PORTRAIT OF A PERIOD
A Collection of William Notman Photographs 1856-1915
McGill University Press, 1967
Vancouver 1949-62
Montreal
New York & New Haven
Vancouver Redux
News & Notes

Description: Edited by J. Russell Harper and Stanley Triggs, with an Introduction by Edgar Andrew Collard. Folio, 266 pp, brown cloth with dustjacket. Reproductions of 174 Notman photographs taken across Canada by William Notman, chosen from the McCord Museum's collection at McGill of over 400,000 glass plates.

"We thought it would be a great 1967 centennial project, for which the Federal government was liberally dispensing funds, but they never gave us a cent. The press went ahead anyway, and Claus Unterberger made the most incredibly faithful reproductions of the photographs one could ever hope for, holding every nuance of detail by exposing his film direct from the glass plates. Making photographic prints for reproduction was impossible, because modern-day photographic papers are so contrasty that they won't hold the subtle grey scales Notman got in his 'primitive' egg-albumen plates. We used the 'double dot' process for printing photographs for the first time in Canada, and it was a triumph. The photographic reproduction of Notman's photographs is marvellous, and I still thrill when I look at them."
Excerpt from Reid's Leaves (Heavenly Monkey, 2001). Reprinted with permission.

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