How much should I allow the broader sweep of world events to impinge upon my narrower concerns? Like most questions I pose to myself, the answer that returns to me is: it depends.
Author: David Barker
A Backward Glance
Far from the dispassionate observing eye, I am part of the scene I photograph and equally the subject of other people’s observations. Sometimes, my presence provokes their curiosity, at other times, their hostility.
Film vs Digital
I am as happy with the images I make with film as with my DSLR cameras. To me, these formats represent different strategies. The more strategies I use, the more opportunities I give myself to make varied and interesting photographs.
Five Days Gone, by Laura Cumming
Five Days Gone: The Mystery of My Mother’s Disappearance as a Child, by Laura Cumming When Elizabeth Cumming was 60 years old, she discovered that, as a young child, she had been kidnapped. In 1929, when she was only three years old, someone had lured her from the beach at Chapel St. Leonards, the Lincolnshire…
Filmores Hotel
As I continued to shoot, I heard a woman’s voice immediately to my right: Stop shooting! I ignored the voice and kept shooting. Stop taking photographs this instant.
The Photographer as Remembrancer
I take my grandmother’s story as a parable of photographic practice. It prompts me to ask of the photographer: does memory really ever fade? Or is that just the excuse we give as we engage in erasure by selection?
Family Day Photo Walk
To take his mind off the pain and insomnia, he started decorating things, his mailbox and front porch to begin with, then expanding out into the yard to create a garden of glass beads, plastic bugs, pennies, action figures, rubber boots, bicycle tires, teapots, pool cues, ad infinitem.
Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge
Every now and then, Kylo Ren made an appearance accompanied by two stormtroopers. Notwithstanding the park’s ban on guns—even toy guns—the stormtroopers carried blasters and swaggered, stiff-torsoed, like they were US Marines.
The Noise of Time, by Julian Barnes
In this fictional account of a historical figure, Julian Barnes imagines how Shostakovich survived in Stalinist Russia. Barnes makes much of irony as a survival strategy, an ontological stance, a means of shielding one’s self from the solar glare of true belief.
The Birdman
I wanted the man to understand that I’m not just another callous photographer, that I care about animals and abhor cruelty. Who would do such a thing? I asked. He pointed at me. You did this. You and your camera.
Blindness in Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter
I am determined to read all the novels and short stories of Eudora Welty, starting with The Optimist’s Daughter, for the simple reason that she is that rare bird: a novelist who is also a photographer.
Sherbourne Street Bridge Fire
On Tuesday January 7th, the City of Toronto conducted a sweep of homeless people from the Rosedale Valley ravine. Mayor Tory cited “health and safety” as an important reason for the sweep. News sources also cited “risks such as fire when open flames are used.”
Two Kinds of Seeing
As a photographer, I pride myself on my keen powers of observation, especially when I’m out wandering in the streets. Seeing is supposed to be my thing. How is it, then, that I could be so bad at it?
Doughnuts in the Don Valley
The winter solstice (plus or minus a couple weeks) is the only time of the year when I can photograph Go Trains before sunrise. The first train of the morning commute passes a level crossing along the Lower Don Trail just north of Pottery Road at 7:00 am when the sky is still dark.
Rosedale Valley Homeless Sweep
The City of Toronto is conducting a sweep of Rosedale Valley Road, removing homeless people who live either under the bridges that cross the ravine or in tents in the more densely wooded areas.