Altered Passage

Altered Passage explores the role of photographers in shaping a national identity for Canada. The work takes William Notman's inclusion on a Canada Post stamp as its starting point, proposing his practice as archetypal of Canadian photographic representation. Each stamp is altered by redacting portions of its image — an aestheticised version of the original, similar to Canada Post's glossing over of the more problematic aspects of Notman's practice. The altered stamps function as postage with uncertain acceptance: every letter is a gamble dependent on whether a postal worker or sorting machine accepts the modification.