Contemporary and historical works by more than 50 established and emerging Canadian photographers all exploring issues of representation, gender, cultural identity, and a deeply felt concern for the environment.

Among those included in the exhibit are Vancouver-based Rebecca Belmore, an Anishinabekwe artist who represented Canada at the 2005 Venice Biennale; Jin-me Yoon, whose stills and video works grapple with the realities of Canadian immigrants, legal and illegal; modern-day photographic explorer Edward Burtynsky, whose large-scale photographs, currently the focus of a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, confront nature transformed through industry; Geneviève Cadieux, whose images of the body explore relationships between the sexes and the registering of psychic pain on human flesh; Toronto-born painter, photographer, sculptor, musician, and filmmaker Michael Snow, creator of such works as the Walking Women series of paintings and the underground art film Wavelength; and the Vancouver artist Rodney Graham, whose large-scale photograph of an upside-down tree plays with the idea of cinematography; and Raymonde April, winner of the Paul-Emile Borduas Prize, whose open-ended narratives have been instrumental in forging a Québecois photographic aesthetic.

The exhibition was co-curated by critic and author Penny Cousineau-Levine, professor of the history and theory of art at the University of Ottawa. The title of the exhibition is borrowed from Cousineau-Levine’s examination of Canadian photography entitled “Faking Death: Canadian Art Photography and the Canadian Imagination,” in which she examined the work of Canadian photographers, revealing the specificities of the Canadian identity and world-view.