"Speaking of Photography Lecture Series" - Carol Payne

The National Film Board of Canada's Still Photography Division was the country's official photographer during the mid twentieth century producing a governmentally endorsed portrait of the nation, an 'official picture' of Canada. Though long overshadowed by the NFB's cinematic productions, Division photographers shot some of this country's most dynamic media photographs of the time. In images of WWII munitions workers, the country's dramatic scenery, and in thousands of portraits of Canadians, the Division sought to foster a sense of national cohesion. Millions of Canadians (and international audiences) saw Division photographs in newspapers, magazines, and the Board's own books, exhibitions, and filmstrips. Carol Payne's lecture will introduce this long neglected agency, recounting the story of the Still Photography Division's role in Canadian nation building during the Second World War and the two decades that followed. At the same time, looking back over the Division's history provides an opportunity to consider where the history of photography in Canada stands today.

Carol Payne is Associate Professor of Art History at Carleton University and a research associate of the university's Public History program. In addition to "The Official Picture", she is coeditor with Andrea Kunard of The Cultural Work of Photography in Canada (MQUP, 2011) and author of numerous essays on photography, from the historic to the contemporary. She is currently principal investigator of the photo-based oral history project Views from the North, a collaboration with the Ottawa-based Inuit school Nunavut Sivuniksavut, Library and Archives Canada, and Carleton University's Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre.

Lectures are free and open to the public

Friday, 1 November 2013, at 18:30

Lectures are held in EV-1.605
The York Amphitheatre (on the ground floor)
Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Complex
1515 Ste-Catherine Street West. Metro Guy-Concordia.

This lecture, co-sponsored by McGill-Queen's University Press, also marks the release of Carol Payne's book, The Official Picture: The National Film Board of Canada's Still Photography Division and the Image of Canada, 1941-1971.

The series is made possible by the generosity of an anonymous donor, with additional support from the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art; the Concordia University Research Chair in Art History; members of the Art History Graduate Students Association; Ciel Variable magazine; Château Versailles Hotel; and other interested sponsors.