Throughout history photographs have been known to depict and represent culture, character, information and ideology. Through specific elements of form, and close scrutiny, photographs are able to give a clearer idea of the bigger picture and provide content and invaluable information that text on its own can’t produce. Carol Payne, a professor of art history at Carleton University wrote an essay in 2012 for the Oxford University Press. This essay focuses specifically on photographic images, Canadian culture, identity and indigenous people. Several arguments and ideas are brought up relating to these topics. Her thesis in particular is to see how an image can present a sense of national identity (Carol Payne 310). She supports and discusses …show more content…
Carol states that photos can create a historical stamp in time and that they can reflect culture of the time period of which they were taken. This is why it was one of the most influential devices of the nineteenth century. It was stated that the camera introduced the idea of positivism. This was the idea that experimental investigation and observation are the only sources of knowledge. What this means is that the camera was able to provide valuable information to the viewer, whether it be about culture, a person, or significant event. Viewers in the nineteenth century believed that photographs conveyed a kind of realism that exceeded the human eye. I believe what Carol was trying to say is that photography in the nineteenth century was successful in providing an honest, informative and realistic representation. She uses John A. McDonald as an example of the camera creating an accurate depiction of identity. She states that the way he is represented in the photograph allowed for people viewing it to quickly understand who he is and what he represented. Carol points out that the portrait of John A. McDonald projects meaning through props and pose. The books indicate intelligence, education and scholarship, and that having his photo taken from a low vantage point emphasizes his height, granting a feeling of respect and worship (Carol Payne …show more content…
Proof is found in the fact that photographic portrayals of first nation people were not absent from the boundary commissions archives. One photograph in particular showed aboriginals bowing their heads looking as though they are in mourning. This symbolizes and depicts the aboriginals as a vanishing race. An aboriginal man named George Littlechild recontextualized historic photos taken by the boundary commissions of aboriginal people. He was part of the ‘sixties scoop’, a group of aboriginal children who were taken from their birth places and placed in non-aboriginal foster families. Littlechild reconstructed his family tree through these old archives. He resisted the governments past visual depictions of dominance by using elements of form to reinscribe the material taken by the boundary commission with aboriginal symbolism, declaring the recovery of family history (Carol Pain
Steckley, J., & Cummins, B. D. (2008). Full circle: Canada's First Nations (2nd ed.). Toronto:
Having such an image before our eyes, often we fail to recognize the message it is trying to display from a certain point of view. Through Clark’s statement, it is evident that a photograph holds a graphic message, which mirrors the representation of our way of thinking with the world sights, which therefore engages other
How can you write about a culture whose history is passed on by oral traditions? Better yet, how can you comprehend a culture’s past which a dominant society desired to assimilate? These two questions outline the difficulty in understanding the historiography of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. In 2003, Paige Raibmon published her article, “Living on Display: Colonial Visions of Aboriginal Domestic Spaces.” Her work, although focused on Canada’s colonial “notions of domesticity,” presents the role of Aboriginals as performers to European notions of indigenous culture and identity. Early social historians believe that Aboriginals’ place in history is in their interactions with European Jesuits. A decade later, historians argue Aboriginals exemplify a subordinate culture fighting against assimilating and hegemonic forces. More recently, social historical perspective shows Aboriginals as performers of the white-man’s constructed “authentic-Indian.” Obviously, there is disparity between historians’ viewpoints but each decade’s published histories concur with James Opp and John Walsh’s concept of local resistance. Using Raibmon’s paper as a starting point, a chronological examination of select histories reveals an evolving social historiography surrounding historians’ perceptions of Aboriginals’ local resistance attempts.
In the chapter, “The Mirror with a Memory”, the authors, James Davidson and Mark Lytle, describe numerous things that evolved after the civil war, including the life of Jacob Riis, the immigration of new peoples in America, and the evolution of photography. The authors’ purpose in this chapter is to connect the numerous impacts photography had on the past as well as its bringing in today’s age.
...tely acknowledging missing/murdered Aboriginal women. For example, the infamous Pickton murders emphasize the extremity taken by local police forces to mask the violence and exclusion that Aboriginal women have faced. In this case, the perpetrator was the notorious Robert Pickton who became a global figure in mass media as the most atrocious serial killer in Canadian history. Jiwani and Young (2006) identify that when the bodies were discovered on the Pickton farm, many of Aboriginal descent, newspapers and journals were empathetic and seized the chance to illustrate the atrocity and horror of the crime. Yet, altogether the media failed to take advantage of any “opportunities for re-inscribing Aboriginality and relating these women’s experiences of alienation and abuse to systemic issues such as intergenerational trauma and residential schools” (Jiwani & Young 910).
