Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
The category, Spleen, is for posts that make us angry.
We might say to a friend: “See the modern-looking building.” But our observation is far from neutral. Modern is not a stylistic quirk or a design decision. It’s an expression of an ideology. It’s a way of being in the world. It assumes the primacy of science, the certainty of progress, the promise of a bright and shining future, the value of democracy, the inevitability of capitalism, the cachet of consumption.
I didn’t expect to find graffiti in Singapore. Given the harsh penalties, I assumed there was enough of a deterrent to keep people from spray painting shit on walls. I was wrong. But most of it is simple tagging. I scratch my head and wonder of the artists: you risked a caning for that?
A photograph from the Toronto Archives’ Globe and Mail Fonds. This photograph was probably shot by John H. Boyd who served as the Globe’s first staff photographer from December 1922 to November 1953. It was shot on December 28, 1922. It shows men on Queen Street shoveling snow into a horse-drawn cart.
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.
This morning my alarm went off at 5:00. I remember setting it last night. My night self was pulling a prank on my morning self. My night self told my morning self that getting up at 5:00 is good for you. That’s when you get all the good shots. Plus: getting up is good for body and soul. Think of Benjamin Franklin: healthy, wealthy and wise.
The Swiss watch manufacturer, Breitling, has opened its official Canadian distribution headquarters at 250 Bloor St. E. I wouldn’t have noticed except for the bombshell sitting in the front window and blazing red in the late afternoon sunlight. They’ve propped up a life-sized, or somewhat (ahem) larger-than-life, mannikin of a blond woman in a red dress and riding a bombshell in much the same way as Slim Pickens rode the H-bomb to his doom in Dr. Strangelove.
This post should have a tag line: Art Event, Or Excuse To Get Wasted?
Sooner or later, every street photographer has to confront the gnawing question: am I an asshole? Always, there will be people who see you with your camera and accuse you of being a stalker. They call you a pervert or a voyeur.
Passengers no longer have to wait for the ferry when they want to catch a flight from Toronto Island. Heather Mallick’s op-ed in the Toronto Star nicely captures the feel of the place: “The pedestrian lake tunnel at Toronto’s downtown Billy Bishop Airport has finally opened at the cost of annihilating the soul, plus $82.5 million.”
In Toronto, on the corner of Avenue Road and Davenport, there is a billboard advertising the Galerie de Bellefeuille in Montreal. It’s positioned so that people driving their Maseratis north from Yorkville will stop at the lights and stare at work by the gallery’s latest darling. Currently, it’s photographer David Drebin whose work you cannot find by following the URL on the billboard because somebody fucked it up.
I observe Toronto’s Pride Week the same way I observe Remembrance Day: with a great deal of skepticism. I want to remember. I want to remember how people struggled to carve out a space for themselves where they can live with a measure of dignity. I want to remember friends and family who succumbed to HIV/AIDS.
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’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 so-called Luminous Veil is, for me, a symbol-laden structure. The Luminous Veil is a late addition to the half kilometre length of Toronto’s Prince Edward Viaduct. It was designed to end the viaduct’s reputation as one of North America’s premiere suicide destinations.
Where Bloor Street passes over Rosedale Valley Road, there are two bridges instead of one. There’s one bridge for the road, and another for the subway.