John Boyd | |
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| Born | 22 December 1865 |
| Died | 14 April 1941 (aged 75) Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Occupation | railway employee |
| Known for | Amateur photographer who documented Canada in the late 19th and early 20th century. |
John Boyd, also referred to as John Boyd Sr., was a Canadian amateur photographer and railway official. He was also the father of Canadian newspaper photographer John H. Boyd.
John Boyd emigrated to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, with his family in the late 1860s. [1] The oldest of 14 children, Boyd left school at the age of 15 in 1880, to work as a messenger at the Grand Trunk Railway's (GT) Freight Office. By 1894, he had reached the position of chief clerk. He moved to the Canadian National Railway (CN) in 1918, remaining there as a supervisor until his retirement in 1931. [2] In his work for both the GT and CN railways, he was given the opportunity to photograph across Ontario. [2]
In his work as an amateur photographer, his photographs were widely published across Canada. He also corresponded with George Eastman, founder of the Eastman Kodak Company, about photographic technology, and published in photographic journals on the subject of technological innovation. [3] He built his first camera out of an oblong box covered in black oil cloth, and went on to design and build such items of equipment as an exposure timing chart, a lens shade, and a fixing tank. [4]
Between August 1914 and November 1917, John Boyd took photographs of the training activities of Canadian soldiers who would soon ship out as part of the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War. His photographs depict aspects of recruitment and military training such as: parade drilling, artillery exercises, signalling, trench digging, and camp life. While most of the photographs were taken in Toronto, some images were shot in Barriefield and Kingston, Camp Borden, Niagara, London, and Guelph in Ontario, and in Montreal, Quebec.
Pictorialism is an international style and aesthetic movement that dominated photography during the later 19th and early 20th centuries. There is no standard definition of the term, but in general it refers to a style in which the photographer has somehow manipulated what would otherwise be a straightforward photograph as a means of creating an image rather than simply recording it. Typically, a pictorial photograph appears to lack a sharp focus, is printed in one or more colors other than black-and-white and may have visible brush strokes or other manipulation of the surface. For the pictorialist, a photograph, like a painting, drawing or engraving, was a way of projecting an emotional intent into the viewer's realm of imagination.
William Notman was a Scottish-Canadian photographer and businessman. The Notman House in Montreal was his home from 1876 until his death in 1891, and it has since been named after him. Notman was the first photographer in Canada to achieve international recognition.
Melvin Ormond Hammond, known professionally as M. O. Hammond, was a Canadian journalist, photographer, and author.
Edwin Alonzo Boyd was a Canadian bank robber and leader of the Boyd Gang. His career made him a notorious Canadian folk hero.
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George Davison was an English photographer, a proponent of impressionistic photography, a co-founder of the Linked Ring Brotherhood of British artists and a managing director of Kodak UK. He was also a millionaire, thanks to an early investment in Eastman Kodak.
Larry Towell is a Canadian photographer, poet, and oral historian. Towell is known for his photographs of sites of political conflict in the Ukraine, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Standing Rock and Afghanistan, among others. In 1988, Towell became the first Canadian member of Magnum Photos.
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Edith Hallett Bethune (1890–1970) was a Canadian amateur photographer known for her pictorialist photography.
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Photographs have been taken in the area now known as Canada since 1839, by both amateurs and professionals. In the 19th century, commercial photography focussed on portraiture. But professional photographers were also involved in political and anthropological projects: they were brought along on expeditions to Western Canada and were engaged to document Indigenous peoples in Canada by government agencies.
James W. Borcoman D.F.A. LL. D., also known as Jim Borcoman, was the founding curator of photography, National Gallery of Canada from 1971 to 1994. He was a pioneer in promoting photography as an art form in Canada, having established the Photographs Collection at the National Gallery in 1967 as the first of its kind in Canada, and developing its growth to over 19,000 objects, resulting in a collection known for the quality of its nineteenth and twentieth century holdings and for its exhibitions and publications. He also promoted contemporary Canadian photographers and was himself a photographer with work in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.
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