Ravishing Vancouver Circa 1948: Life Writing and the Immersive Translation of Noir Aesthetics

Authors

  • Susan Ingram York University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17742/IMAGE.VT.11.3.3

Keywords:

noir; Vancouver; fashion exhibitions; Stan Douglas; life writing

Abstract

This article takes its cues from autobiography scholar Marlene Kadar’s expansive, archivally focused feminist approach to life writing in its examination of two exemplars of visual culture: Ivan Sayers and Claus Jahnke’s From Rationing to Ravishing: The Transformation of Women’s Fashion in the 1940s & 1950s exhibition and Stan Douglas’s innovatively staged Helen Lawrence and its sister project, the interactive app and installation, Circa 1948. It illuminates both works biographically, exploring their creators’ relation to Vancouver to better understand the resurgence of noir in Vancouver circa 2014 as a form of translation intended to make historical lessons about crime and corruption visible for those willing to see them.

Author Biography

Susan Ingram, York University

Susan Ingram is Professor in the Department of Humanities at York University, Toronto, where she coordinates the Graduate Diploma in Comparative Literature and is affiliated with the Research Group on Language and Culture Contact. She is the general editor of Intellect Book’s Urban Chic series and the co-author of the volumes on Berlin, Vienna, and Los Angeles. A past president of the Canadian Comparative Literature Association, her research interests revolve around the institutions of European cultural modernity and their legacies.
Imaginations 11-3 (2020) cover: Cia Rinne's <i>Das Erhabene</i>

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Published

2021-02-23

How to Cite

Ingram, S. (2021). Ravishing Vancouver Circa 1948: Life Writing and the Immersive Translation of Noir Aesthetics. Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies, 11(3), 33–78. https://doi.org/10.17742/IMAGE.VT.11.3.3

Issue

Vol. 11 No. 3 (2020): Visibility and Translation / Visibilité et traduction

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License
This work by https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/imaginations is licensed under a  Creative Commons 4.0 International License although certain works referenced herein may be separately licensed, or the author has exercised their right to fair dealing under the Canadian Copyright Act.