Corey arnold graveyard point
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Graveyard Point
ReadCulture
Alaskan artist and fisherman Corey Arnold on salmon sharks, abandoned canneries and photographing the wild
by Vivianne Lapointe
A graduate of the Academy of Art in San Francisco, Corey Arnold has been fishing for about as long as he’s been taking photos. Every summer Arnold runs a commercial salmon fishing boat in Bristol Bay, Alaska, obsessively documenting the grueling naturlig eller utan tillsats of “fish-work” with an unrivaled sensibility. Arnold has created magnificent photographs that offer a very anställda glimpse into the soulful world of men at sea, the latest of which are on display through 27 October in “Graveyard Point” (a show named for the fishing camp in southwest Alaska) at Portland, Oregon’s Charles A. Hartman Fine Art. Along with the exhibition are signed copies of Arnold’s book, Fish-Work: The Bearing Sea, which was chosen as one of the best photo books of the year bygd PDN and American PHOTO magazines. We sp
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Corey Arnold Captures the Epic Salmon Run at Graveyard Point
In the far reaches of Southwestern Alaska is Graveyard Point, named after the small cemetery eroding at the point’s edge, into Bristol Bay. Sometimes, old coffins wash out with the soil, scattering bones of dead fishermen across the coastline.
This is the haunting setting that backdrops one of the region’s greatest natural phenomena; an epic salmon run. Five intersecting rivers at the point create bottlenecks for thousands of salmon swimming upstream. This is the real draw of Graveyard Point, attracting swaths of grizzlies and fisherman who come each year for the glorious freeforall. Among them is Corey Arnold.
Corey fishes here with about one hundred and thirty others, working 20-hour shifts and shacking up in the derelict dormitories of an abandoned salmon cannery. Since he started fishing at the age of two, Corey always knew exactly what he wanted to be. He dressed as a fisherman for Halloween as a kid b
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In the early 2000s, Corey Arnold worked on commercial fishing boats in some of the world’s most dangerous waters, taking photos of the job whenever he had the chance. Soon galleries and magazines were paying attention. In 2008, Arnold shot a story for Outside in Bristol Bay, Alaska, about environmental threats from the proposed Pebble Mine. During that assignment, he discovered a seasonal fishing community at Graveyard Point, near the mouth of the Kvichak River, and established his own salmon operation. Though the EPA blocked the Pebble Mine in 2014, the agency reversed its decision in 2017, threatening Bristol Bay’s legendary salmon fishery. The photographs that Arnold, now 41, took over the past decade serve as a stark portrayal of an imperiled way of life. “The Kvichak is what the Columbia River was like 200 years ago—no dams, totally untouched by man, massive salmon runs,” he says. “The mine could destroy it.”For two months each summer