Donigan Cumming

Donigan Cumming’s The Stage is one of the most challenging photo books published in the last century. Rather than merely documenting his subjects, Cumming collaborated with them, carefully orchestrating their appearance and posture in each photograph, emphasizing their most eccentric qualities to a degree that has earned him comparisons with Diane Arbus. The Stage thus constitutes a portrayal of the elderly, the odd, the sick and the possibly demented. Books on Books No. 19 offers a complete facsimile of this extremely rare, remarkable and little-known Canadian photo book. It includes an essay by prominent cultural journalist Robert Enright.