The Official Picture Lecture for CU in the City

Ottawa Public Library, Sunnyside Branch, 1049 Bank St, Ottawa, ON K1S 3W9
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Carleton University's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences invites you to attend the spring 2014 edition of CU in the City with author Carol Payne, who will discuss the findings of her new book, The Official Picture.

Register for this free event here.

Click here for event details

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In The Official Picture, Carol Payne argues that the Still Photography Division played a significant role in Canadian nation-building during WWII and the two decades that followed. Payne examines key images, themes, and periods in the Division's history - including the depiction of women munitions workers, landscape photography in the 1950s and 60s, and portraits of Canadians during the Centennial in 1967 - to demonstrate how abstract concepts of nationhood and citizenship, as well as attitudes toward gender, class, linguistic identity, and conceptions of race were reproduced in photographs. The Official Picture looks closely at the work of many Division photographers from staff members Chris Lund and Gar Lunney during the 1940s and 1950s to the expressive documentary photography of Michel Lambeth, Michael Semak, and Pierre Gaudard, in the 1960s and after. The Division also produced a substantial body of Northern imagery documenting Inuit and Native peoples. Payne details how Inuit groups have turned to the archive in recent years in an effort to reaffirm their own cultural identity.

For decades, the Still Photography Division served as the country’s image bank, producing a government-endorsed "official picture" of Canada. A rich archival study, The Official Picture brings the history of the Division, long overshadowed by the Board's cinematic divisions, to light.