Imagining Winnipeg: History through the Photographs of L.B. Foote
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by Esyllt W. Jones
University of Manitoba Press, Winnipeg, 2012. 182 pps., illus., $39.95 paperback
Stories of a rapid rise and an equally dramatic fall have long shaped both academic and public understanding of Winnipeg’s early history. In the first part of the twentieth century, it is popularly believed that nearly anything was possible in the prairie metropolis.
In Imagining Winnipeg, social historian Esyllt Jones contests this optimistic interpretation of the period through the work of its leading photographer, L.B. Foote. Jones traces the narrative of progress, the coming of white civilization, and commercial expansion in the frontier city through the eyes of an artist who made a living documenting it for the world to see.
On one hand, Foote’s photographs show Winnipeg at its best. He captured many happy memories of the city’s elite taking part in their leisurely pursuits. He even famously photographed Prince Edward and his brother Prince George at the CNR station in 1927.
Other photographs, however, show some of the deepest poverty in the history of Canada. His images grant the modern eye an intimate window into the lives of ordinary people, and his iconic photographs of the Winnipeg General Strike from 1919 are known around the globe.
The Archives of Manitoba’s Foote Collection is invaluable to historians like Jones. Her book marks the first time Foote’s photographs have been put together as the work of a single producer outside the archives.
Imagining Winnipeg is at the same time a coffee-table beauty, a collection of intriguing photographs from a time past, and one of the most creative analyses of this period in Winnipeg’s history since Alan Artibise’s influential books over thirty years ago. It will forever change your impressions of the city.
— Hayley Caldwell (Read bio)
Hayley Caldwell is a University of Winnipeg history student and a former intern at Canada's History Magazine.