Faking Death: Canadian Art Photography and the Canadian Imagination

In Faking Death, Penny Cousineau-Levine presents Canadian art photography since 1952 as a coherent body of work and articulates a provocative framework for its interpretation. Contrasting Canadian photography with American and European traditions, she shows that Canadian photographers are often preoccupied with a place that is 'elsewhere,' a doubling and a duality that also occur in Canadian literature, film, and political life. Exploring the ambivalent preoccupations Canadian photographers have with death and dying, bondage, and entrapment, she argues that the forms of faked death in many of these works express a collective Canadian wish for a symbolic passage to national maturity.
Cousineau-Levine discusses the works of over 120 artists, providing a compelling introduction to one of Canada's most vibrant and internationally recognized artistic media. The book includes 16 colour reproductions and 150 duotones of photographs by artists such as Raymonde April, Genevieve Cadieux, Lynne Cohen, Donigan Cumming, Evergon, Janieta Eyre, Charles Gagnon, Thaddeus Holownia, Geoffrey James, Michel Lambeth, Ken Lum, Shelley Niro, Gabor Szilasi, Diana Thorneycroft, Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace, and Jin-me Yoon, making it an invaluable tool for curators, artists, teachers, students, and scholars.