More than a century before Photoshop, William Notman (1826–1891) found ingenious ways to enhance his photos and fool the eye. Notman arrived in Canada from Scotland in 1856, swiftly establishing himself as Montreal’s most prominent photographer. He was a proficient technician and an enthusiastic inventor of tools and techniques for his photography and was best known for his development of elaborate composite photographs. For more on William Notman read Sarah Parsons’s William Notman: Life & Work.
Sarah Parsons is Associate Professor of Visual Arts and Art History at York University, where she teaches the history and theory of photography and Canadian art. She has published on various aspects of photography and served as editor of Photography after Photography: Gender, Genre, History, a volume of essays by the photo historian and theorist Abigail Solomon-Godeau (Duke University Press, 2017).
The 2023 Canadian Art Inspiration 
The 2022 Canadian Art Inspiration 
Autumn Tigers
The 2021 Canadian Art Inspiration
Mastery in Metal
Through the Lens of C.D. Hoy
The Measure of Nature: 
Artist and Abolitionist
Shuvinai Ashoona: Mapping Worlds
Early Snow: Michael Snow 1947-1962
William Kurelek’s Art of Rapture and Reminiscence
Prudence Heward’s Modern Women
Paul-Émile Borduas’s Abstract Revolution
Norval Morrisseau’s Spiritual Vision
Alex Colville: An Everyday Order
Shared History: The Drawings of Pitseolak Ashoona
Personal, Local, and National: Greg Curnoe’s Vision
Art of Perception: Jack Chambers’s Inner Vision
Jock Macdonald: The Search for New Forms of Beauty
Zacharie Vincent’s Indigenous Legacy