Magicians of Light: Photographs from the Collection of the National Gallery of Canada

Alan Thomas is a professor of English at the University of Toronto.

This book of photographs and essays, a large and beautifully produced
work in itself, stems from an exhibition presented by Ottawa’s
National Gallery of Canada. The exhibition was evidently designed to
display the nature and quality of the collection after its first 25
years; this book stands as a testament to its richness. Following its
mandate to collect the international history of photography, the
National Gallery has sought out work by many of the major figures of the
last 150 years to provide a broad survey. That duty has been met, and
scenes and faces familiar to enthusiasts of historical photography rise
up to greet the reader: Sebastapol by Fenton, the Paris street urchins
of Negre, and Alexander Gardner’s sad views of Gettysburg. Born again
are images of Niagara Falls in daguerreotype, ancient Egyptian palaces
as seen by Du Camp, and Alice Liddell posed by Julia Cameron. The
collection travels predictably toward the modern era through Emerson,
Weston, Stelchen, Kasebier, and Stieglitz, and delivers “from our own
time” the work of Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, John Coplans, and others,
including Ottawa’s own Yousuf Karsh. There are also many anonymous and
little-known photographs that fill in the spaces between the celebrated
works.

The most recent works do not carry the same interest as the earlier,
but of course it is the miraculous quality of recovery, of bringing back
the actual aspect of past life and real persons, that makes photography
so powerfully affecting a medium. For each of these full-page
photographs (233 in number) an accompanying critique, written by James
Borcoman, the curator, presents the historical and artistic context in a
pleasant and commandingly informative manner—though the essays suggest
the deficit in photography’s critical vocabulary that Borcoman himself
acknowledges in the introduction; the filling of this gap is necessary
to the development of academic studies in the field. Generally, the
arrangement of the book follows the march of history; readers will find
it a thoroughly pleasing and stimulating journey.