Landscaping with photographs, or how propaganda pictures transformed forests into fields

• In Event: Photographing Environmental Histories: capturing, presenting, and circulating environmental change in the past and present

Abstract

To combat massive unemployment struggles following the Great Depression, the Québec government financed large-scale settlement projects in its northern regions from the 1930s to the 1950s. The program aimed to transform Abitibi region from a scarcely inhabited landscape—of forests, mines, and wild game exploited for its natural resources—to the site of an intensive agriculture enterprise. Thousands of photographs depicting large scale land clearing and brand new farming establishments, as a testament to the initiative, lie decontextualized in the provincial archive. These pictures were taken by photographers working for the Ministry of Colonization and the Service de ciné-photographie (SCP), the official audio-visual production and distribution agency of the province. What part did these pictures play in the colonization process? How were the images used, how were they circulated, and who was their intended public? What sort of colonization process do these images show? And, finally, how are the inhabitants of the colonized territory represented, be they officials, settlers or aboriginals?
This paper argues that photographs are compelling tools that played a fundamental part in transforming Québec’s northern landscape and that accelerated colonization processes by virtue of their publication and use.

Author

• Samuel Gaudreau-Lalande, Université Concordia, Montréal, Qc, Canada