Don Gill: Sites of Production

An extensive review of the "Sites of Production" series by
Canadian photographer Don Gill. Don Gill is described as 'a
wandering artist who works with social history through images
that reflect his direct experience of the tourists' response to
our landscape and history'. The author critically discusses the
notion of documentary style and its status of primary truth
gatherer, replacing this notion by 'doing social history,
broadly speaking'. Gill speaks of his work in terms of
'connotative documentary'. The author locates Don Gill's work in
the tradition, begun in the 1970s, of examining and picturing
the Western Canadian landscape in terms of its social and
political activity, and compares Gill's project with work done
by Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace, Michael de Courcy, Rodney Graham,
Henri Robideau, Roy Arden, Joey Morgan and Eleanor Bond.