[BCMA] FW: Dan Savard, BC Book Prize Winner

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[cid:image001.png at 01CC0424.D5821E70]                              NEWS RELEASE







For Immediate Release

April 26, 2011

Dan Savard wins BC Book Prize for Images from the Likeness House

Victoria BC - Dan Savard of Victoria is this year’s winner of the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize, recognizing the author of the book that contributes most to the enjoyment and understanding of British Columbia. The award was presented April 21 at the 27th annual Lieutenant Governor’s BC Book Prize Gala.

In Images from the Likeness House, Dan Savard, author and recently retired senior collections manager of the anthropology audio visual collection at the Royal BC Museum, explores the relationship between First Peoples in BC, Alaska and Washington and the photographers who made images of them from the late 1850s to the 1920s.

Images from the Likeness House features photographs, as they have survived, without digital enhancements. They range from the earliest glass‐plate images made by photographers to snapshots taken by amateurs on nitrate film.

“Some of these images were produced by outsiders, who knew little about the cultures they recorded,” says Savard. “You have to ask yourself is this the photographic record that First Peoples would have chosen to leave of themselves?”

“In one of the photographs, you can see a metal stand behind the feet of Tsimshian Chief Arthur Wellington Clah - this was, presumably, for him to lean against during the long exposure time,” says Savard. The 1889 image Savard describes was also the inspiration for the book’s title. After going to the Maynard’s photography studio in Victoria, Chief Clah wrote in his diary, “Rebekah ask if I going likeness house. So I go, to give myself likeness.”

Savard shares his passion for historical photographs as he discusses the value in each, how or why the photographer produced it, or what the image means to researchers today.

“This book is a powerful visual testament to the perceptions - and misperceptions - of the First Peoples who lived on this land more than a century ago,” says Royal BC Museum CEO Pauline Rafferty.



Images from the Likeness House, Savard’s first book, was also selected as this year’s second prize winner in the BC Historical Federation 2010 Writing Competition.
Images from the Likeness House
Author: Dan Savard
Publisher: Royal BC Museum
$39.95
First Nations / Photography
May 2010
paperback, 208 pages, 9 x 10.5”, 300 b/w and colour photographs
ISBN 978-07726-6150-0
About the Royal BC Museum
As the provincial museum and archives, the Royal BC Museum preserves and shares the stories of British Columbia - on‐site, off‐site and online - through its research, collections, exhibitions and educational programs. Its two‐hectare cultural precinct also includes a number of historically significant buildings and First Nations sites.

For more information about the Royal BC Museum, visit www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca<http://www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca> or call
1‐888‐447‐7977.

-30-

Media contact:           Royal BC Museum Media Inquiries
250-387-3207
news at royalbcmuseum.bc.ca<mailto:news at royalbcmuseum.bc.ca>

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