MediaMentor's Photo Blog: How they see us: photo exhibition looks at the history of Canada's image abroad

Friday, February 05, 2010

How they see us: photo exhibition looks at the history of Canada's image abroad

RT @mediamentor: How they see us
http://ow.ly/14vqP
#photo exhibition looks at the history of Canada's image abroad

O Canada runs at the Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto until Feb. 27.

"... My father is English, and I vividly remember that one of the books his family had on its shelves was an essay collection called The Romance of Canada. It featured a skin-wearing fur-trapper on its cover, plodding through a wintry pine forest on snowshoes, his rifle at the ready.

Many of the images in O Canada, a new photo exhibition that runs until Feb. 27, are similarly stereotypical. The bulk of the pictures, on display at the Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto, document the nation's first century, from Confederation to Expo '67. Bulger tracked down historic images in collections around the world, but he hit a mother lode when the New York Times invited him to explore its vast photo archive in Queens. There, among four-million-plus photos, the curator found over 22,000 with Canadian content.

Many of the photos in the show illustrate how Canada grew to be perceived by the rest of the world. Winter is a constant presence, and the Mounties and Niagara also get their close-ups. Some images document the central role aboriginals have played in the nation's story, while others bear witness to the birth of a multicultural society...."