Village News

“Mennonite Village Photography” exhibit features a beautiful collection of never-before-seen photographs left behind by four Manitoba Mennonite photographers who lived and worked in the early twentieth century. The images are from glass and film negatives stored in institutional archives and family collections. After being scanned and given a new life in print, the photos provide a clear view into Mennonite life and early settlement in Manitoba.

“Mennonite Village Photography” produced by the Mennonite Historic Arts Committee (MHAC) is an exhibit like no other. Often curators have trouble finding photos that can be enlarged without loss of quality, but with this exhibit every photograph is large and the visually breath-taking. You will find yourself drawn into the photos, even though they are black and white and were taken 1890 to 1940. There will be a grand-opening of the exhibit at Mennonite Heritage Village (MHV) this Thursday, February 15 at 7pm, as part of MHV’s Authors Night.

Professional photographers at this time usually specialised in taking posed portraits against painted backdrops in studios. The Mennonite photographers mimicked that style, but they also captured a much less artificial picture of what existed around them. Though two of the photographers, Heinrich D. Fast and Johann E. Funk, were encouraged by their respective churches to give up their hobby in preparation for baptism and marriage, all four captured an array of subjects, both posed and candid, and the images reveal something of how they saw their worlds. Even if the men photographed for only a short window of time, their images freeze-frame a distinctive and fleeting period of time in the history of Mennonite village life in western Canada.

The attached photo depicts the MHAC committee members (from left to right): Frieda Klippenstein, Conrad Stoesz, Susie Fisher, Anikó Szabo, Roland Sawatzky, Andrea Klassen, posed in early 1900s style in front of a photography backdrop that belonged to Peter G. Hamm, a photographer from Neuberghtal, MB who is featured in the exhibit. Hamm’s original backdrop will also be available in the gallery for guests to take their own photo! So dress up with your friends and be transported back in time.