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Nahanni McKay is a Metis artist from Treaty 7 Territory, currently residing in Banff, Alberta. Nahanni is a photography graduate from the Emily Carr University of Art & Design in Vancouver, B.C. and creates pieces about the coexistence of people and wildlife through film. Her exhibition is centered around a beekeeper. Nahanni’s show really showcases the entire beekeeping process and tells a story from start to finish through her photography.
The Beekeeper is a series of photographs of Dr. Mark Nigro tending his beehives in his backyard at his home in Vancouver, British Columbia. Dr. Nigro is not only a full-time surgeon at Vancouver General Hospital, as well as a beekeeper.
Currently there is a focus on health care workers and how they sacrifice their own safety to help others. They devote their time to helping people with little time to themselves. I wanted to highlight Dr. Nigro’s hobby of beekeeping in this series because he is making a positive contribution to the declining bee population in his spare time.
Bees are vanishing at an alarming rate because of factors such as air pollution, habitat destruction, and pesticides. Bees are critically important to the ecosystem because they pollinate the vast majority of the world’s food, serving as an integral part of the food chain. They are crucial to the future.
Dr. Nigro explained to me that science is in everything we do. For example when going fishing you have to know where the fish live. When ski touring, you have to understand snow, weather and hiking, taking in the environment around you.
Beekeeping is about interconnecting nature and understanding the relationship between plants and animals. The best thing we can do for the bees is to understand science and the connections between us and the natural world.
- Nahanni McKay
