Their clothes are often ragged, their beards wild and bushy. But most unforgettable are the eyes; they shine with optimism, daring and a disquieting intensity.
These are the fortune hunters, the men who headed west to the 1848 California Gold Rush. Their images were captured by various photographers in daguerreotypes, a new photographic process at the time.
Those amazingly preserved images now appear in a rogues’ gallery of a book called Gold and Silver, which accompanies an exhibition of the same name, on view until April 2 at the National Gallery of Canada. The book was authored by Luce Lebart, director of the Canadian Photography Institute, a branch of the gallery. The exhibition also includes a few Klondike Gold Rush photos taken half a century later in Yukon.
The California daguerreotypes were part of a donation of 11,000 images and objects to the photography institute in 2016 from the Archives of Modern Conflict, a London-based organization that maintains a vast lens-based collection.
Gold and Silver is just one of many recent books on the market (or soon to be) that focus on the art of photography, both historical and contemporary. Another gem, of doorstop proportions, is titled Notman: A Visionary Photographer. It tells the story of William Notman, the Scottish immigrant who opened a photography studio in Montreal in 1856 and became Canada’s first internationally known photographer, creating dazzling portraits of Montreal’s rich elite. The Notman firm also sent photographers west to capture turn-of-the-century images of a small, dusty town called Calgary and sweeping vistas of the Banff area.
An exhibition of Notman’s work was shown earlier this year at Montreal’s McCord Museum. A national tour is planned. Finalized so far is a stop next fall at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Que.
Notman’s photographs of Montreal matrons in ball gowns are a stark contrast to the hardscrabble life found in turn-of-the-century Saskatchewan. Those images – 175 of them – can be found in The Homesteaders: From Confederation to the Great War, a planned September publication by the University of Regina Press. The author is sociologist Sandra Rollings-Magnusson. “In The Homesteaders, settlers speak of their early days in their own voices – a treasure trove of first-hand accounts collected by the Saskatchewan Archives,” says the publisher.
From the University of Manitoba Press, already in circulation, is The North End Revisited, photographs of this famous (and infamous) Winnipeg melting pot of a neighbourhood by John Paskievich. This book adds 80 new photographs to Paskievich’s initial 2007 publication, The North End.
In Calgary, the Glenbow is planning a photography exhibition that’s sure to be a crowd pleaser. Frida Kahlo: Her Photos will run from Feb. 3 to May 20, the first time the internationally touring show has been shown in Canada. An accompanying book of the same name published in Latin America contains dozens of candid shots of the iconic Mexican painter, along with her friends and family, gleaned from the artist’s private collection of 6,000 photos dating back to the first half of the 20th century.
Other photography books worth checking out:
- Fred Herzog: Modern Color, published last February in Germany by Hatje Cantz, this comprehensive look at the work of the notable Vancouver photographer, was reviewed favourably this month in the New York Times.
- Yes Yes We’re Magicians, a quirky collection of vintage photographs mostly found on eBay and assembled by Canadian photographer Jonah Samson, is co-published by Vancouver’s Polygon Gallery and Figure 1 Publishing.
- On the Road with Mike Drew: Collected Photographs and Stories from Central and Southern Alberta shows work from one of the province’s better-known photojournalists and was published by Victoria-based Rocky Mountain Books.
- Also from Rocky Mountain Books, Seeking Stillness is a collection of contemporary photographs from Alberta and beyond by Calgary-based photographer Olivier Du Tré.
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