- Title:
- A souvenir from the North : images, narratives, and power in the Athabasca-Mackenzie River Basin, 1882-1914
- Creator:
- Dyce, Matt
- Date Created:
- 2006
- Degree Awarded:
- Master of Arts
- Subjects:
- modernity photography power
- Geographical Focus:
- Canada North West Territories
- Supporting Materials:
- n/a
- Description:
- The arrival of photography in Canada during the mid nineteenth century parallels the emergence of a conceptual backdrop: ‘modernity,” which many historians have employed in explaining major changes occurring then in Western culture and society. As photography’s unchallenged ability to convey reality altered visual culture and modernized ‘ways of secing,” developments in Canada revolved around this new and unfolding power of representation. Representation holds that the objective truth of an image will always be hidden behind what the photographer intended and also includes the theoretical framework within which an image may be read or ‘decoded’ by a viewer. In examining the cultural and historical currency possessed by visual reproductions, this study will show how cultural meaning is derived, negotiated and reciprocated through the outcomes and uses of photographic production and reproduction. The purpose of this thesis is to identify, question and analyze photographic practice and representation in the river system comprising the ‘Far North’ part of the North-West Territories. I examine the period from 1882 to 1914. These dates respectively mark the points when the first mechanically reproduced images were created of the Athabasca-Mackenzie drainage basin, and when the commercial photographs made of that river system by C.W. Mathers reached their recirculatory zenith. C.W. Mathers created a set of commercial photographs of the Far North in 1901, and the series is placed at the centre of this study. In suggesting his images were ‘recirculating,’ I not only mean that more of Mathers’ photographs were in material circulation than at any other time, but that the power-knowledge complexes coupled with his images reached a zenith as well. I ask how Mathers’ images can explain the confluence of colonialism, modernity and photography in the North, employing an analysis of geographical imaginations of time and space scholars have conceptualized as a metropolitan(city)-frontier(hinterland) relationship.
Source
- Preferred Citation:
- Dyce, Matt. 2006. "A souvenir from the North : images, narratives, and power in the Athabasca-Mackenzie River Basin, 1882-1914", Department of History, Carleton University
- Link to this page:
- https://cuhistory.github.io/grads/items/hist_143.html
Rights
- Rights:
- Copyright the author, all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.