Group Portrait

This group portrait, printed on albumen paper, was taken inside the first Chinese church in Victoria, BC. The act of taking group portraits like this one and the sharing of the resulting prints may have contributed to the construction of collective cultural identities in turn-of-the-century Victoria. The black page on which the photograph is mounted suggests that the picture was originally included in an album, but it now stands on its own within Bruce Peel Special Collections as part of the Chinese Experience in Canada Collection.

Other examples of group portraits in the exhibition include a portrait of plumbers and steamfitters, and a portrait of a graduating class.