An exhibition of stunning black and white photographs at the Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg, Canada uncovers a fresh vision of western Canada in the Great Depression, seen through the lens of a young Jewish Canadian artist. The Lost Expressionist: Nick Yudell, A Photographer Discovered, reveals the images of Nick Yudell (1916-1943), a previously unknown amateur photographer who lived in the town of Morden and in Winnipeg, Manitoba. This "lost world" was brought to light thanks to the persistence of one woman – Celia Rabinovitch, Ph.D., M.F.A. - with a little help and encouragement from the Canadian Studies Program.
For Celia Rabinovitch, artist, author and scholar, and longtime Canadian Studies affiliate, this exhibition is also personal. A painter and art historian, she was in art school when her father showed her the wooden box that Nick crafted for his life’s work before leaving for World War II in 1940. "When I first saw the negatives, I knew they were important, but I didn’t know how to work with them. The technology wasn’t there yet," she says. When she began scanning and restoring the negatives in 2007, they fell into themes offering a visual story of Nick Yudell’s life and the communities he touched. It took nearly fifteen years for this labor of love to come to fruition.
Nick Yudell was born in Winnipeg in 1916, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants to Canada. Following his mother's death, his father, who was supporting two other school-age children, brought him to live with his maternal aunt and his uncle David Rabinovitch in Morden. The youngest of nine children, Nick was particularly close to his cousin Milton Rabinovitch - Celia’s father. He received his first camera at the age of twelve. An avid photographer, he captured individuals in daily life in Morden and Winnipeg, where he lived with his father during high school in Winnipeg’s North End, returning to work in Morden in 1933. In 1940, he enlisted in the military to fight fascism in Europe – training for the RAF as part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. Nick Yudell became an RAF pilot stationed in North Africa and perished when his Vickers Wellington II on a mission to strike Nazi supply lines was shot down over Tunisia in 1943. He became a Canadian war hero; Yudell Lake in northern Manitoba is named for him.
Canadian Studies supported this project from the beginning, when Rabinovitch presented her work to the program in Berkeley. It sparked the imagination of former Canadian Studies director Nelson Graburn, who understood it as a complete visual archive of a relatively unknown time and place in Canada. "If it were not for Nelson’s encouragement, this exhibition (with accompanying book) probably wouldn't have happened," Rabinovitch says. She received a John A. Sproul Research Fellowship in 2012 to support her work. Now, ten years later, the photographs form an impressive exhibition that reveals Yudell's original vision.
Yudell identified each image with the individual name, date, place, and lighting conditions, writing on brown envelopes that he inserted in his archive. He left his magazines and other photographic materials with Milton in Morden. Celia Rabinovitch visited there and conducted oral histories with those who remembered him to build a picture of the artist through these collected sources. "We can tie his use of chiaroscuro (dramatic, heavy contrast) to the film noir movies that he must have seen in the cinema. Several people that I interviewed remembered him, or recalled individuals depicted in his photographs. These observations rounded out his life."
"This offers a prism of one man's life, showing how rich and complex one person is," says Rabinovitch. "Although he was a Canadian war hero, the show expresses the value of life through Nick’s portraits and images of daily life. Film was expensive; every shot counted. Nick expressed the personalities of the individuals around him. His themes cover dramatic lighting, photographic experimentation, and predict the course of his life."
Rabinovitch hopes the exhibition also challenges notions about people from small towns and the west. She points to the diversity of Morden, which had a population largely consisting of immigrants. "They weren't isolated from the world as some would assume. People there were curious and intellectually sophisticated. Growth and development – originating in agriculture- and the support of community were central to the daily life of the town. They were attentive to the patterns of life, and to support others – especially during the Dirty Thirties."
The Lost Expressionist: Nick Yudell, a Photographer Discovered is on view at the Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg through August 1, 2022, and travels to the Pembina Hills Art Center, Morden, 2023. The exhibition is seeking donations to cover material costs and prepare for a North American tour. For more information, visit the exhibition website or contact thelostexpressionist@gmail.com.
The photographs in this article were taken from the exhibition and provided courtesy of Celia Rabinovitch.