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Northern Exposures: Photographing and Filming the Canadian North, 1920-1945.

Article Excerpt
Peter Geller. Northern Exposures: Photographing and Filming the Canadian North, 1920-1945. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004. 280 pp. $85.00 cloth, $29.96 paper.

The notion that Canada is synonymous with the North is an idea ingrained in the popular imagination. The sublime allure of the frozen landscape has fascinated explorers and tourists, while artists and writers have employed northern imagery to express a unique Canadian sensibility. As such, imaginative constructions of the North have been used as discursive tools to distinguish Canada from the United States. In the nineteenth century, for example, imperialists argued that Canada's cold climate produced a distinctive character that contrasted with that of its southern neighbor.

In recognizing that northern-ness is "an integral part of the Canadian ethos," Peter Geller effectively demonstrates that the North is more than a physical region or a conceptual category but is a visual expression. Northern Exposures reveals how, in the first half of the twentieth...

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