Favourite Footes at the WFP News Café

Please join UMP at an event focused on Winnipeg’s photographers and filmmakers!

When: Wednesday, October 10, 7:00 pm
Where: Winnipeg Free Press News Café (237 McDermot Avenue)
Cost: FREE

Favourite Footes features Erna Buffie, Colin Corneau, Bob Lower, Ian McCausland, and John Paskievich talking about their favourite Foote photos, accompanied by a slideshow of images from Imagining Winnipeg: History Through the Photographs of L.B. Foote.

The Winnipeg Free Press is also sending photo editor Mike Aporius and photographer Mike Deal to share photos from the WFP’s archives.

Light refreshments will be served.

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About Imagining Winnipeg
In an expanding and socially fractious early twentieth-century Winnipeg, Lewis Benjamin Foote (1873-1957) rose to become the city’s pre-eminent commercial photographer. Documenting everything from royal visits to deep poverty, from the building of the landmark Fort Garry Hotel to the turmoil of the 1919 General Strike, Foote’s photographs have come to be iconic representations of early Winnipeg life. They have been used to illustrate everything from academic histories to posters for rock concerts; they have influenced the work of visual artists, writers, and musicians; and they have represented Winnipeg to the world.

But in Imagining Winnipeg, historian Esyllt W. Jones takes us beyond the iconic to reveal the complex artist behind the lens and the conflicting ways in which his photographs have been used to give credence to diverse and sometimes irreconcilable views of Winnipeg’s past. Incorporating 150 stunning photographs from the more than 2,000 images in the Archives of Manitoba Foote Collection, Imagining Winnipeg challenges our understanding of visual history and the city we thought we knew.

About L.B. Foote
Born in Newfoundland, Lewis Benjamin Foote arrived in Winnipeg in 1902, where he bought a house on Gertrude Avenue and began a career as a professional photographer. For more than 50 years, Foote’s photographs chronicled the development of the city. He was an active photographer until 1947 and died ten years later.

Foresters

Catholic Order of Foresters, c. 1916. Courtesy of the Archives of Manitoba (n165).

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This is the second item on this blog that touches on the Ancient Order of Foresters.

Here's a slightly longer excerpt from Esyllt's introduction to Imagining Winnipeg, which I think gives you a sense of both Foote's early history and of recruitment practices that fraternal orders such as the AOF practiced:

"For a time in PEI, Foote had sold photo coupons to families that they could reimburse at local studios, and he took this up again in Halifax and Dartmouth, selling coupons for sessions at the Cogswell Photo Company. He sold mostly to young military men and their girlfriends, and working-class families. He began to work in a team with a photographer, not in a studio, but at soldiers’ barracks and hangouts, and community events like boat races. At this time, Foote himself was a salesman, not a photographer. He purchased a cylinder phonograph, rigged it up so that twenty-four people could listen to it at once, and charged for the privilege at local fairs all over Nova Scotia. At the same time, he began taking his own photographs, of local churches and their ministers, which he would sell. He also worked as a recruiter for the Order of Foresters, playing his autoharp and hosting entertainment all along the south shore of Nova Scotia, encouraging people to join the Order."

Again, this image came to us courtesy of film editor Bob Lower.

Shooting star

Jimmie Ward's "Shooting Star", 1911. Courtesy of the Archives of Manitoba (n892).

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From the Free Press archives: 

"Heading off the programme and perhaps of the most lively interest will be the aviation performance of George Mestach and Jimmie Ward. Monoplane and biplane will be seen for the first time side by side in the west. Mestach has a French machine, the very one which, driven by Jules Vedrines, took first place in the famous flight from Paris to Madrid last year. Mestach makes his specialty the delivery of letters and parcels and will no doubt oblige those who are desirous of taking advantage of the new mode of quick delivery at the fair. Ward is more of a sensationalist and his "Shooting Star" is a well known machine through the States, where he has electrified the spectators on more than one occasion by his daring." - July 6, 1912 description of the Canadian Industrial exhibition in Winnipeg.

For a more detailed discussion of Ward's history, see the 1995 article in the Minnesota Historical Society's History magazine.

(Born Jens P. Wilson, Ward changed his name to avoid a number of speeding tickets: "His affinity for speed soon caused him to take on a new last name, because his police record for speeding stood in the way of keeping his license.")

Again, this image came to us courtesy of film editor Bob Lower.

Giant horseshoe

Blacksmith with giant horseshoe, 1912. Courtesy of the Archives of Manitoba (n404).

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Lately, we've been talking a LOT about the process of putting together Imagining Winnipeg, but there are thousands of Foote photos that didn't make it into the book.

So we thought we'd share this trio of images that came to us courtesy of film editor Bob Lower.

We couldn't find any more information about the people in this particular photo or the occasion that necessitated a giant horseshoe, but we were able to find advertisements from the same era that mimicked those on the wall behind the...giant horseshoe.

From the Free Press archives:

SNEAK PEEK #7: The Blurb!

In publishing, there's nothing like a good blurb.

