PDF Image and Identity: Reflections on Canadian Film and Culture (Film and Media Studies) by R. Bruce Elder in Arts-Photography

Description

What happens when an individual becomes the subject of many and divergent portraits? ldquo;Biography;rdquo; says Stephanie Kirkwood Walker; ldquo;is a deceptive genre. Positioned between fact and fiction and elusive in its purposes; biography displays an individual life; an existence patterned by conventions that have also shaped the readerrsquo;s experience.rdquo; In This Woman in Particular; Walker explores versions of Emily Carrrsquo;s life that have appeared over the last half-century. Walker contends that the biographical image of Emily Carr that emerges from an accumulation of biographies; films; plays and poetry as well as her own autobiographical writing establishes an elaborated cultural artefact mdash; an ldquo;imagerdquo; that is bound by its very nature to remain forever incomplete and always elusive. She demonstrates how changes in Carrrsquo;s biographical image parallel the maturing of Canadian biographical writing; reflecting attitudes toward women artists and the shifting balance between religion; secular attitudes and contemporary spirituality. And she concludes that biography plays a crucial role in all our lives in initiating and sustaining debate on vital personal and collective concerns.