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nancyfjorde.bsky.social
nancyforde.com
@nancyfjorde.bsky.social
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don't dream it's over • Irish mamaí (she/her) • Writer. Photographer. Settler. Kjipuktuk | SSHRC CGS-M Award • MA Doc Photography & Photojournalism (21) MFA Creative Nonfiction (26) • ✨ noli timere ✨ b. 322ppm linktr.ee/nancyforde
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nancyfjorde.bsky.social
Daily photo. #AmWriting on bogs, Iron Age bog bodies, death, photography, and preservation (current MFA.)

To interrupt doomscrolling, a visual equivalent of a breath, a moment of calm. A 'foto balm' of light drawn.

I made this photograph in November of 2019. Sometimes the sky beckons to be framed.
Clouds in November. The sun attempts to brighten clouds below darker clouds on a November day. Telephone lines cut across the sky. November 2019. Waterloo, Ontario. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. nancyforde.com.
November 20, 2025 at 1:51 PM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
Daily photo. #AmWriting on bogs, Iron Age bog bodies, death and preservation (current MFA.)

To interrupt doomscrolling, a visual equivalent of a breath, a moment of calm. A 'foto balm' of light drawn.

Been a while since I shared a photograph. The approach of winter is a good time for reflection.
Bare trees in November surround a swampy pond en route to Burlington, Ontario. The pond reflects their dark limbs. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. nancyforde.com.
November 19, 2025 at 12:26 PM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
Support your local indie bookstores!

Always, whenever you can, buy indie. I attended the @afterwordsliterary.bsky.social book crawl in Halifax last year and wrote about some great indie bookstores here in #HFX:
open.substack.com/pub/nancyfor...
Photograph at twilight of indie bookstore window display at Bookmark in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with words that say "I ❤️ Local." Photo credit: Nancy Forde. nancyforde.com. October 2024.
October 13, 2025 at 10:33 AM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
📸 #Photographers in #HFX #HRM Don't miss tonight's event at St Mary's Boat Club "Underexposed: #Photojournalism @theglobeandmail.com" featuring Fred Lum @2manycameras.bsky.social, Theresa Suzuki, and Darren Calabrese.

Visit globeandmailevents.com/underexposed to register. Doors open at 6:30 PM ADT.
Photo says "Underexposed" Photojournalism at The Globe October 8, 2025. | 6:30-9:00 PM (Atlantic) St Mary's Boat Club, 1641 Fairfield Rd Halifax NS Register Now Registration closes 3 hours before the event starts. If you need assistance with registration, please contact marketing@globeandmail.com. 5 photographs showing (clockwise from top left): - A dancer in an elaborate dress performing; - Mushrooms on top of some herbs; -A guitar player shaking hair; - Someond walking on rocks with the ocean behind them; - a person lounging against a tree checking their smartphone with their little dog on their lap looking straight into the camera. Credit: photographers for The Globe and Mail.
October 8, 2025 at 2:39 PM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
This photograph is 30 yrs old from the LA Riots. Thanks to those who already clocked it like @boozybadger.lawyersandliquor.com. Photography credit to Mark Elias/AP. CNN ought to do better, be accurate and truthful in its photojournalism (and its journalism, overall.) Shameful. Add accurate captions.
Photograph and caption is: "The National guardsmen stand guard outside a burning donut shop in Los Angeles on April 30, 1992. The National Guard was called in to aid police during the second day of rioting in the city. (Mark Elias/AP)"
October 7, 2025 at 11:28 AM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
Just read Manchán Magan died. RIP. A piece he wrote inspired my final research project for my photography MA. His words and love of language spoke to your heart. Prolific. His knowledge such a beacon. Wise, too. I know he'll shine on through his books/podcasts. The presence he was. The mind he had.💚
Irish author Manchán Magan stands near a bog in a light green tweed jacket, dark blue shirt and mustard pants, wearing his signature glasses. RIP to him. Photo credit: Irish Independent (which did not provide a credit i could see.)
October 3, 2025 at 8:37 AM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
And one of my personal heroes. A primatologist and a prime example of how to human. RIP, Dr. Jane Goodall.

