StampNews.com is glad to inform that Canada Post continues its celebration of Canada‘s best photographers of the past 150 years with the release of the fourth issue of stamps in a five-year series. This stamp issue includes the work of 7 important Canadian photographers past and present whose imagery has become integral to Canada’s rich photographic mosaic. The bright images for this series were selected by leading curators and gallery owners across the country.
StampNews.com encourages our readers to appreciate these seven bright stamps and their original design.
Michel Campeau explores the obsolescence of the darkroom by focusing on items and objects found in the darkroom environment. This work that is depicted on the first stamps was the subject of a National Gallery Exhibition in 2013. Campeau was the winner of the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography for 2010, and a founding member of the Groupe d’action photographique. This collective of Montréal photographers documented the city’s working-class districts.
The second stamp is devoted to Lutz Dille. His gritty but compassionate photographs from the post-war era capture poignant and everyday moments on city streets, including Toronto. He shot largely in black and white and is considered one of the country’s leading documentary photographers.
The third item celebrates Angela Grauerholz who is known for her work on photographic archives, as well as her dense images, addressing notions of memory, space and place. In 2006, the Montréal photographer was awarded Québec’s Prix Paul-Émile-Bordu
as, followed by the Canada Council’s Governor General Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2014, and in 2015 she was the winner the Scotiabank Photography Award.
Byron Harmon that is marked with the fourth stamp of the newly issued series was a charter member of the Alpine Club of Canada and its first official photographer. He captured the grandeur of the Canadian Rockies and the courage of those who explored them in thousands of photographs housed at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies in Banff, Alberta.
Alexander Henderson earned acclaim both for his romantic, pastoral depictions of the Canadian landscape, and photographs of urban life and outdoor activities. He published his first major collection of landscape photographs in 1865, later taking on a series of photographic commissions for Canadian railways. The stamp features a photograph of the Victoria Bridge, Grand Trunk Railway, from c.1878. This bridge was a significant landmark linking Montreal to the South Shore. Spanning 3 kilometers, it was hailed at the time as the 8th Wonder of the World.
Humphrey Lloyd Hime served as a photographer and surveyor on the Canadian government’s 1858 Assiniboine and Saskatchewan Exploring Expedition. The work of this personality is marked with a fifth stamp. He captured striking images of the Red River settlement buildings, Hudson’s Bay Company trading posts and indigenous encampments. As well as being a photographer, Hime was a businessman who would later become the president of the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Yousuf Karsh is honored with the last stamp in the issue. One of the masters of 20th century photography, Karsh saw his subjects in terms of light, shadow and form. His body of work includes portraits of government leaders, artists, musicians, authors and scientists. The photograph of writer and conservationist Archibald Belaney, a British citizen who convinced the world he was ‘Grey Owl’, was made five years before his portrait of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made Karsh an international success.