Suzanne Sexty, Honorary Research Librarian at Memorial, and frequent contributor to the Newfoundland Quarterly, can find her subject matter and historical inspiration in unconventional places.

Her most recent subject of fascination is the pioneering Newfoundland photographer James Vey who took photos of the province from the 1890s to the 1920s; Ms. Sexty became interested in Vey when she began researching photography during that time period. She found evidence in archival documents that Vey is buried in the General Protestant Cemetery on Waterfordbridge Road in St. John's.

Unlike his contemporaries, little is known about Vey. Ms. Sexty believes the reason for this is because after Vey’s death his family moved to the west coast of Canada and sold much of his photographic equipment. But Ms. Sexty seems ready for the challenge and the degree of detective work required to piece together his life and his creative legacy through her research.

"Much of his work is un-credited and it is only through picking up a piece that has his name on it and linking it to a book in which it appeared…or sometimes I will find a book that credits him with a photograph and then I will go back and see if I can find the original," she said.

Vey belonged to an early period of photography when it was a mysterious mix of science and artistry.

"These early photographers were transitioning from the portrait artists who went out and painted pictures to the photographic artist, where composition and subject were very important and required a particular eye, the eye of the artist. The development techniques, which were new to the photographer, were mostly done at home on your own and you had to have a fair degree of knowledge of science and be somewhat experimental in your attempts to develop film."

Vey is said to have some unique methods to create his signature style, one of which involved dropping a gold coin in the developing pan. Ms. Sexty is reluctant to reveal too much of her research, which will eventually become a book, but she does note that Vey had a particular talent to find news and capture it.

"To me, Vey was very much a man of the streets. He must have lived on the rooftops and on the sidewalks of St. John’s. All the photographers of the time took the commercial studio portraits and that was their mainstay. They went out and took pictures of the scenery…but Vey was unlike the others and was much more of a physical photographer in the sense that when Marconi came to town, Vey was there. When he heard about a fire, he went down to it."

Ms. Sexty will be presenting on the life and times of pioneering photojournalist James Vey on Monday, May 12, at 10 a.m. in room L-2028 at the Queen Elizabeth II Library. For more information please contact Kristine Power or 864-3188 kristinep@mun.ca.