A History of Photography in Canada, Volume 1 : Anticipation to Participation, 1839-1918

From early reports of the invention to its wide application during World War I, the idea of photography created anticipation and participation in the modern world.The first volume of A History of Photography in Canada captures this phenomenon by looking at hundreds of photographs generated in and about Canada-in-the-making and by listening to the chords they struck in the collective imagination. Emphasizing technological readiness and cultural eagerness for the medium, Martha Langford shows how photography served ideals of progress and improvement as Canada’s settler society looked to master the world by seizing its visible traces.The imposition of these programs on Indigenous Peoples and indentured labourers is confronted throughout this volume, which offers both narratives and counternarratives of subjectification.Reproducing images of people, places, events, and objects from the unceded territories of the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis, from British North America, and from the Domi