Photographer Jason Watt — What Watt Sees Is What You Get
by Sally Hansen
Throughout his postings in the high Arctic and his travels around the world, Jason Watt has used a camera to record and report the incredible diversity of life on earth. His photography is as multi-faceted and as multi-purposed as his travels and his actions. His photography website offers glimpses of life in Tuktoyaktuk, Bolivia, Kashmir, and innumerable places in between.
Not a Still Life
Someone once said “The reason people plan is to make God laugh.” Jason isn’t much of a planner; he just does it. “I’m an adrenaline junkie, but I want to do good,” he tells me, and that is the common thread weaving throughout an exceptionally active life.
It isn’t any easier to pin labels on Jason Watt than it is to pin him down to one location or one job or anything else. Except his wife Michelle Skanes — she’s a constant in his life. She’s his travel partner and a partner in their new undertaking, Hickory Dickory Documentary Films (HDDF). This newest facet of Jason’s artistry and life is covered in more detail in a separate article in this Human Rights issue of theHumm.
At the ripe old age of 35, Jason has lived or traveled in over thirty countries. Not only has he photographed a lot of wildlife species; he’s eaten many of them — crocodile, musk ox, muskrat and muktuk. And he’s overcome a lifetime phobia of fish, brought on by watching “Jaws” at too impressionable an age, to swim with piranha in the Amazon, with a pod of dolphins in the Indian Ocean, and with “I-don’t-want-to-know-what” in the “Anaconda River” in Brazil. He admits he only swam in the Amazon because Michelle jumped in first.
For the past 16 years Watt has worked as a Registered Nurse and a Paramedic, working locally in Canada’s metropolitan hospitals and remotely in the high arctic. Originally, Jason pursued his Paramedic designation because he thought it would help him qualify to be a firefighter. Before completing his training as an RN, he opted for the adrenaline rushes provided by working on air ambulance helicopters and land ambulances in the Pakenham area.
In 1998 Watt was offered a job in the Gwich’in and Inuvialuit community of Aklavik, Northwest Territories, located on the Peel channel of the Mackenzie River Delta, 113 km south of the Arctic Coast. He and Michelle worked there and on the Arctic Ocean in Tuktoyaktuk intermittently over an eight-year period. They contributed to the health and education of the community, and collected friends, stories, memories and photographs in return.
Jason’s passion for travel and his drive to “do good” continuously fuel his creative side. In addition to his captivating photographs of the landscapes and the peoples of the Northwest Territories, he co-produced a book, Dempster Highway Volume 2, that raised over $10,000 for an aboriginal children’s library. The book, like his photographs, tells the stories of his subjects. In the case of the book, he lets the elders of the community tell their own stories in their own words. Watt values truth and unmediated reality. He shoots straight from the hip in all respects, and his ability to ferret out and capture authenticity is what distinguishes his photographs.
In October of 2005, Jason traveled to Pakistan as a member of a Canadian Medical Assistance Team that responded to the devastating earthquake that killed over 74,000 and wounded another 106,000 people. For a little more than three weeks he worked in Kashmir’s capital city of Muzaffararabad, doing what he most wants to do — making a difference. His experience with the Outpost Clinics in Aklavik and Tuktoyaktuk proved to be good training for his humanitarian mission in Kashmir. Both produced amazing photographs.
Kashmir had a profound effect on him. The local man working next to Jason in the medical facility kept urging him to take pictures of the unimaginable devastation and human misery that destroyed most of Muzaffarabad, only nineteen kilometres from the quake’s epicenter. From watching BBC TV, residents knew that their plight was receiving little attention in the rest of the world. They were desperate for humanitarian assistance. By the time he got back home to Pakenham, Jason was convinced that he could reach and help more people with a camera than with a syringe. HDDF was born.
Real Reality Shows for TV
Jason doesn’t watch much TV and he doesn’t play virtual computer games. He is passionate about truth and authenticity, and believes that going there, living there, and truthfully recording what is happening there, is the best way to help improve conditions there, anywhere. He thinks Canadian resources should be directed towards fighting the root causes of much of the violence in the world. He has had a lot of first-hand experience with the effects of poverty and natural disaster.
Watt believes that building friendships through humanitarian aid and peacekeeping is the most effective long-term strategy for fighting terrorism. He and the HDD Film team believe that honest documentaries filmed for TV can “evoke powerful emotions in everyday citizens, which are, in turn, transformed into positive energy in the form of social activism in their respective communities.”
Watt’s Up?
HDD Films’ first documentary film, Zazala: The Pakistan Project, is scheduled for distribution by April 1, 2007, when Jason and Michelle are scheduled to hit the road again. Jason has purchased a used 1986 military ambulance and a Nikon D200 for their next trip — around the world. “My camera is worth more than my car,” he tells me. “That shows you where my priorities are.”
As usual, his priorities are to seek and spread truth and reality, never be afraid of being afraid, and do good.
It’ll do you good to go to the HDDF website to learn more about the Pakistan Project, about Jason Watt and the other members of the Hickory Dickory Documentary Films Team. To experience the impact of Jason’s mesmerizing photography, click on his website. Better yet, drop in at Watt’s Cooking in Pakenham (owned by Jason’s sister Jody Watt), just around the corner from the scenic five-span stone bridge, where you can sample great desserts as well as great photography. You can reach Jason at HDDF by phone at (613) 789–4333, and also by email.