They're not so much reviews as recommendations. So it matters who you have blurb something. The person blurbing is saying "You must read this." And if you're a fan of the blurber, that recommendation means something.

As such, we were thrilled when director Guy Maddin agreed to blurb Imagining Winnipeg.

"L.B. Foote's Winnipeg is a boomtown of staggering abundance and meanest privation. His city teems with a mad sense of community—everywhere people, people and more people, throngs of new citizens forever gathering, spilling over, lining up; everyone held rapt and almost intoxicated by grand ceremony, fevered ritual or political upheaval. So much giddy newness plopped down on top of the nations that came before and on the timeless, pristine, soon-to-be-bedevilled plains. Foote honours human, city and prairie alike with his peculiar and ennobling eye." — Guy Maddin, director of My Winnipeg.

Those of you familiar with UMP's books may have noticed that we published a book on Maddin's work, entitled Playing with Memories: Essays on Guy Maddin in 2009.

The collection was edited by David Church, a PhD student at Indiana University, and while it featured many of Maddin's contemporaries and collaborators, Maddin himself wasn't directly involved.

So it's nice to come full circle, first with a book on "the aesthetics and politics behind Maddin's work" and second with a book on the aesthetics and politics behind Foote's work, as blurbed by Maddin.

 I think it's also a great reminder of the influence Foote's images have had - and hopefully will continue to have - on generations of artists.

Ariel Gordon
UMP Promotions/Editorial Assistant

Favourite Foote Photo: Erna Buffie

My grandfather, like these men, was a railway worker and a musician - a machinist and a violinist, to be precise. But you won’t find him in this photograph. I suspect that the color bar of the 1920s was much too powerful an obstruction to allow a white musician to play in a black band, let alone the reverse.

How sad.

And yet I see no sadness in the faces of the porters and musicians in this wonderful Foote photograph. I see only joy, dignity and the same intelligent intensity that I saw on my grandfather’s face, when he held his violin and stared at a camera.

I find myself wondering what tunes this band would have played. "Tiger Rag?" Louis Armstrong's “St James Infirmary?” Maybe "Frankie and Johnny" or the iconic "After You've Gone." Songs that I still love to sing with my family. I also find myself wondering whether or not my grandfather heard these men play at one of their 50 cent matinees or evening concerts at The Dominion Theatre. Did he and his own dance band, like so many other white bands in history, steal songs from the repertoire of these minstrels?

Minstrels. It’s a loaded term when used in this context, and yet it’s original medieval meaning is completely benign – “a singer, musician or poet who traveled from place to place giving performances.” And in that sense, these men and my grandfather were minstrels, traveling performers who, despite the vast divide of racism that separated them, shared at least one thing in common – their love of music.

- Erna Buffie


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An award-winning filmmaker and writer, Erna Buffie lived for twenty years in Montreal, spent seven years in Halifax and returned to her hometown, Winnipeg, in December 2010. Sometimes, when it's -32 in the sun, she asks herself why she returned, but most of the time she's quite happy about it. Her British-born grandfather, George Leach, emigrated to Winnipeg in 1912 and died at the age of 82, when Erna was eleven. She'd give anything to talk to him, even for just a few hours, so she could ask all the questions she had neither the knowledge, nor the inclination to ask, when she was a child. Erna's next documentary, "Smarty Plants: Uncovering the Secret Wolrd of Plant Behaviour" airs Thursday, March 22 on CBC TV's The Nature of Things.

Favourite Foote Photos: Bob Lower

I spent much of the 1970s haunting the Manitoba Archives Photo Collection. As a filmmaker I rarely finish a film without an historical sequence, so through the years I looked at every snap in the drawers, most more than once. Then one day, the photos started haunting me. Specifically, one group of photos and of that one particular image, but I’ll get to that.

When the Foote Collection first showed up it was breathtaking, and not just for the obvious reasons. What made it really special was the quality of the prints. Foote used 8x10 glass negatives for much of his career and the archivists, bless their hearts, made contact 8x10 prints from them, several for each, which were put into the folders for purchase by any passing researcher. Their clarity and immediacy were and are stunning. I couldn’t resist several of these and I still have them. One of my favourites is “Fred Ferguson and his son – 1928.” Father and son stand beside a little Aeronca monoplane and the boy’s proud glee evokes so much of my own plane-crazy childhood, he makes me laugh.

The one that haunts me, however, I haven’t seen for 35 years and more. I found it among Foote’s photos for the coroner, a sad and sordid record of violent and accidental deaths through the decades. Several made me curious about the stories behind them, but one group wouldn’t leave me alone. I think they were from 1930 or 31 and perhaps taken in April, but it could have been late fall. They record a multiple murder-suicide in a poverty-shack farmhouse on a patch of bald prairie...somewhere. The farmer has shot his family and himself. All the images are terribly disturbing but one stands out. It is the thinly clothed body of an unidentifiable woman huddled on the ground many yards from the house. Whether he chased her and killed her there or she crawled out and died of wounds or exposure is unclear but several things about the photo make it unforgettable.

