Notman's World

William Notman was a man of rare talent. Photography was still in its infancy when he opened his first studio--in Montréal--in the late 1850s. He rapidly turned his art, and a budding technology, into a highly successful business. Within five years he was appointed Photographer to the Queen. Not content with doing mere portraiture, he saw photography as a means of documenting history. With the use of props in his studio, composite photographs, and calling on his background as a trained artist, Notman immortalized the people and places of Canada. But this film goes beyond the re-creation of the past to question how photographs shape our sense of history.