Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
I met this woman in the space south of Trinity Lutheran Church in the St. James Town area. She doesn’t feed the birds and squirrels every day, but when it’s cold she makes a point of giving them something to eat. She comes with bird seed, peanuts and, in case the squirrels don’t like the peanuts, she brings walnuts.
I wanted to send him a copy of this shot but he couldn’t think of how that would work. In the last month, he’s had two cell phones stolen, plus he can’t use his email account anymore. His ex-girlfriend is a computer programmer and, like, psycho. She’s hacked all his passwords. He’s got to figure out something else for email.
In an age when it’s increasingly easy to make technically “perfect” images, it’s correspondingly easy to be complacent about whether or not those images do what images are supposed to do. Do our images merely allay anxieties around formal requirements? Or do they satisfy deeper needs? While the two are not mutually exclusive, there are many photographs that move us deeply even though they are deeply “flawed”.
There’s a shop on Parliament Street south of Wellesley that sells religious merchandise. I’ve featured the front window before; I had been drawn to it by a notice posted in the window. I now realize this is a shop I’m going to have to track over time. Interesting things happen here.
There’s some food photography I want to do, but I’ve decided I should practise my setup before I undertake anything complicated. So, on an overcast day when the light was soft, I put a table by a window and spread some jelly beans across a sheet of foam-board. I stood two more sheets of foam-board on end to act as reflectors to soften the shadows. Then I went to work with my 100mm f2.8L macro lens.
Was out Sunday afternoon with my camera and, dull weather notwithstanding, people were chattier than usual. Maybe it has to do with the approach of Christmas. Or with the fact that Christmas is still far enough away that people aren’t feeling stressed by it.
Now, as the weather turns colder, one must take precautions against over-exposure. Photographers, of course, are concerned about over-exposure all year round.
While the official story holds that Ian Fleming named his most famous character after an American ornithologist, local legend tells a different story. In 1942, Fleming spent a few weeks at Camp X near Oshawa where he was taking specialized training (he was leader of a British commando unit). Fleming was staying at a home on Avenue Road, and, every day, on his way to Camp X, he passed a local church, St. James-Bond United Church.
Mike invited me to a party. He said there’d be a girl there. The whole thing would be recorded on video. Streamed on the internet. I could wear a mask if I liked. I don’t know why, but while he told me this, I was wondering who he voted for in the last federal election. I didn’t ask, of course. I didn’t want to make him feel awkward.
I met Amry outside a dental office in Cabbagetown. He was leaning against a poster of a big perfect smile, smoking a cigarette.
I eat my lunch at noon and my supper at six. I go to bed at eleven so I can have a good night’s sleep. I like the regularity. It never occurs to me that I could disrupt this well laid pattern by snipping up a novel and pasting bits of it onto carefully selected surfaces. It might make me late for lunch.
Freddy was sitting on a bench in Allen Gardens tuning his guitar. I went up to him and asked if I could take some photos of him doing his thing. A couple hours later, after (among other things) a trip to a Timmies where I bought him a coffee, we parted company on Carlton Street.
At a time when the weather should be cold and dull, a streak of bright warm weather comes as a boon to street photographers. People are out being people, doing all the varied things that people do, maybe with more gusto (desperation?) because they know it can’t last.
There’s a karmic quality to street photography: what the gods take away with one hand, they grant with the other. I walked west along Queen, squinting into the late afternoon sun, and saw a man in silhouette leaning against a wall and bumming a light from a passerby.
Sometimes what I see offends my sensibilities. I don’t want to believe that some of my neighbours equate Islam with Nazism, or call black people niggers and monkeys and say they belong in prison. I want to tell a story of Toronto the Good.