by Jonathan Scotland
University of Western Ontario
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Esyllt W. Jones, Imagining Winnipeg: History Through the Photographs of L. B. Foote. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2012, 154 pages. ISBN 978-0-88755-735-4, $39.95 (paperback)
L. B. Foote was one of Winnipeg’s most influential chroniclers. His photographs of the city’s growth into a prairie metropolis, of its infamous north end, and of the labour strife resulting in the 1919 General Strike have shaped our historical impressions of the city. We know very little about Foote himself. But, whatever his intentions or motivations, it is striking how his career paralleled that of the city he photographed.
Beginning in the early years of the 1900s and continuing into the 1950s Foote produced over 2,000 images, now housed at the Archives of Manitoba. These images capture a remarkable spectrum of life―from political rallies, industrial construction, and rural life, to leisure and family gatherings. The photographs were made in all seasons and cut across class lines. Yet, despite the length of his career and variety of subject matter, Foote’s visual legacy is defined by his earliest images, especially those depicting the living and working conditions in the years leading up to 1919.
With Imagining Winnipeg, Esyllt Jones seeks to redefine how we understand Foote’s photographs. Through an introductory essay and 150 carefully selected images, Jones challenges past interpretations of Foote’s work. In place of a pre-1920 focus, she argues that Foote’s later photos need to be integrated into the historical record of his most iconic images. By considering Foote’s historical place within his entire corpus of work, this book raises important questions about the nature of photographs as evidence, the problems of placing them in historical context, and our own responsibilities as audience of the images.
The reproductions of the photographs themselves are very good, and the production quality of the book is high. Each page contains a stand-alone plate, uncluttered by text save for caption and archival reference. Of the included images, eighty-four were made after 1919. These are loosely organized by theme and chronologically. Although the images unfortunately lack an index, Jones’ essay does include references to nearly half. In the essay itself Jones deftly weaves Foote’s biography, drawing in part on his unpublished memoirs, with a more personal reflection on her interaction with photography as history. This will appeal to photographers and historians alike. For those interested in the technical side of Foote’s photography, there is less material. Jones notes that the Archives of Manitoba contains little information about how Foote worked. Still, it would be nice to have more information on Foote’s methodology and equipment, or at least more explanation of how or why this information has not survived.
The focus of the book is clearly Foote’s photographs, especially their place in Winnipeg’s history and their use in conflicting narratives of city’s past. Jones tackles each in a discussion of race, the photos’ role as evidence (for social reformers and social historians alike), and Foote’s relation to labour and capital. The power of Foote’s work rests in his uncanny ability to speak to audiences across time and place. Contemporaries embraced the photographs because of Foote’s ability to mimic their own worldviews. If social reformers wanted to exploit the north end, Foote’s images could do so, but he was equally capable of depicting the power of industrial development. This chameleon-like nature has obscured Foote’s own intentions, but it has ensured his work’s continued appeal. All sides of historical debate, for example, readily utilize his images of the Winnipeg General Strike illustrating the complex role of photographs as visual evidence in history.
How to explain Foote’s longevity? For Jones the answer lies in the way we utilize images in history. These photos cannot “provide a clear window into the past,” but their subject matter rarely asks us to (p. xxiii). Instead, Foote’s continued appeal is his work’s enigmatic quality which forces audiences to “consider the lives lived in front of his lense [sic],” lives which reveal their individuality in ways that eschew prescribed narratives (p. xxiii).
Understanding Foote’s appeal does not mean we cannot be critical, and Jones readily interrogates the images’ iconic status. The essay also critiques the ways in which Foote’s work underpins tropes in Winnipeg’s history. Most notably Jones shows how Foote’s photos perpetuated the dismissal of Aboriginal Canadians, reinforcing ideas that Winnipeg, as frontier outpost turned prairie metropolis, typified Canadian “emptiness prior to the arrival of white settler society” (p. xiii).
In a few minor cases these critiques outstretch their evidence. Jones notes, for instance, that one photograph of boy scouts, who appear “physically awkward,” worked to unsettle ideas of scouting masculinity (p. xiv). It is an interesting observation, but unfortunately without evidence. If this image (or others like it) undermined period masculine ideals, it would be helpful to know how. Scouting was about development, and this image could equally be interpreted as one of boys coming into their own. Such lapses do not diminish an otherwise provocative essay, which is at its best delving into Foote’s work over the long durée.
As Jones argues, embracing the post-1920 photographs (which form the bulk of Foote’s work) also forces a reconsideration of traditional stories of Winnipeg’s decline after the General Strike. Foote’s images of largescale building projects (dams, generators, and machines) highlight an emerging “modernist aesthetic” that is entirely out of place in Winnipeg’s declension narratives (p. xx). So, too, are his images of the city’s expanding middle class. About those it is noteworthy that commissioned portraits were a big part of Foote’s business, and that his photographs of marriages form a particularly useful record of an important family ritual.
There is no single reading of what these images mean. Nor should there be. Jones’ take ― which reveals Winnipeggers’ changing lives over a half-century ― is a compelling reminder that peoples’ private lives need not correspond to grand historical narratives. Foote made some of his images nearly a century ago. Their power to captivate so many years later is testament both to the quality of his work and to Jones’ re-reading of it. Here’s hoping this excellent collection sparks continued re-readings and reconsiderations of Foote’s work for years to come.
We thank Clara Bachmann for assistance in preparing the online version of this article.
Page revised: 22 March 2020