Artistic ideals in Canada are often difficult to combine into one concise understanding given their changing nature. The colonial era as well as the late nineteenth century was significantly shaped by Pastoralism, a style that often depicted paintings of the countryside (Davis 36). The Homer Watson painting, After the Rain in 1883 is a pastoral style that depicts “nature reach[ing] its highest stage of picturesque beauty [that only occurs] when forests [have] been cleared, meadows or fields created or cultivated and farms established” (36). After the Rain shows a farmer’s field, where the land has been cleared of trees following what looks to be a major storm (38). Watson represents early Canada by placing emphasis on a secure, eerily comfortable, agrarian based society in a photographic-like piece of work. Homer Watson believed in his w...
...ndividual subject in the image, and perhaps by putting themselves in their shoes, deepen their understanding of their own autonomy. Once one is able to find the application to themselves, they have successfully filtered the subjectivity of the photographer, and established their own subjectivity towards the image.
Photography has been around for nearly 200 years and has advanced dramatically with the new technology. In 1826, when the first photograph was taken photography was a very basic art form, but soon after photographers figured out how to manipulate their photos. In today’s society, it is almost unheard of to look at photographs that are raw and unedited, but has it always been this way? Dating back to the first photograph in 1826 by Joseph Nicephore Niepce, photography seemed to be raw, but only a few decades after those photographers discovered they could alter their photos to make them more appealing (“Harry Ransom Center”). Over the past 200 years photos of all different subjects have been manipulated through history and technology seems to be the culprit.
The history of Canada’s Aboriginal people is a rich but tumultuous one, rife with conflict, but also full of valuable information we can emulate in our lives. Aboriginal people is the name for the original inhabitants of North America and their descendants. Though it’s unfortunate that Aboriginals, mostly those living on reservations, are seen as drunkards. Able to satisfy all of their material and spiritual needs through resources of the natural world around them. White privilege has negatively impacted Aboriginal peoples living on reservations through oppression, marginalization, and degradation.
Spears, Shandra. "Re-Constructing the Colonizer: Self-representation by First Nations Artists ." ATLANTIS 29.2 (2005): 1 - 18 . Print.
Marilyn Dumont, born in northeastern Alberta in 1955, is a métis writer and educator whose poems have for many years been an inspiration in Canadian literature, giving insight into the struggles of the aboriginal peoples in Canada. Marilyn, in many of her poems, explores the deep feelings of hatred that native peoples feel towards ‘the whites’, otherwise known as the settlers that arrived in the 1600s, or later the Canadian government. These emotions are deep-running, tracing back many years, under which the native peoples have been oppressed physically, culturally, and psychologically to the point where many have given up hope. With her poems, Dumont breaks ties with conventional generalizations through her loud and flamboyant style, ultimately
Schwartz, Donna. “Objective Representation: Photographs as Facts.” Picturing the Past: Media History & Photography. Ed. Bonnie Brennen, Hanno Hardt. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999. 158-181.
...an take better photographs, even while daily activities. Now when people go on walks, they can bring their camera and take pictures of the beauty around them. The deer with her fawns eating the meadow grass, a bench in a park, or a picture of the orange, luminous sunset. The beauty is all around, people just have to go out and snap the picture.
During the 19th century, a great number of revolutionary changes altered forever the face of art and those that produced it. Compared to earlier artistic periods, the art produced in the 19th century was a mixture of restlessness, obsession with progress and novelty, and a ceaseless questioning, testing and challenging of all authority. Old certainties about art gave way to new ones and all traditional values, systems and institutions were subjected to relentless critical analysis. At the same time, discovery and invention proceeded at an astonishing rate and made the once-impossible both possible and actual. But most importantly, old ideas rapidly became obsolete which created an entirely new artistic world highlighted by such extraordinary talents as Vincent Van Gogh, Eugene Delacroix, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Claude Monet. American painting and sculpture came around the age of 19th century. Art originated in Paris and other different European cities. However, it became more popular in United States around 19th century.
Evolution of more than just a Camera? Cameras have documented many events in history that refuse to be forgotten. Some pictures capture life in a different time and captivate us into a moment that seems far away and perhaps mystical. Images can be found from WWI, WWI, and even as far back as the civil war. Not only are the horrors of war captured, but many other memorable moments as well. Many famous moments in celebrity history have also been caught on film, and leaders of our nation have also shared the same