Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
It’s like an Arctic Spring: a winter of desolation and then, suddenly, an explosion of life. Young people with money. Old people out for a stroll and leaning on their canes. Sirens blaring. Schizophrenics screaming at the cars. Things are starting to feel normal again.
I think there’s something offensive about the longstanding tradition that art has a redemptive quality which can magically elevate a man’s misery. Too long it’s been used to justify apathy in the face of unjust social relations.
When the quarry was first excavated, it exposed a local geological record going back 130,000 years, right down to a bedrock of shale that, itself, is probably half a billion years old. Near the bottom, at the 130,000 year mark, the geologist, Arthur Philemon Coleman, discovered the tooth of a giant beaver.
The very fact that we allow them to march down the main thoroughfare of our city gives the lie to their complaints. Admittedly, one of the marchers lost his freedom when he was arrested. But that was because he bit a police officer.
He bangs his mallet on his guitar, the lid from a plastic bin, and then his head, all in quick succession, like he’s a drummer in a band. I step up and shoot a quick burst. How can I not?
People in Toronto are fortunate because the city has grown up over a network of ravines that provide easy escape from the usual urban traumas of concrete and vertigo.
This is the first time in months that I’ve been out with my camera and have interacted with a live human being. It’s as if I’ve been holding my breath all winter and can suddenly let it out (while still wearing a mask, of course). It gave me such a lift to chat with a stranger.
More people live in my hometown than lived on the entire planet when humans first organized themselves into large communities. Yet that was all it took to produce most of the diseases that have afflicted us even to the present day.
Oddly enough, successful street photography is a bit like catching a virus. I say this because, as with catching a virus, street photography requires a lot of exposure. Not camera sensor exposure, but exposure to people interacting in public places.
If the colour yellow was an animal, it would be a cat. It simply is and doesn’t care what you think. It bursts in upon your world whether you like it or not.
I used to think masks were for badasses, protesters during the G20 summit who didn’t want to get ID’d by police, or graffiti artists trying to hide from surveillance cameras. Now, masks are what sensible people wear, like Birkenstocks or sunscreen.
My understanding is that Karens throughout the American South still assert the right to go maskless. Presumably street photography in places like Houston and Tallahassee has not yet assumed an after-time look. That might change once all the Karens have died…
Ten years ago to the day, I left the safety of Toronto’s suburbs and rode downtown to poke around the billion dollar militarized zone that former PM Stephen Harper authorized to secure the 2010 G20 summit.
Thanks to Covid-19, all major Pride events in Toronto (at least those requiring a city permit) have been cancelled. Like the rest of the world, Pride Toronto has gone virtual.
In an initiative called Paint The City Black, 40 graffiti artists from the GTA and Montreal have gathered in Graffiti Alley to support the Black Lives Matter movement with murals