Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
Three times a year, the Toronto Camera Club accepts submissions for its internal “Nature” competition. Members can submit under one of three categories: botany, zoology, and general. The general category is for nature-themed images where the main subject is neither plant nor animal e.g. a landscape, or seascape. There is one proviso: the submitted images cannot include any evidence of the “hand of man.”
If I stopped every time I saw a burnt out motel or abandoned gas station beside a highway in northern Ontario, I’d never get anywhere. In May, I stopped at a few choice locations, and bookmarked a few others for the end of the summer when I’ll be passing that way again. The images are inherently dramatic, they raise questions, imply a story.
I drove up to Thunder Bay in mid May. Drove all 1400 km in one day. When I got there, the weather was miserable. They told me it had been sunny for three weeks straight, that it had been a brilliant spring. And then I arrived. It even snowed one morning.
I like to think of the Japanese photographer, Araki, as (among other things) the grandfather of the modern selfie. Photographers have been taking self-portraits since the camera was invented, but Araki makes a regular habit of including himself in his images, and was doing so long before digital photography became a thing.
I’m not sure traffic in New York — or at least in Manhattan — is as bad as everyone says. Then again, I live in downtown Toronto so what do I know? The subway has a lot better coverage than in Toronto. And the grid of one way streets is effective.
I didn’t have time to sniff out really good examples of street art when I was visiting Manhattan. I suspect that if I were a tourist visiting Toronto, I’d have the same problem in reverse. I wouldn’t know where to look. Nevertheless, I saw what I saw and share it here:
All the tourists go to Times Square in search of the real New York. What they find is each other … and people hustling them (which may, in fact, be the real New York).
Photographing buildings in Manhattan is a challenge, or at least it was for me last week, and for two reasons. First, I didn’t have the right gear, only my little mirrorless Fujifilm camera and a pancake lens. Second, even if I had the right gear, buildings in Manhattan have been shot to death. What could I possibly say that’s original or interesting?
Not everything in New York City moves at the pace of a George Gershwin piece. People DO take time to pause and reflect. Last week I was privileged to capture some of those moments.
From smartphones to camcorders to DSLRs, digital devices have become so ubiquitous, it’s like they’re everywhere. I observe (ironically) with my own digital device, and share (hypocritically?) through digital media. It’s almost impossible now to find a non-digital vantage point from which to observe.
This is related to my previous post about “commerce on the ground” only, in this post, the money is more obvious.
When I think of commerce in New York, I tend to think of Wall Street, but there’s commerce on the ground, too: people doing whatever it takes to earn a living. Here are samples that run the gamut from shoppers in the flagship store of the world’s most valuable corporation to buskers in Washington Square Park.
Street photography in Manhattan is like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s so easy.
What is the proper subject of street photography? Some people seem to equate street photography with stalking the homeless. Maybe they think photography isn’t authentic unless it’s gritty, and it isn’t gritty unless it portrays suffering.
You may have noticed a hint of irony in the title for this post. Normally, we think of motherhood as this joyous life-sustaining institution. But the expression on this woman’s face, her whole demeanor, suggests a more realistic (demystified?) account of motherhood. The word “melancholy” comes to mind. I think Betty Friedan would approve.