Thanks for living up so supremely to your surname. What an inspiration. I'm glad I've lived when you were alive. Such a loss to our planet. Our hearts with her loved ones tonight. 🌍🐒🌏🦍🌎
(Quote and image credit: Jane Goodall Institute) Image of world renowned primatologist and humanitarian, Dr. Jane Goodall, sitting in the shade of trees wearing a green shirt and gazing upwards. The text for the quote by her says: "Somehow we must keep hope alive - a hope that we can find a way to educate all, alleviate poverty, assuage anger, and live in harmony with the environment, with animals, and with each other." RIP to my queen who died today at 91 years of age. October 1, 2025.
October 1, 2025 at 7:28 PM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
This week GriefMatters.ca is hosting "Grief Gatherings" Sep 19-28. Among them is a #photography walk by me tomorrow on how photography began/continues as a healing practice for me. If you're in #HRM, bring your camera to come 'draw light' together.

Pls register by e-mail. Deets in photo/ALT text.
poster for in-person 'FotoBalm' event on how photography began and continues as a healing practice. Poster text: Come draw light on Thursday September 25 4-6PM (backup weather day Fri Sep 26). A 'FotoBalm' event led by photographer Nancy Forde as part of Grief Matters' Grief Gatherings Week. Event Details All photography skill levels and cameras welcome (even if your 'camera' is a smartphone.) Organizer: Nancy Forde (nancyforde.com.) Location: In person at Sir Sanford Fleming Park/"The Dingle. Time: 4-6 PM. Please gather at The Dingle gazebo for the 4 PM start. Dress for walking/hiking/weather. Water bottles and Kleenex encouraged. This event is free. Donations are welcome. To register: e-mail nancyfordephoto@gmail.com with subject "FotoBalm Event." This event is limited to 20 participants only. Please register early to reserve your spot.
September 24, 2025 at 1:38 PM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
Meant to add Alt Text for the poem for accessibility. Here it is:
You can leave here by VICTORIA SPIRES But it's always in you. It turns out the feeling Of being inescapably below sea level translates To all settings, even in the city, barricaded, as you are, With borrowed history. The fen holds on to no history, beyond Your own, which is always visible; the line of trees Along the edge of the field, signaling nothing but a windbreak To the next horizon. There's something about the way the body Maps to land, the great psychic lode of it silts in the ribs, Making its claim. The heart is a drainage channel, there is Seepage. When you cry (which is often, and in secret), You think of Vermuyden. He wanted to stop all this, sluice it, Put it to use. You find many uses for your body in the city, But not the best ones, yet. You still carry yourself like a bog oak, Severe and brittle, as if you are scarcity, not abundance. You think Of the loneliness of thoughts; shifting tributaries, occasional islands. When you try to circle back, the way is lost. You're still at least half lost, Maybe more. Fen child. Isn't there a better name for those who grow up Thinking self is just another word for sky, who dredge Ditches for the peat of buried secrets, tuck them carefully Up their sleeves as soft currency. The land is a cold tea steeped In the North Sea, and you are steeped in the land.
September 22, 2025 at 10:27 AM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
Daily photo. #AmWriting on bogs, Iron Age bog bodies, death and preservation (current MFA.)

To interrupt doomscrolling, a visual equivalent of a breath, a moment of calm. A 'foto balm' of light drawn.

Almost #autumn! (Sep 22.) I wrote about why #trees shed leaves: open.substack.com/pub/nancyfor...
Bare trees surrounded by a carpet of their orange leaves in autumn, photographed in fog. Elora, Ontario. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved.
September 17, 2025 at 2:00 PM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
I mean I've ALWAYS had a crush on Redford. He was clearly an insightful, formidable director to elicit the performances he did from Hutton, Tyler Moore, Hirsch, Sutherland, McGovern. Astonishing! Imagine THAT film being your feature directorial debut. An actor's actor. What made him a great director
Film poster for 1980 film Ordinary People directed by Robert Redford. A frame showing three photos: a mother, a father, and a son. The poster says "Ordinary People" in cursive script. Then below that. "Everything in its proper place. Except the past."
September 16, 2025 at 8:08 PM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
So many classics: Butch Cassidy, The Sting, All the President's Men, 3 Days of the Condor, loved him in The Electric Horseman. As a teen I had a crush on a young Timothy Hutton after seeing Ordinary People. The Natural remains a golden film. Thanks to this legend for every unforgettable performance.
Still of Robert Redford as Sonny Steele standing in a in an elevator in glittering cowboy duds with the mirror in the elevator reflecting him. From Sydney Pollock's 1979 classic film, The Electric Horseman, with Jane Fonda.
September 16, 2025 at 7:51 PM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
Daily photo. #AmWriting on bogs, bog bodies, #photography, preservation (current MFA.)

