Following last week's launch at the Gladstone Hotel, it's hard to grasp that Toronto's Magenta Foundation, created only two years ago, is Canada's first charitable arts-publishing house. The hoopla around its very existence, with an aim to promote Canadians in fine arts, editorial and commercial photography, documentary and photojournalism, is a slap on the wrist to our allegedly fragile, for-profit publishing industry, along with agents neglecting the international dissemination of Canadian art.

After 18 months of planning and preparation, the bilingual Carte Blanche is Magenta's first publication, with more to come. Magenta's companion exhibit, opening this week at the Gladdy, is a reflection of the publication's compendium of our top artists, in a dazzling visual display that has waited far too long to be published.

Magenta founder and president Mary Ann Camilleri returned to Canada after 10 years in New York to get things rolling, working alongside designer Gilbert Li and editor Doug Wallace as one of Carte Blanche's five photo editors. Sensing the lack of Canadian representation in New York, she defines her inspirations to nurture Canadian artwork in Carte Blanche's preface: 'the methodical work Canadians put into their projects, the concern for their environment', and 'the sense of pride they show in their work'.

'By creating Magenta,' Camilleri continues, 'I am spurring other Canadians in the arts to pay closer attention to what's going on right under their own noses'.

A nationwide jury of 17 arts professionals, including some of Canada's top curators, art directors and photo editors, selected Carte Blanche's featured artists. Among the heap are no less than Yuri Dojc, Janieta Eyre, Angela Grauerholz, Rita Leistner, Arnaud Maggs, John Massey and Christopher Wahl. Several emerging artists are also featured in the book's final section, as well as a biographical summary complete with an overview of artists' exhibits, websites and contact information.

Multi-media artist and writer Douglas Coupland was selected to write the publication's foreword, noting that Canada is one the youngest countries on the globe, and that very 'lack of modern history leaves us with little choice but to go forward'. As Coupland suggests, photography has become the dominant force in what defines Canuck modern art, while landscape and future are our most primordial, thematic obsessions.

A glance at Carte Blanche's pages may support Coupland's theory. Bound in hardcover, the book's 260-plus, full-colour images range from abstract collages like the fruits-and-grains 'Breakfast' of Dean Baldwin to the hypnotic gaze over Robert Burley's landscape 'Erie #1'. Photographs like the grieving family from Elise Rasmussen's untitled 'Passing of Life' series, the spiritual nude 'Amidah' by Tobaron Waxman or William Ciccocioppo's aboriginal 'The Pahpasays' demonstrate not only our diversity as Canadians but as storytellers. Carte Blanche's emerging artists' photographs often question art itself, its assembly following a more focused path towards Canadian imagery and the modern art 'future' to which Coupland refers.

'In the past decade,' writes Coupland, 'as American and Canadian societies have forked into two distinct directions, a sense of confidence has begun to emerge among Canadian artists. They are discovering that their work is not a shadow of something larger but, rather, wholly unique, increasingly risky and technically complex'.

Via Magenta's distribution in Canada by Douglas and McIntyre Ltd. (www.douglas-mcintyre.com and in the U.S. by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution (www.csbd.com), Carte Blanche may be the beginning of a good thing for Canadian photographers, and a model for the publishing industry. With its perspectives on both Canadian and international stories, the book's imagery is an important reflection of our unique place in the world, in a refreshingly contemporary volume of work to make us proud. Its venture and sales at $75 Canadian and $65 U.S. might not have been enough until now to attract publishers, but it can't stop a charity from raising the funds to publish more in the future.

Carte Blanche opens May 5 and runs until June 26 at the Gladstone Hotel. 1214 Queen Street W. A complete list of its photographers, and details on the exhibit, are available at www.magentafoundation.com.