First there is the spot itself. What a lonely, cheerless, exposed spot to spend her last minutes - maybe hours. Hard dry stubble, freezing ground, no shelter from icy wind or stalking brute. Did she lie out here listening to her family die one by one? Or was it all over then but her own slow demise? How awful were her memories if what they led toward was this? What guilt did she feel for her children’s fate? Did she hope and pray for help or had all reason to live left her?

And then there is one more detail in the picture, an element that gives the scene a whole other dimension: in the background of that shot is a car that I remember as a Ford Model A. No other cars or people, just a depression-era sedan stopped in the middle of nowhere.

There is no hint of living presence in any of the photos except this. Suddenly you are aware of another layer of bleak activity taking place. Foote’s assistant, police, coroner’s men, perhaps a neighbour, all digesting this horror first hand out on the chilly, silent prairie, each in his own way aware that this could be his life, his family - or strenuously holding such awareness at bay. And Foote, fastidiously recording every detail on another glass plate.

After about the third time I had reason to be in that collection and found myself riveted, I decided I should have that photo. Along with several others (I seem to recall a group of Tribune delivery boys going to a movie) I put it in my car while I did some downtown shopping. When I came back they were gone. I’ve forgotten the rest after all these years, but I’ve never forgotten that one.

Unless I made the whole thing up.

- Bob Lower


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Bob Lower has been writing, editing and directing films in Winnipeg since 1971, and as such is a walking history of the Winnipeg film community. Drama, documentary, commercials - you name it, he’s got the scars. He is currently working on a film about the National Film Board during the Second World War.

Favourite Foote Photos: John Paskievich

One of my favourite Foote photographs is the one of Princess Elizabeth, now Queen, taken in 1951 on the sidewalk in front of the Canadian Pacific Railway Station and the conjoined Royal Alexandra Hotel on Higgins Ave.

My reasons for especially liking this picture are two-fold; the first is nostalgic and the other is photographic.

Arriving with my family in Winnipeg in 1958 I remember us walking out of the CP station and then heading right on Higgins towards Main St. along the same strip of sidewalk where the photo was taken. However, I can't recall any crowds across the street atop Segal Drugs welcoming our arrival.

Growing up in Point Douglas, my friends and I would spend our Saturdays at one of the many movie theatres that lined Main St. from Higgins to Alexander Ave. To get to Main St. we would often take a short cut through the CP Station and Royal Alec via a little known back entrance located at the foot of Austin St. When we were older we shot pool and got educated in various subjects at the billiards hall in the rear end of the Princess Hotel which was located at about where the Alberta sign is in the Foote picture. I'm wondering if the Princess Hotel was formerly called the Alberta?

The photography that Foote did in the early part of the past century was in the formalist tradition of the time. The subjects were placed firmly in the centre of the frame and looked directly at the lens. The bulky cameras and individual large negatives with slow emulsions weren't conducive to spontaneity either in the photographer or the subject. The more candid shots that Foote took of parades, outdoor celebrations and, most famously, the Winnipeg 1919 Strike were done from a distance where the camera, mounted on a tripod, could be methodically operated with the most efficiency.

When Foote photographed Princess Elizabeth he was at the end of his illustrious career. By then cameras were smaller and films were faster, allowing for more spontaneous photography. Foote's photo of Elizabeth is thoroughly modern in its fortuitous and dynamic arrangement of triangles. The princess and the two uniformed men lead the viewer's eye past the spectators in the roof to the billboard while the motorcade, overhead wires and the drugstore recede into the right side of the frame. Elizabeth's legs, crossed at the ankles, form a delicate triangle that neatly punctuates the picture.

The photograph has the look of a somewhat surreal collage. The princess's posture is so perfectly elegant that it looks like it may have been posed and shot elsewhere and then cut and pasted onto the street scene in Winnipeg. Not knowing who else might be inside the car with the open door and wondering who or what outside the left side of the frame elicited such a lustrous smile from the Princess adds a fine anticipatory tension to the picture.

- John Paskievich


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John Paskievich is a Winnipeg photographer and filmmaker who has yet to get over the savaging of Portage Ave and North Main Street.

Favourite Foote Photos: Jeff McKay

When Laszo Markovics and I were doing our film about L.B. Foote and L.L.FitzGerald we went through hundreds and hundreds of images.

Foote was a commercial photographer but he was had this absolutely out-of-left-field side to his work. He obviously had a real sense of humour, curiousity and theatricality.

Much of his work is so well done, well framed, exposed, executed and there are many photos which spring forth in my mind as favorites.

But this image of the two chickens captured atop a pedestal in front of a lit backdrop at the poultry show is a standout for me.

When I see it I think of the speed in which he worked with the equipment he had at the time.

Glass plates, exposures, and he did a lot of the printing himself.

This particular photo reveals how adept he was with his camera. He was a skilled technician and an artist.

And it's a kooky fun picture. I love it!

- Jeff McKay


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Jeff McKay began making films in 1985. He has worked as a director, editor and cameraman. His films have sold and aired to broadcasters and played in festivals around the world. He loves Winnipeg and prairie people, places and stories.