Description
Book SynopsisRare 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.
Colleen Skidmore surveys the professional lives and photographs of nearly eighty women studio portraitists, travel documentarians, photojournalists, fine artists, hobbyists, and photographic printers from Lucy Maude Montgomery on Prince Edward Island to Élise Livernois in Quebec City, and from Margaret Bourke-White in the Arctic to Hannah Maynard on Vancouver Island.
Why women? Why not women? Presenting the exceptional range and impact of their work, Rare Meri
Trade Review
"Fletcher’s story opens Rare Merit and skillfully articulates Skidmore’s main thesis: women’s histories are central to the medium, and women played a significant role in the development of Canadian photography."
-- Siobhan Angus * Technology and Culture, vol. 64. no. 4 *
Table of Contents
Introduction
1 The Daguerreans, 1841–61
2 The Livernois Studio, 1854–74
3 Notman’s Printing Room, 1860–80
4 The Maynard Studio, 1862–1912
5 The Moodie Studio, 1895–1905
6 Travel, Photography, and Photojournalism, 1872–1940
7 Commercial Studio Photographers, 1860–1940
8 Artists and Amateurs, 1890–1940
Conclusion
Notes; Selected Bibliography; List of Illustrations; Index
