Sidney Carter | The Canadian Encyclopedia

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Sidney Carter

Sidney Robert Carter, art and antique dealer, photographer (b at Toronto 18 Feb 1880; d at Montréal 27 Mar 1956). Carter was an early advocate of pictorialism in photography, and by 1901-02 was exhibiting in London, the US and Canada.

Carter, Sidney Robert

Sidney Robert Carter, art and antique dealer, photographer (b at Toronto 18 Feb 1880; d at Montréal 27 Mar 1956). Carter was an early advocate of pictorialism in photography, and by 1901-02 was exhibiting in London, the US and Canada. In 1904 he became an associate of Alfred Stieglitz's Photo-Secession in New York City, and 3 years later in Montréal he prepared an exhibition promoting pictorialism. Largely between about 1917 and 1928 Carter accepted portrait commissions; his style, however, slowly lost the haunting quality evident in his portrait of Rudyard Kipling (1907), favouring graphic effect and a firmer outline. His photographs from the 1930s are conservative, and he seemed to lose interest in the medium that had won him prominence.