My parents, both 92, celebrated 73 years of marriage this week. They've been together 76 years (since they met at 16 while working at the Dublin textile factory Mulcahy's.) I made their portraits a few yrs ago.
My parents share a kiss at their home, Christmas of 2019. They were 70 years together. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com. My mother leans upon my father's shoulder while he kisses the top of her head, Christmas of 2020. She has declined into dementia since around 2016. He remains her primary caretaker and now, her memory reserve. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
September 12, 2025 at 10:43 AM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
Rest in peace and power to elder and actor Graham Greene who belonged to Oneida of the Six Nations, People of the Standing Stone, and who hailed from Ohswekan which I visited in 2018 to interview an Indigenous Seedkeeper. Condolences, solace to his family and community. Huge loss and far too young.
P/hotograph of a green sign that says 'Osweken' amidst green trees and bushes and against a blue August sky. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. August 8. 2018. All rights reserved. P/hotograph of a Grand River near Osweken (in southwestern Ontario about an hour drive from where I was born.) Trees line the banks of the river against a blue August sky. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. August 8. 2018. All rights reserved.
September 2, 2025 at 3:07 PM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
Wonderful to spend part of #WorldPhotoDay being interviewed re my recent SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship (Master's) award and research Im continuing on eco #grief and the role of #photography in mourning/memorialization, causing/easing eco-anxiety/grief and inspiring #ClimateActionNow. #AmWriting
The last dregs of snow melting on a rolling field in Wellington County, Ontario. April 2022. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. Dishcloth hanging in my window designed by UK designer Rob Ryan of a silhouetted couple holding hands in rippled pools of water with the words "Everything that is supposed to be in Heaven us already here on Earth." May 2025. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved.
August 20, 2025 at 7:50 PM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
Happy #WorldBoglandsDay to everyone protecting wetlands and the species that thrive in them. I'm writing on bogs, vital #CarbonSinks. If they've been drained for other purposes, they can be re-wetted and restored. They should no longer ever be drained. We need them. #ClimateCrisis #ClimateActionNow
Hiking Polly's Cove, a lone tree stands amidst some bogland near Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia m, on the province's Eastern shoreline. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. July 2024.
July 27, 2025 at 5:09 PM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
Daily photo. #AmWriting on bogs, Iron Age bog bodies, #photography, preservation (current MFA.)

Quite alarming. #Greenland is melting. Nine years since I visited Kalaallit Nunaat this August. Warm even then. People in tees in Ilulissat. Here's Sermermiut/Disko Bay. Can you spot the #HumansForScale
Sermermiut with Disko Bay just beyond. Tiny humans stand near the shore with great ice formations looming in the distance. Sermermiut is protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Evidence of ancient settlements lived here: Saqqaq, Dorset, and Thule (Proto Inuit) Peoples. A breathtaking spot. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. August 2016. All rights reserved.
July 21, 2025 at 11:43 AM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
Friends: I won!

I hold an MA in Doc Photography & Photojournalism (2021.)

Now pursuing #writing MFA in Creative Nonfiction (2026-at least am writing on #photography. 😅)

Embargo's lifted. Ecstatic to announce I recently won a #SSHRC CGS-M scholarship to fund research toward completion of my book!
Screenshot of Canadian Government SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) CGS-M (Canada Graduate Scholarship- Master's Program) Fall 2024 Competition award recipients search result showing the following: Applicant: Nancy M. Forde Affiliation: University of King's College (Halifax) Title of Winning Research Application Proposal: "Memento Terra Mori: the use of photography to grieve loss and preserve life on a planet in death spiral." Funding: $27,000 URL: https://sshrc-crsh.canada.ca/en/competition-results/award-recipients/2024/canada-graduate-scholarships-masters.aspx.
July 20, 2025 at 12:54 PM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
Heaney for me. Always and ever Heaney. Here's Westering.

#InternationalMoonDay
Poem Westering by Irish poet Seamus Heaney (page 1): Westering in California I sit under Rand McNally's 'Official Map of the Moon' - The colour of frogskin. Its enlarged pores held Open and one called 'Pitiscus' at eye level - Recalling the last night In Donegal, my shadow Neat upon the whitewash From her bony shine, The cobbles of the yard Lit pale as eggs Summer had been a free fall Ending there, The empty amphitheatre Of the west. Good Friday Poem Westering by Irish poet Seamus Heaney (page 2): We had started out Past shopblinds drawn on the afternoon, Cars stilled outside still churches, Bikes tilting to a wall. We drove by, A dwindling interruption, As clappers smacked On a bare altar And congregations bent To the studded crucifix. What nails dropped out that hour? Roads unreeled, unreeled Falling light as casts Laid down On shining waters. Under the moon's stigmata Six thousand miles away, I imagine untroubled dust A loosening gravity, Christ weighing by his hands.
July 20, 2025 at 11:10 AM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
*me and my #book project (strangling my Imposter Syndrome and surrounded by my ideas and doubts)

