More than 12,000 photographs of Duty are now accessible online to the public, through the Bibliothèque et Archives nationaux du Québec (BAnQ) website. Several thousand more images from the newspaper will be available for viewing over the next few years.
The curious goes from surprise to surprise, randomly where his gaze guides him. There, a series of Elvis impersonators followed, a few images later, by a photograph of actor Julien Poulin posing at the Binerie Mont-Royal. This is the famous Russian dancer Nureyev. And there, it’s the designer Hugo Pratt. Here we are in a series of photographs featuring Mayor Jean Drapeau. There, it’s René Lévesque. And then here, the writer and journalist Gil Courtemanche, the actress Juliette Binoche, the singer Yves Montand. It’s infinite. Oh ! Michael Moore, and there, Pierre Karl Péladeau with his father. It’ll make your head spin.
It would take months to go through all this, to put into context so many past events which have left traces of all kinds, far and wide, down to us.
And then, through this long parade of photographs associated with a more or less recent past, the curious still comes across images that are much older. The eye seeks to grasp a past that is more difficult to decipher from the outset. Here is Henri Bourassa, the fiery orator behind the newspaper, visiting Acadia. Scenes from the beginning of the 20th centurye century, during activities linked to the movements of major figures of the Duty.
The fund of Duty has just over 70,000 photos. To date, exactly 11,900 of them have been digitized. They are directly accessible via the BAnQ website.
“These images were digitized directly by The duty in .jpeg format,” explains Hélène Fortier, director of BAnQ in Montreal. “It’s certain that the .jpeg format does not highlight the original shot,” observes Mme Fortier. She specifies that all images can, however, be the subject of specific digitization orders, since BAnQ has the original negatives.
“We are planning, within five years, the digitization of all of the photographs in the collection, in .tiff format,” she specifies. Ultimately, image descriptions should be directly linked to each image. This is not the case at the moment. Curious people and researchers alike must refer to files alongside the photographs themselves to correctly identify them. The exercise is not always easy.
How to find your way there?
The photographic collection of the Duty kept at BAnQ requires relying on a research tool created alongside the documents themselves. It gives a detailed description. The first column (A) indicates the number of the scanned file. The second column (B) indicates the name of the personality or subject. The third column (C) gives the name of the photographer. The fourth column (D) gives the date the photograph was taken or the date the photograph was published in the newspaper The duty. A more detailed description of the personality or subject is also offered.
The subjects of these photographs concern Montreal, provincial, Canadian and international news. Strikes, demonstrations; major projects such as the construction of the Montreal metro, Expo 67, the Olympic Games, the construction of the James Bay hydroelectric complex; cultural events of all kinds, from the Elvis imitation contest to Prince and Paul Piché. The personalities photographed come from all areas of the cultural sector, including theater, cinema, television, jazz, popular and classical music, literature in all its forms, visual and multidisciplinary arts, sculpture, dance, scenography, staging.
Economic news, legal news, disasters, accidents, floods, fires and news items, as well as numerous thematic reports also count among the accessible images. There are also, in these montages of photographs, a quantity of more or less official photos, handshakes, institutional photos, with people placed in rows of onions, facing the fragile posterity promised by the eye of a camera.
A recent tradition
Before the 1960s, photography was little appreciated in the pages of the newspaper founded by Henri Bourassa. In fact, for years, the newspaper put photography aside. For what ? Both for questions of means and of philosophy with regard to what information should prioritize. So that The duty, for a very long time, will be mainly composed of long columns of texts created by patient and dedicated typographers who work at the Imprimerie populaire. This printing press, owned by the newspaper, will also produce books, leaflets and various printed materials for a time, for example the newspaper of the Bloc populaire canadienne. Until the death of the liberal daily Canadain 1954, The duty is published in the afternoon, before becoming a morning daily.
With the 1960s, an image revolution appeared as a notable fact in the pages of Duty. Daily life now relies on the work of professionals hired as freelancers, then on photographers attached exclusively to the Duty.
Among the thousands of photographs deposited in the BAnQ archives, names of photographers associated with Duty returning regularly: Jerry Donati, Jacques Grenier, Martin Chamberland, Jacques Nadeau, Christian Guay, Chantal Keyser, Louise Lemieux, Robert Skinner and Alain Renaud.
“It is a magnificent collection of archives that that of the Duty. In fact, it is the most complete that we have from a Quebec newspaper,” explains the director of BAnQ in Montreal. The set includes not only photographs, but documents that trace the story, from its origins in 1908 to the early 2000s. The first issue of the Duty was published on January 10, 1910. “In the case of textual documents, you must go to the archives, rue Viger, in order to consult them. »