My interest in the Camp Bison Prison Farm is twofold. First is the photographic interest of exploring an abandoned space. Second is more personal: I grew up occasionally hearing my dad tell the story of its most infamous inmate.
Author: David Barker
Toronto Pride Parade 2019
A funny thing happened. When I walked down Yonge the first time, all my photos were in black and white. But when I joined the parade and walked down a second time, all my photos were in colour. It was just like in the Wizard of Oz.
Story: Chad and Stacy go on a Date
Things Disappear
The more I tread the same ground with my camera, the more I come to recognize that an unwitting theme of my work is disappearance.
Raptors Victory Parade
I milled around on King St. each of University for a time, reminding myself that, as a street photographer, I wasn’t there to photograph a parade, but to photograph the people who come to see the parade. So I started walking.
Toronto Raptors NBA Champions
Last night was game six of the NBA championships. Throughout the series, I keep telling myself I’ll go down at night to photograph people going mental in and around Jurassic Park, but I keep playing mind games with myself, inventing reasons why I should stay at home, put up my feet and read a book…
A Scottish Journal
My wife, Tamiko, and I spent a week in Glasgow to celebrate our friend’s appointment as minister of Glasgow Cathedral. Naturally, I came equipped with my camera. The following is drawn from notes I scrawled along the way:
Bedroom Eyes
This photograph raises too many questions for me to let it alone. Given that I discovered it as an insert in a book about romance, my initial supposition is that the book was intended as a gift to the woman’s lover; she was using the photograph to indicate that she came as part of the package.
IBM Scrapes Flickr Images
IBM reveals that it has developed its so-called Diversity in Faces dataset, a face database of approximately one million images to assist researchers in developing less biased facial recognition algorithms.
A Handmaid’s Tale
When I need to clear my head, I go for a long photo walk. I use my camera as a tool to silence the interior chatter by shifting my attention to the visual field. It’s the mental equivalent of splashing cold water on my face. I had just such a need on Friday, and hatched a vague plan to take a photo walk that would end at the mouth of the Don River. For reasons I could not possibly have anticipated, I never reached my destination.
Photography is a Religion
Photography is not a craft; photography is a religion. It is governed by a theology of grace. We do not earn our good images; they are bestowed upon us.
Synecdoche
Synecdoche is a simplicity that doesn’t lie.
Cliché
For the time being, the images I make are the product of my true vision, and mine alone, but inevitably they will ascend to the pantheon of cliché as do all images, for like all truth the truth of my vision is provisional. It is not my entitlement, but a momentary privilege.
Photographs Like Memories
I wish photographs were like memories. They would start out as well-focused images with crisp edges and clearly defined details. But with the passage of time, the images would lose their clarity, edges would soften …
Ride For A Cure
In September of 2017, my wife, Tamiko, and I joined the Linton family in the Republic of Ireland for a cycling adventure to help raise funds for the Sanfilippo Children’s Research Foundation.