This lavish and unique five-volume photograph album records a hunting trip to the Canadian Rockies in 1916-17. Each photograph in the album is hand-tinted with watercolours and mounted on its own page. The album's large and heavy pages provide a generous frame for each picture, creating a setting that would be appropriate for an original work of art.
The album belonged to Cleveland millionaire Kenyon Vickers Painter.The album also contains some surprises. Three loose photographs found among the album’s pages offer views of Mount Robson. Look closely. In each print, a man sits at an easel in the foreground, dwarfed by the size of the mountain while painting the scenery around him. Paint has also been applied to the surface of the photographs in an apparent effort to transform these documentary prints into works of art.
This album was assembled by a man named R. C. W. Lett, who is described in the album’s pages as a “colonization agent” of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. The album thus makes visible and explicit the ways that photography was used as a tool of colonization.
The album also contains some surprises. Three loose photographs found among the album’s pages offer views of Mount Robson. Look closely. In each print, a man sits at an easel in the foreground, dwarfed by the size of the mountain while painting the scenery around him. Paint has also been applied to the surface of the photographs in an apparent effort to transform these documentary prints into works of art.
Photographs like these ones played a role in shaping the ways that the Canadian West was imagined, and provide a good example of what photo historian Joan Schwartz calls "imagined geographies." This album turns the spaces of Canada into an imagined place—and, for the specific purposes of this album—one that was intended to please investors in the railway.
As you consider the kind of “imagined geographies” that these photographs both build on and contribute to, consider additional souvenir albums of the Western Canadian landscape included in this exhibition. What arguments do these photographs make and how do they encourage us to imagine and remember these places?
This album forms part of the Prairie Roots Collection at Bruce Peel Special Collections, supported by the Prairie Roots Endowment Fund (gift of Ralph and Gay Young).
Photographs like these ones played a role in shaping the ways that the Canadian West was imagined, and provide a good example of what photo historian Joan Schwartz calls "imagined geographies." This album turns the spaces of Canada into an imagined place—and, for the specific purposes of this album—one that was intended to please investors in the railway.
As you consider the kind of “imagined geographies” that these photographs both build on and contribute to, consider additional souvenir albums of the Western Canadian landscape included in this exhibition. What arguments do these photographs make and how do they encourage us to imagine and remember these places?
This album forms part of the Prairie Roots Collection at Bruce Peel Special Collections, supported by the Prairie Roots Endowment Fund (gift of Ralph and Gay Young).