Rare Merit

Rare Merit is a beautifully illustrated and astute examination of women photographers in Canada as it took shape in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Throughout, the camera was both a witness to the colonialism, capitalism, and gendered and racialized social organization, and a protagonist. And women across the country, whether residents or visitors, captured people and places that were entirely new to the lens. This book shows how they did so, and the meaning their work carries.

Rare Merit illuminates the impact of women as portraitists, travel documentarians, photojournalists, fine artists, hobbyists, and printers in the early years of photography in Canada.