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ALVIN ARMSTRONG
FRIDAY ISLAND SET, OCTOBER 1962
Lightjet c-print (2008)
image: 40.6 cm x 50.8 cm
image courtesy CBC Vancouver Media Archives
ESTIMATE: $500-750
Alvin Armstrong was the in-house photographer for CBC Vancouver from the 1950s to the 1970s. He maintained a meticulously documented archive of photographs recording the productions at the local CBC studios during its “Golden Era’ of in-house productions, when televisions became a part of everyone’s lives. Armstrong documented (for promotional purposes and record keeping) the highly imaginative, elaborate sets designed for variety shows such as Let’s Go and A Second Look, as well as talk shows and children’s programs. Armstrong’s stills were taken with a medium-format camera and produced as gelatin silver prints and colour transparencies. His remarkable colour images capture the lurid, colour-coded graphics and abstract constructions of the fantastical sets and costumes that speak so powerfully of entertainment and the cultural imagination in the 1960s. Armstrong’s photographs were included in Presentation House Gallery’s exhibition and publication Facing History and were featured in the 2008 PHG exhibition, Juliette and Friends. This still from the show Friday Island captures the surreal quality of an actor stiffly posing in a tableau.
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