Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
Over time, as I do more street photography, I expect I’ll accumulate enough images to mount a credible “Men At Work” series. To be balanced, I should also mount a “Women At Work” series, too, but that will take longer because there seem to be far fewer women who work in open spaces.
Here are three images I took one night in Yorkville. Must go back for more, especially in the summertime when it’s crowded. Each of the images has a person in it.
At Parliament & Mill Street, at the northwest corner of the distillery district, there’s a wedge-shaped building, and right at the pointy corner of the wedge is a lighting store, and on display in that lighting store is (or was) a mushroom-shaped lamp.
Sometimes, I like simply to go outside and shoot whatever I see. The idea is to be observant in the midst of the ordinary. To be startled by the commonplace.
I was walking down Parliament Street past Regent Park when I heard a voice: Excuse me. Excuse me. May I ask you a question? There was a man sitting on some steps. He held out his hand and asked for money. I gave him a twonie.
‘Tis the season for my Christmas stalking i.e. wandering around malls and shops and photographing people as they do whatever they do to mark this time of year.
One of the brilliant things about street photography is that the backgrounds (streets, buildings, sidewalks) provide long perspectives. Here are a few shots that try to take advantage of that:
Blurring can imply motion, action, chaos; it can produce a mood; it can evoke feelings of nostalgia.
Another debate, when shooting street photography, is whether to be obvious or discreet. Sometimes, the answer is determined by legal considerations. For example, where a person has no reasonable expectation of privacy, the general rule of thumb is that no permission is required.
There are all sorts of debates around street photography. One of them is the colour/black and white debate. There’s a convention that street photos should be in black and white. My own feeling is: it depends
There are a surprising number of movies in which photography has an important role. Like writers who write novels about novelists, it’s almost as if film-makers need to engage in the same self-reflexive practice.
Took a walk around Guelph the other day. Was there to pick up my daughter from school, so didn’t have a lot of time. Just used my little mirrorless camera.
This poster came down last week. It was on the south-facing wall of the new Holt Renfrew Men’s clothing store on Bloor Street. (In case you need to know, like for some trivia game, Holt Renfrew is ultimately owned by the Weston family.)
So here’s the question: is there a distinctive Scottish style of graffiti which would justify a distinctive Scottish country? Or is its style of graffiti simply part of a globalized hegemonic free-trade graffiti that you could find anywhere, whether on NYC subway cars or under Iraqi bridges?
Remember these things. They’re called payphones. In the olden days, people would put coins in them and use them to make telephone calls. Now, they are display cases for graffiti and old coffee cups.