composition, for an amateur at a time when photography was in its infancy, is quite astonishing. Perhaps, in acting as the head of the school’s extra-curricular camera club, he took the NBNS motto to heart: Docendo discimus, the Latin proverb meaning “by teaching, we learn.”

This vertical picture of the French River in 1921 became a regular insert in the NBNS yearbook well into the 1930’s.

A familiar sight in the early half of the 20th century in the Near North – a fence constructed of pulled field stumps.