Product Description

In "Faking Death" Penny Cousineau-Levine examines the work of over 120 Canadian photographers, revealing important aspects of Canadian identity and imagination. Contrasting Canadian photography with American and European traditions, she shows that Canadian photographers are often preoccupied with a place that is "elsewhere," a doubling and duality that also occurs in Canadian literature, film, and political life. Subverting the documentary tradition and other stylistic idioms for their own distinctive ends, Canadian photographers exhibit an ambivalent preoccupation with death and dying, bondage, and entrapment. Cousineau-Levine argues that this is characteristically a 'faked' death that expresses a collective Canadian wish for a symbolic passage to national maturity."Faking Death" includes 16 colour reproductions and 150 duotones by artists such as Raymonde April, Jeff Wall, Lynne Cohen, Charles Gagnon, Evergon, Michel Lambeth, Thaddeus Holownia, Geoffrey James, Genevieve Cadieux, Shelley Niro, Diana Thorneycroft, Jin-me Yoon, Ian Wallace, and Ken Lum. By bringing together this many Canadian works, "Faking Death" provides a compelling visual introduction to one of Canada's most vibrant and internationally recognized artistic media. It is an invaluable tool for curators, artists, teachers, students, and scholars in art history, fine arts, Canadian studies, film, communications, literature, and cultural studies.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5985 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-10
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.85 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
'"How refreshing to stumble on Penny Cousineau-Levine's wonderful Faking Death, a thorough and entertaining study of that least (or, until I read this book, formerly least) entertaining subject, Canadian high art photography ... In a handful of lucid, cleanly written chapters, each dappled with enough well-researched and perfectly placed examples and samples to choke a national museum, Cousineau-Levine convincingly charts a cohesive strategy for reading Canadian art photography as both peculiar, indeed delicious cultural phenomenon and an exciting, internationally valuable achievement." R.M. Vaughan, National Post "The narratives of displacement, dislocation, ambivalence and fear that haunt Couineau-Levine's text are productive and pertinent tools with which to begin unpacking the intended and subconscious meanings of contemporary art photography."--The Art Book, September 2004

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