[Image courtesy of Early Roman #IronAge folk who crafted the Gundestrup Cauldron, unearthed in 1891 and preserved at the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen.] #AmWriting
Detail of the Gundestrup Cauldron showing a horned human (perhaps Cernunnos - horned god associated with fertility) holding a torc and a snake surrounded by deer, boar , wolf and other creatures embossed upon the Gundestrup Cauldron, a silver, Iron Age cauldron discovered in 1891 in Denmark. Thought to be dated from Early Roman Iron Age (150 BCE to 1 BCE.)
July 19, 2025 at 12:53 PM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
Daily photo. #AmWriting on bogs, bog bodies, #photography, preservation (current MFA.)

To interrupt doomscrolling, visual equivalents of a breath, pause, a moment, however minuscule, of calm. A balm of light drawn.

Sunrise greeting this AM via my Rob Ryan tea cloth as I descend the front stairs. 🌞
Rob Ryan tea cloth covering stairwell window with the rising sun behind it shows a print lock graphic of a couple standing in rippling water with the words surrounding them: "Everything that is supposed to be in heaven is already here on Earth." Photo credit: Nancy Forde. July 19, 2025.
July 19, 2025 at 10:57 AM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
Daily photo. #AmWriting on bogs, bog bodies, #photography, preservation (current MFA.)

To interrupt doomscrolling, visual equivalents of a breath, pause, a moment, however minuscule, of calm. A balm of light drawn.

Happy July. A couple wades into our fave beach in Southampton, Ontario. Lake Huron.
A couple photographed from behind and in swim suits wade into lake water toward a floating buoy at Lake Huron in Southampton, Ontario. Sand at bottom of photo, blue water and blue sky above it. A few summers ago now. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved.
July 3, 2025 at 11:35 AM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
On #CanadaDay, settlers like me can remember we live on stolen, unceded lands.

Land Acknowledgement is not an act of reconciliation. The TRC outlined 94 Calls to Action. Read them and take action:
www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/b...

Find out whose stolen lands you live upon: native-land.ca

#LandBack
Candlelight Vigil for first declared National Day of Truth and Reconciliation (October 1, 2021) in memory of all the Indigenous children stolen and taken to residential schools and in the wake of all the Indigenous children whose graves were found at various residential schools across Canada. Held in "Victoria Park", a park local Indigenous Peoples have repeatedly demanded to rename, in Kitchener, Ontario, on stolen Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and Chonnonton lands. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. 2021. All rights reserved.
July 1, 2025 at 11:28 AM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
Keen to hear @praddenkeefe.bsky.social tonight on his writing and on 'Rogues' in #HFX (Alumni Hall, UKings where I'm pursuing my #writing MFA.)

Especially intrigued by references to #bogs, Iron Age bog bodies in 'Say Nothing' as I research them for my own book. Thoughts of Heaney and 'Punishment.'
Cover of "Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks" by Patrick Radden Keefe. Published in June 2022 by Doubleday. Cover of "Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland" by Patrick Radden Keefe. Published in February 2020 by Vintage. First half of poem 'Punishment' by Heaney about the Windeby bog body (first believed to be a young girl but later determined to be a young boy) but politically referencing how Irish women who'd slept with British Soldiers in N. Ireland also had their heads shaved as punishment. Credit: Seamus Heaney. RIP. Second half of poem 'Punishment' by Heaney about the Windeby bog body (first believed to be a young girl but later determined to be a young boy) but politically referencing how Irish women who'd slept with British Soldiers in N. Ireland also had their heads shaved as punishment. Credit: Seamus Heaney. RIP.
June 24, 2025 at 5:17 PM
nancyfjorde.bsky.social
Daily photo. #AmWriting on bogs, bog bodies, #photography, preservation (current MFA.)

To interrupt doomscrolling, visual equivalents of a breath, pause, a moment, however minuscule, of calm. A balm of light drawn.

Missing this view of Lake Huron, Ontario. Made in 2017. Gathering of dear friends.
View of blue Lake Huron with small path through grass and looking through trees in summer. Near Ferndale/Lion's Head area southeast of Tobermory. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. 2017. All rights reserved.
June 24, 2025 at 2:09 PM