Andrew Danson Danushevsky photographed the graves of 150 Titanic victims buried in Halifax cemeteries for an exhibit called "An Earnest Price: 150 Grave Stories from Halifax". Halifax artist Susan Tooke created a multimedia performance called "Depths of Sorrow" telling the story of an fictional woman aboard the Titanic, featuring dancer Veronique MacKenzie and musician Lukas Pearse. Both exhibits explore personal stories and memorialize the lives lost in the Titanic disaster as its 100th anniversary approaches.

1. BY ELISSA BARNARD ARTS
REPORTER

2. Andrew Danson Danushevsky took photographs of the graves of Titanic victims buried in Halifax
for an exhibit called An Earnest Price: 150 Grave Stories from Halifax, which is on view in the
foyer of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic until July 2. (TED PRITCHARD / Staff)

3. PHOTOGRAPHER Andrew Danson Danushevsky has always
been intrigued by the Titanic and has had dramatic life
experiences of his own on the sea. He was born on the
English Channel and sailed to Canada with his mother, a war
bride.
During that voyage, his baby carriage rolled towards the rails.
"I was just about to go between the rail when this guy grabbed
me in mid-air," he said in a phone interview from his home in
Grand Falls-Windsor, N.L.
For the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, Danson
Danushevsky decided to photograph the gravestones of all
150 victims of the Titanic buried in three Halifax cemeteries:
Mount Olivet, Baron de Hirsch and Fairview Lawn.

4. Danson Danushevsky calls his show at the Maritime Museum
of the Atlantic An Earnest Price, after 17-year-old Ernest
Price, a boy who got a job as a barman on the Titanic and
did not survive the disaster.
Also, "everyone who sailed on that ship paid an earnest price,
whether with their lives or the huge sums of money to be on
it."
Danson Danushevsky is more interested in the experience of
the ordinary individual than the wealthy and the famous
aboard the Titanic.
He was all alone when he was in the cemeteries
photographing graves.
"I could feel spirits coming from some and others didn’t affect
me. I can’t explain it."

5. Some of the most powerful feelings he experienced were
from the tombstones inscribed with a number and not a
name — the graves of the unidentified victims whose
stories have never been told.
"I started late in 2008, and in 2009 my father died and in
2010 my mother died and I was in the middle of the
project," said Danson Danushevsky.
The project became more spiritual than historic "and
embodied with my own mourning process."
To take these images, he used a hand-held, point-and-
shoot camera, so each photograph is slightly different.
"None of them are identical. I didn’t want them to look
catalogued because people are individuals. I wanted to
illustrate the fact no one is the same."

6. Apart from the story of Ernest Price, Danson
Danushevsky is also moved by the story of the
Black Squad of engineers and boiler room staff
who kept the ship going so more people could be
rescued, by the grave of the unknown child, now
known, who "represented all these young people
who lost their lives," and by the crew, most of
whom went down with their ship.
No one knows exactly why — whether there was
no room on the lifeboats, or crew members were
too busy helping passengers, or they just
couldn’t get out.

7. "We don’t know these answers. It’s the unknown stories.
It’s the questions I find more intriguing than obvious
answers."
Danson Danushevsky’s work has appeared in 65
exhibitions in Canada, and he has organized
photographic exhibitions in Cuba, Germany and the
Czech Republic.
HALIFAX ARTIST Susan Tooke’s interest in the Titanic
began when she was a child.
"My grandmother had a copy of this book, The Sinking of
the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters. And when I visited
her in small-town Ontario, I remember reading it and
being completely fascinated and struck by the enormous
tragedy of it.

8. She turned to that 1912 book, which she found in her late
father-in-law’s bookcase and which now sits in her
studio, to create Depths of Sorrow. It’s a multi-media
performance with dancer-choreographer Veronique
MacKenzie and musician Lukas Pearse at the Maritime
Museum of the Atlantic on Monday and is part of the
Night of the Bells on April 14.
The trio’s experimentation in two- and three-dimensional
imagery, large-scale projections, sound, dance, infrared
capture and real-time video processing creates ghostly
figures in projection as MacKenzie dances on stage.
When the three performed in the Kinetic Studio Series in
January, scientist Henrietta Mann, who specializes in the
rusticles on the Titanic, was in the audience.

9. "She saw the ghost-like images that the infrared capture
was able to transfer into visible light. She right away
associated them with the ghosts from the Titanic
tragedy."
Mann suggested the trio create a piece for the 100th
anniversary of the Titanic sinking.
"It struck me as a wonderful opportunity to tell that tragic
story," said Tooke.
Depths of Sorrow is "the story of a fictional woman who
boards the Titanic in Southampton with all the optimism
of the day and then, of course, she wakes up to the
striking of the iceberg."
"She’s not a survivor so it’s quite a dramatic tale and very
emotional. We’ve used underwater photography to
capture Veronique the dancer underwater, and that’s very
emotional."

10. Technician and videographer Tim Tracey, who has been
teaching Tooke, shot MacKenzie in a nightgown in the
Centennial Pool in Halifax.
"There were so many people that did not survive and that
did not have the chance to tell their story. This stands in
for that."
In her Elm Street studio full of her bold Nova Scotia
landscape paintings, a tiny blue bird named Dora and a
sleek clean desk with a computer, Tooke has spent the
last month and a half drawing and animating Depths of
Sorrow.
"It’s meant ramping up my ability," said Tooke, who has
been studying animation and video editing.

11. She made drawings and paintings based on historic
photographs of the Titanic and its passengers, placed
them in three different layers on separated plates of
glass and then moved her ghostly figures on vellum amid
the "sets," as well as moving the sets themselves.
"I would move and take the next snap, move and take the
next snap."
She put these sequences into Photoshop to further
manipulate them, "and I came up with an image that
looks like a woodcut, and using sepia tones it takes it
back to 1912." Intentionally, her images look like
storybook pictures from 1912.
Dancer MacKenzie, shot against a green screen, is
inserted inside these storybook pictures as a person in
motion inside a ghostly narrative.

12. "She’s performing Monday. And you can see her dance and
her image captured by infrared camera and translated to
visible light, and she can dance a duet with her video
self."
Audio-visual composer and technical wizard Pearse is
creating a score using sound sampling and snippets of
music from the day as well as composing traditional
music.
"There are so many layers to it. It’s so intense and we’ve
been rehearsing late hours — we went till two in the
morning the other night — making sure everything comes
together from the technical to the creative end."
Tooke finds working in this new way informs her other work
as a painter and award-winning illustrator. This project
"has got me wondering what else we can apply our
experience to. This collaboration is really exciting and is
pushing me in other directions."

13. Tooke, MacKenzie and Pearse are working toward an
installation using all these elements called Motion
Activated at Saint Mary’s University in May 2013.
An Earnest Price: 150 Grave Stories from Halifax is on
view in the foyer of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic
until July 2. Depths of Sorrow is performed twice
Monday, at 8 and 9 p.m., in the Small Craft Gallery of
the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic and may be viewed
from inside and outside the museum. Admission is free.
Depths of Sorrow is also part of the Night of the Bells on
April 14 at Grand Parade.