EPL Art Gallery - July 2003

Street photographers stood with their bulky cameras on downtown corners from the 1920s through the 1960s, offering inexpensive photographs to people passing by. Customers would collect a small coupon, then pick up a print from the photographer a few days later. Edmonton’s best street photographers - including Clarence Cox and Vince Costello - knew that many of their customers had no camera at home. They took pride in their creative work although they received little recognition for their photographic legacy. They left us a beautiful portrait of a city in motion.

Edmonton’s street photographers could capture the memory of an easygoing day - a stroll with a friend down Jasper Avenue, an afternoon at the movies - and they filled family photo albums from Beverly to Jasper Place. If we put their casual portraits together with personal stories, we catch an intriguing glimpse of Edmonton’s past. These pictures remind us of the diversity of the city’s population over time. They offer rich details about the evolving clothing styles of ordinary citizens. They spark memories of downtown stores, theatres, office buildings and gathering places that disappeared long ago. They are a testament to this city’s enduring spirit.

“I remember Clarence Cox, a famous Edmonton street photographer. He lived in south Edmonton where I grew up. He must have taken hundreds or thousands of pictures, especially during the war years. Downtown was very important in those days. He worked on several busy corners, and I’m sure that everyone who lived in Edmonton was caught in his camera lens at one time or another.
    -- Helen Murchie

“The photographers were always out regardless of the weather. I remember one photographer who was tall with thick glasses. He never smiled as we trooped past. We were high school girls from St. Mary’s High School on 103rd Street. He refrained from snapping our pictures, but in the evenings or on Saturday afternoons, he would take our pictures.”
    -- Mary Alice Arial

“ They were always there, I think. They stood in front of the Capitol Theatre on Jasper, on the north side of Jasper in the 101st Street block, and near the Rialto Theatre…I’m not sure whether they first caught our eye, and then snapped, or whether they just clicked away at likely customers. They handed us a sales slip which we would have for identification when picking up our pictures. I don’t recall how much we paid, or even where we picked them up.”
    -- Joyce Harries

If you have a street photographers’ portrait, we’d like to add it to a special collection we’re creating for the City of Edmonton Archives. We need as much of the following information as you can provide, along with the photograph:

1) Your name
2) Your address
3) Your phone number
4) Year of photo, or approximate year
5) Names of people in the photo
6) Location, if you remember
7) One paragraph describing that day
8) Name of the photographer, or information about street photographers in the city.

Please bring it to:

Edmonton: A City Called Home project
The Gallery, Main Floor,
Stanley A. Milner Library
7 Sir Winston Churchill Square

Dates: Monday, July 29; Wednesday, July 30 and Friday, August 1st
Time: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Each original photograph will be treated with care and returned as soon as possible.

For more information call:
496-7242