Tom Haas Photography

Lush skunk cabbage, early spring growth. Hidden Lake swamp, Tobin Harbor.
Ms Kemmer’s lapstrake Wayzata Boatworks row boat, Tobin Harbor. Similar to Westy Farmer’s early craftmanship of the 1900’s. The Wayzata Boatworks paid piecework wages of $8 per assembled boat.
Gale kitchen on Gale Island. Alfreda was apologetic that the frying pans were unpolished.
Westy and Bylo Farmer with Tom Haas at Coffee Pot Landing in Rock Harbor just down the shore from Rock Harbor Lodge. Westy’s grandfather developed the original Rock Harbor Lodge in the early 1900s.
Pete Edisen on the dock waiting to greet the Lodge boats with tourists on the way to view the Lighthouse, and Pete of course.
Looking “uphill” at the harbor at Wrights Island. Windowsill practically at ground level as the decaying logs settled into the ground.
Einer Eckmark, Washington Island, Windigo. Stanley Sivertson’s fishing license partner. They fished on shares or split shares.  Shares were split 50/50.  Expenses were split after shares. ½ of zero equals zero.
Milford Johnson mending and washing nets at Crystal Cove.  

Isle Royale: A Photographer’s Circumnavigation
1967-1987

Duluthian Tom Haas spent 20 summers kayaking along Isle Royale’s shores and smaller barrier islands and hiking its mainland, hauling along a 12-pound large-format camera and an 8-pound tripod. Throughout that meandering circumnavigation he captured over 3,000 black-and-white images of the islands’ harbors and bays, rocky shorelines, abundant flora, historic fisheries, and legacy-family cabins as well as the archipelago’s summertime residents, a mix of commercial fishing families and the descendants of those who first visited as far back as the 1890s.

More than 30 years after the project ended, Tom and his wife Jeannie Thoren — who has ben enshrined in the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame — sifted through Tom’s work, selecting 275 of their favorite images from the collection, each at once an artistic expression and a document of Isle Royale’s rich cultural and natural history, for this book.

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