Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
More than in any other genre of photography, street photography seems to demand purity codes, like a religious cult or a hockey team. You can’t be a real street photographer unless you shoot with a Rangefinder, or a Leica, or only shoot “unposed” subjects. There’s even a UK-based web site that sells “official” streettog T-shirts.
There’s been a lot of talk in Toronto about the practice of “carding” where police stop people on the street and ask for ID. A number of events have converged to make it a hot-button topic.
I’m not a trainspotter. I don’t know why people do it. But photographically speaking, a train can be an interesting subject or piece of background. I’ve noticed a pattern in my own shooting: trains pop up all over the place, so I offer some samples here.
Sunday night, after everyone had finished in the tunnel by the Glen St. exit from the Sherbourne subway station, I went back with my tripod and a wide lens to document the results. Here are some samples of the #graffiti from wallnoize7.
On Saturday morning, it’s as if the graffiti army showed up: kids (am I showing my age?) lined up on either side of the tunnel, traffic cones at either end of the tunnel, ladders, boxes of spraypaint, and a guy with a clipboard doling out paint and telling people where to go.
I saw Spudbomb doing his thing under the Bloor West Go Rail overpass. I don’t know if Spudbomb is a person or a collective. Or an aspiration. Or a poltergeist.
The Baldwin Steps climb the Iroquois shoreline which was the shore of Lake Ontario when ice age melt water made the lake significantly larger than it is today. The steps rise from Davenport Road to Casa Loma and offer a great view of the city to the south. Climbing the steps serves as a pointed reminder that, no, the city isn’t flat.
For the first time in years, I walked under the Bathurst Street Bridge. This is the old iron bridge that goes over the rail lands south of Front Street. Now, a chain-link fence blocks access, but there’s a gaping hole in it that looks to me like an invitation.
More men at work to supplement a January post on the same theme:
I’ve lost my faith. Once, I believed as most believed. It would be a virtue to own a Ferrari. It would be a sign that the gods had smiled upon me and blessed me with prosperity, or at least with the right to carry huge debt servicing charges. But the central myth that fueled that belief has fallen under the march of modernism.
The College/Spadina intersection was blocked this month for streetcar track repairs/upgrades so I went over a couple times to catch the mess.
The following are suggestions (not prescriptions) and are highly personal. They reflect what I would describe as an emerging philosophy of seeing and engagement with the world. In particular, I preach a holistic gospel of photography: photography works in service of the whole person.
What a difference seven weeks makes! After February’s Icefest 2015, I walked south to City Hall and shot people skating on the ice rink in Nathan Phillips Square. Seven weeks later, I caught a little girl splashing in the water that remains after all the snow and ice has melted. City workers were cleaning things…
Now that winter is over, Toronto sits in a brief seasonal limbo. Although it’s warm, the buds haven’t come out yet, so the trees are winter barren. City workers are scurrying to clean up all the residual grime that settles after snow melt. Earth day is here and people are gathering up the last remaining…
Despite the luridity of Toronto’s literary imagination (I know there’s no such word as luridity but it seems to work), its ravines aren’t always the dark repositories of our unconscious desires.