Katherine Knight’s Boat blends old and new

For Katherine Knight, model boats are a connection to Maritime history through craftsmanship.

Knight may not be a boater or model maker — but she captures their beauty through photographs.

In her new book of photography, Boat, Knight places hand-crafted model boats into nature, often where the true-to-size boats they were modelled after would normally be found. The book combines photography with written work, including interviews with model makers and essays from contributors.

Taking the photos

Originally from Ottawa, Knight says she fell in love with the Maritimes on a trip to Tony River, N.S., in 2000. She moved to Pictou County’s Caribou Harbour four years ago, after spending her summers there since 2003.

Knight was a student at NSCAD where she received a bachelor of fine arts in 1980. Some of her photographs from that time are featured in her book, where they serve as chapter headings.  

“There’s one in there at the back that’s (from) 1978. I was a second-year student,” she said. 

Knight said analog, or film, photography has influenced her creative process, even as the industry moved to digital.

“I kind of kept my habits. I tend to shoot full frame, I don’t crop a lot. I don’t try and create an image through Photoshop,” she said. 

The photographs of model boats, which are the focal point of her book, are taken on digital cameras, including a point and shoot camera that can be almost fully submerged in water. 

To take the photos, Knight goes “up to (her) knees or thighs in the water.” She describes it as a “careful” process, often taking up to 300 photos only to select one or two.

For Knight, the book is a culmination of “four or five threads of inquiry, and several different attempts to make different things about model boats.” 

Model boats, she says “connect us to a culture of handcraft and also a kind of pre-digital age.” Her interest in craftsmanship prompted her to find people who were connected to model making and boats.

Finding the words

Knight said the photos “felt like they were missing a kind of connection to the person who made them or the experiences of the people who (the) boats matter to.” To fill this gap, Knight interviewed model makers.

The first person she spoke to was Watson Knickle, a model maker from Lunenburg County. 

“He told me this story about being shipwrecked, and he basically lost his fingers, and that’s how he then started to make model boats. Once I had his story, then I went out looking for more,” said Knight.

The book also features essays from cultural historian Sara Spike and poet Sue Goyette.

“When I saw her photos, I was immediately inspired,” said Spike. “I think what’s really interesting about Katherine’s project is how she’s connected different modes of representation together.

“We can very easily say ‘handmade models are something from the past and digital photography is from the future.’ But in fact, in a project like this, we see that they’re very much welded together,“ said Spike.

For Goyette, Knight’s book was compelling because of how her photographs communicate the care put into the models. “These are people who are crafting something, insisting on its importance in their life,” she said. 

“Beauty is a thing that demands a kind of reiteration,” said Goyette. “I’m really drawn to how that is at the centre of this book.”

The Halifax launch of Boat by Katherine Knight is on Dec. 3 at Halifax Central Library.