The Canadian Photography Institute

Reflecting the rich interdisciplinarity of contemporary photography studies, The Cultural Work of Photography in Canada is essential reading for anyone interested in Canadian visual culture."--Pub. desc.

In Faking Death Penny Cousineau-Levine examines the work of over 120 Canadian photographers, revealing important aspects of Canadian identity and imagination. Contrasting Canadian photography with American and European traditions, she shows that Canadian photographers are often preoccupied with a place that is "elsewhere," a doubling and duality that also occurs in Canadian literature, film, and political life. Subverting the documentary tradition and other stylistic idioms for their own distinctive ends, Canadian photographers exhibit an ambivalent preoccupation with death and dying, bondage, and entrapment. Cousineau-Levine argues that this is characteristically a 'faked' death that expresses a collective Canadian wish for a symbolic passage to national maturity. Faking Death includes 16 colour reproductions and 150 duotones by artists such as Raymonde April, Jeff Wall, Lynne Cohen, Charles Gagnon, Evergon, Michel Lambeth, Thaddeus Holownia, Geoffrey James, Geneviève Cadieux, Shelley Niro, Diana Thorneycroft, Jin-me Yoon, Ian Wallace, and Ken Lum. By bringing together this many Canadian works Faking Death provides a compelling visual introduction to one of Canada's most vibrant and internationally recognized artistic media. It is an invaluable tool for curators, artists, teachers, students, and scholars in art history, fine arts, Canadian studies, film, communications, literature, and cultural studies.

To many, the North is a familiar but inaccessible place. Yet images of the region are within easy reach, in magazine racks, on our coffee tables, and on television, computer, and movie screens. In Northern Exposures, Peter Geller uncovers the history behind these popular conceptions of the Canadian North.

Image and Inscription features the work of many of Canada’s distinguished authors, critics, curators, and artists who are recognized for their contribution to the discourse and practice of photography... it presents the diversity and the changeable milieu of photographic practice and evokes an unanticipated moment in Canadian photography. It also represents an important step in expanding the contemporary authorship on photography in Canada." - adapted from the Introduction by Robert Bean

This fifth and final volume in the series dedicated to the National Gallery of Canada's immense photography collection documents the emergence of the medium as a recognized artistic discipline in Canada. The creation and growth of this unique collection reflects the enormous development in the practice, collection and display of photography over the latter half of the 20th century. Prior to this time, government institutions, commercial establishments and the legal, medical and journalism professions prized it for its documentary value. As a result, photographs rarely entered the collections of major institutions. This changed in the 1960s when art became more vigorous and dynamic. Photography especially articulated probing, contentious ideas of art, the artist, identity, sexuality and community. Art institutions, themselves undergoing radical transformation, acted as an interface between artist and public, and attempted to articulate movements and trends in art and photography. With dozens of full-page plates each accompanied by an individual abstract, the publication offers a scholarly essay providing artistic, cultural and historical context. Artists featured include those at the forefront of the changes in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as more contemporary figures who continue to push at the limits of the definition of the medium. They include Roy Arden, Raymonde April, Ed Burtnysky, Carol Condé and Karl Beveridge, Evergon, General Idea, Rodney Graham, Angela Grauerholz, Geoffrey James, Suzy Lake, Ken Lum, Gabor Szilasi, N.E. Thing Co, Ian Wallace and Jin-me Yoon.