Confederacy, Turtle Clan of the Kanien’kehaka,
from the Six Nations Reserve.
These photographers participated in an impor-
tant exhibition,Emergence from the Shadow: First
Peoples’ Photographic Perspectives, held in 1999 at
the Art Gallery of the First Peoples Hall of the
Canadian Museum of Civilization.
Created in 1939, the National Film Board of
Canada (NFB), a governmental institution that spe-
cialized in short films, documentaries, animation,
and experimental films, has had an extraordinary
impact upon the development photography in
Canada as well as making Canada an important
center internationally in filmmaking. Although pri-
marily an organization to support filmmaking,
many innovations came from the various important
NFB directors including Norman McLaren, Michel
Brault, and Claude Jutra. A documentary directed
by Jean-Claude Labrecque,60 Cycles(1965), for
instance, was the first film to use a 1,000-mm lens
in an opening shot that remains famous: a group of
cyclists is shown riding towards the camera with the
impression that they are not even moving due to the
long focal length of this particular lens.
The most original contribution from Canadian
filmmakers to the world history of motion pictures
was certainly the creation of ‘‘Cine ́ma direct’’ at
the end of the 1950’s, which had an influence on U.
S. and European documentary directors such as
Don Alan Pennebaker and Jean Rouch. Among
these cameramen was Michel Brault, who bor-
rowed the spontaneous approach of Henri Car-
tier-Bresson when filming. Brault is known for his
use of wide-angle lenses in lieu of shooting from a
distance. Among his best examples areLes Raquet-
teurs(co-directed with Gilles Groulx, 1958) and
Pour la suite du monde (co-directed with Pierre
Perrault, 1963). Brault’s aesthetic innovation hel-
ped assure a place for francophone directors at the
NFB, something that had been more or less denied
before 1960, although French-speaking directors
were required to submit their projects in English
until the mid-sixties.
Through the following decades, those associated
with the NFB pursued various explorations into
documentary, animation, and some fiction as
well, sometimes mixing genres in a single film.J.
A. Martin photographe(1976)—a feature film that
pays tribute to the itinerant photographers who
historically traveled to isolated villages, or to fac-
tories and hotels, to do portraits of groups, work-
ers, families, and individuals—may have been
inspired by a photographer from Nicolet, Que ́bec,
named Philias Coulombe. Directed by Jean Beau-
din from a script by Marcel Sabourin (who also
played the leading role), it was produced by the
National Film Board of Canada and gained actress
Monique Mercure (who played the photographer’s
wife) a prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
A unique organization, the National Film Board
of Canada has contributed to the creation and
conservation of some of the most important collec-
tions of images of Canada. Today, a part of that
visual heritage is held at the Canadian Museum of
Contemporary Photography in Ottawa.
During the two world conflicts in twentieth cen-
tury, Canada participated along with England and
the Allies, and war photography is therefore an
important portion of the archives kept by the
Canadian Army and veterans. Many cameramen
from the National Film Board of Canada were
sent abroad to film stock footage for newsreels.
The War Museum in Ottawa owns an extensive
collection of such materials. A 1973 exhibition
catalogue, Relentless Verit: Canadian Military
Photographers Since 1885edited by Peter Robert-
son traces a history of Canadian involvement in
various actions and wars through the eyes of sol-
dier-photographers, beginning with a documenta-
tion of the troops of the Yukon Field Force
embarking for Klondike in 1898. The Canadian
presence during the South African War in Durban
in 1902 as photographed by Henry Joseph Wood-
side (1858–1929) is featured along with photo-
graphs of Canadian soldiers and peacekeepers on
the battlefields in Belgium, France and elsewhere
in 1917 during World War I and during the World
War II years.
Compared to other countries, relatively few
books showing the Canadian landscape and
urbanscape were published prior to the 1980s.
That genre emerged and blossomed when photo-
graphers sought to publish the photographs that
they exhibited in galleries and Canadian embas-
sies. Mia and Klaus glorified various natural sites
in a series of books, such asCanada(Mia & Klaus,
with Roch Carrier, 1986). Eugen Kedl produced
many photography books focusing on Canadian
cities and heritage. Known for his ability to catch
the sunlight at dawn, photographer Claudel Huot
took hundreds of images from Que ́bec City over
several decades in which he magnified the lateral
lightning of sunrise on urban walls. One of his
most striking books, Que ́bec, ville de lumie`res
(with a text by Michel Lessard), was published in
French and English. Toronto-born artist BillCANADA, PHOTOGRAPHY IN