REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES GUEST EDITORS • Now and Then The Road to Here DisAppearances on a Highway IMAGINATIONS ANDRIKO LOZOWY & KYLER ZELENY Placing Nostalgia Recalibrating Intimacy Seen and Imagined JOURNAL OF CROSS_CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES | Fragments of Desire Seeing Saskatchewan Poke you in the Heart REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE Leaving to Return Photography as Theory in Action Studies on How to View a Landscape Wood Grain Elevators Border Lines and Crossing Points Publication details, including open access policy and instructions for contributors: http://imaginations.csj.ualberta.ca North By West Editorial Team: Brent Ryan Bellamy, Daniel Laforest, Andriko Lozowy, Tara Milbrandt, Carrie Smith-Prei, Sheena Wilson NORTH BY WEST ISSUE 7-1, 2016 November 23, 2016 To cite this article: To link to this article: Cavaliere, Elizabeth Anne. “Now and Then: Situating Contemporary Photography of http://dx.doi.org/10.17742/IMAGE.NBW.7-1.2 the Canadian West into a Shared Photographic History.” Imaginations 7:1 (2016): Web (date accessed) 14-21. DOI: 10.17742/IMAGE.NBW.7-1.2 The copyright for each article belongs to the author and has been published in this journal under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives 3.0 license that allows others to share for non-commercial purposes the work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal. The content of this article represents the author’s original work and any third-party content, either image or text, has been included under the Fair Dealing exception in the Canadian Copyright Act, or the author has provided the required publication permissions. NOW AND THEN: SITUATING CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY OF THE CANADIAN WEST INTO A SHARED PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY ELIZABETH ANNE CAVALIERE Résumé Abstract La photographie a une place importante, contemporaine et Photography has played an important role, both contemporary historique, dans les visions de mise en forme, dans l’élaboration and historical, in shaping visions, understandings, and de visions, compréhensions, et expériences de l’Ouest canadien. experiences of the Canadian West. The varied uses of early Les utilisations variées des premières photographies de l’Ouest, photographs of the West, circulated in a moment of national circulé dans un moment de la conscience nationale provoquée consciousness brought on by Confederation, shaped the par la Confédération, ont façonné l’imaginaire collectif collective Canadian imagination. Contemporary artists canadien. Artistes contemporains sont encore influencés and scholars continue to be influenced by many of the par un grand nombre des mêmes idées qui émergent en ce same ideas that emerged in this early moment of Canadian moment au début de l’histoire canadienne, à un moment history, when both country and medium developed alongside que le pays et la photographie développer ensemble. Thèmes one another. Themes of exploration, identity, colonialism, de l’exploration, l’identité, le colonialisme, le règlement, le settlement, tourism, natural resource, industry, and ecology tourisme, les ressources naturelles, l’industrie, et l’écologie find as much resonance in historical photographs in archival sont résonnant dans les photographies historiques maintenant and museological collections as they do in contemporary continues dans des collections d’archives et de musées comme photography and critical discourse. This essay bridges dans les photographies contemporaines et l’écriture de celui-ci. historical themes and archival pieces with the images of Cet essai relie des thèmes historiques et œuvres d’archives avec contemporary photographers working in western Canada le travail de photographes contemporains travaillant dans today, whose photographs are featured in this issue. This essay l’Ouest du Canada aujourd’hui, et qui est présentée dans ce sets the historical framework that endures in themes that journal. Cet essai se développe l’histoire qui persiste dans les contemporary photographers explore and also links the artists thèmes que les photographes contemporains explorent dans featured in this issue into a shared visual history. leur travail, et servir comme un lien entre les artistes présentés dans ce journal dans une histoire visuelle commune. hotography has played an important role, both contemporary and historical, in shap- ing visions, understandings, and experiences of the Canadian West. Shortly after the rivalrous invention of photography in France and Britain in 1839, explorers and Pitinerant photographers produced the first photographs of Manitoba and Saskatchewan’s Fig. 1. The Prairie Looking West, 1858. expansive prairies and, by the 1850s and 1860s, Alberta and British Columbia’s Rocky DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.17742/IMAGE.NBW.7-1.2 ELIZABETH ANNE CAVALIERE Mountain range. This moment in the mid- resonance in the historical photographs now a silver-coated copper plate to dangerous 19th century is a particularly poignant one, held in archival and museological collections as mercury vapours producing a singular, highly bringing together a nascent photographic they do in the contemporary photographs and detailed and sharp image—discouraged the use medium with the exploration and coming essays in journals such as Imaginations. While by of photography on survey expeditions for nearly together of Canada as a new nation. Both no means a comprehensive history of Canadian two decades after the medium’s invention. photography, this essay will work to bridge However, the collodion wet-plate process used by settlers and the colonial government of historical themes and photographs with the photographers such as Hime had the advantage British North America, soon to be the work of contemporary artists photographing the of the clarity of a daguerreotype combined with Canadian government after Confederation Canadian West. By setting a historical framework, the reproducibility of a calotype—a paper-based in 1867, were keen to tap into the I hope to develop an ongoing dialogue between process that produced a less crisp but reproducible possibilities that lay westwards, motivated the historic and the contemporary, as well as to negative—and a newfound portability in the by the gold rush and natural resources of situate the artists featured in this journal into a durable glass plates. Additionally, the exposure the northwest; the potential for colonial shared photographic history. times for the collodion wet-plate process were shortened significantly from that of the expansion and settlement in the prairies; One of the earliest uses of photography in the threat of advancement northward daguerreotype, broadening the range and clarity Canada was in the exploration of land. In of photographic subjects. These technological from the United States; a quickly expiring 1858, Humphrey Lloyd Hime was the first milestones were paramount in photography’s hold on the interior by the Hudson Bay photographer in Canada to be attached to a use in the geological and topographical Company; and the British imperialist drive governmental exploratory survey. Photographs documentation of the Canadian West during to gain access to the Pacific. produced during the survey, such as his Prairie the 19th century. Photographs were used by Looking West (fig. 1), have become iconic early surveyors, scientists, engineers, government Contemporary artists and scholars continue to images of the Canadian interior, both in their officials, and even amateur naturalists as a way to be influenced by many of the same ideas that moment and ours, for their ability to describe the inventory and process the land and its contents emerged in this early moment of Canadian land physically (in this case flat and expansive in visually.2 As documentation, photographs history, when both country and medium every direction) as well as to shape an ideological contributed to the delineation of physical developed alongside one another. Themes of understanding of the prairie land as empty and boundaries between Canada and the United exploration, identity, colonialism, settlement, ready for settlement.1 The complexity, bulkiness, States as well as to the shaping of a concept of tourism, natural resource, industry, and and danger of early photographic processes, national consciousness through the claiming ecology—to name only a few—find as much such as the daguerreotype—made by exposing of place. ISSUE 7-1, 2016 · 15 NOW AND THEN: SITUATING CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY OF THE CANADIAN WEST INTO A SHARED PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY he scientific and documentary function of photography The establishment of borders throughout Canadian history continued to grow throughout the 19th and 20th centuries physically defined a nation and at the same time brought the with, for example, developments in aerial photography resources contained within those borders under national Tand photogrammetry. The precision and perceived objective control. Natural resources, from trees to water to prairie, and nature of the photograph made it an invaluable tool in the infrastructure, notably the transcontinental Canadian Pacific measurement and collection of data about the land. However, Railway (CPR) completed in 1885, transported resources eastward the mapping, documenting, and inventorying of the Canadian and settlers westward. Logging and mining camps, bridges, West is not exclusive to official governmental and military railroads, steamships, and machinery are frequent subjects