In our latest Summer Research Postcard, we connect with Art History student Charlotte Beyries, whose work alongside Prof. Joan Schwartz focuses on the practice of photography in Canada:
"Charlotte Beyries (just returned from Venice, who will be starting 4th year in the fall, and is planning on doing an M.A. next year) was awarded an Undergraduate Student Summer Research Fellowship (USSRF) and has been working with Professor Joan Schwartz on her SSHRC-funded project 'Picturing "Canada": Photographic Images and Geographical Imaginings in British North America, 1839-1889.' Charlotte has been doing extensive research in provincial archives, online databases and museum collections on mid-nineteenth-century Canadian newspapers in order to establish how, where, why, and by whom photography was embraced as a social practice in Canada."
"Along with this primary source research, Charlotte has collected some notable findings about the visit of the Great Eastern steamship to Quebec city and the excitement it generated amongst the populace that flocked to tour the ship. Pictured below are a series of stereoscopic views by the influential photographer William Notman, who photographed the arrival of the Great Eastern in 1861. A few years later in 1866, the Great Eastern would return to the Americas, bringing with it the first successful transatlantic telegram cable from Liverpool, England to Heart’s Content, Newfoundland."
