Uncategorized - Photography of David Allan Barker

We first encountered the phrase “alternative facts” when Kellyanne Conway defended the U.S. Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, after he lied about the number in attendance at Donald Trump’s inauguration. It strikes me that, in the age of Photoshop and deep fakes, we can have alternative photos too. So I have begun a little personal project.

Official photos of the president are in the public domain and, at least in the case of Donald Trump, are readily available on the whitehouse45 Flickr account. That means anybody can have at them for just about any purpose under the sun. Presumably all the photos on the Flickr account have been shot by Shealah Craighead who was Trump’s official photographer. Time magazine claims that it is “a role that has been viewed as crucial for the preservation of history.” Yeah, right.

My little personal project involves downloading images from the Flickr account and properly preserving them for history. In my estimation, my colour corrections and retouches vastly improve the historical record. I call them alternative photographs. The most important improvement is the erasure of Donald Trump. I’m not sure how I should approach this. Maybe I should start by producing images that fade him out, like the photo of Marty McFly’s parents in Back to the Future. Later, when people had gotten used to a less Trumpy version of Trump, I’d remove him altogether. This is a bit like pulling down statues, but without all the sweat and yelling.

A vanishing Donald Trump climbs the stairs to board Air Force One.

Family portrait on the E & N Railway Trail, West Victoria, B.C.

While we were out in Victoria B.C. visiting my wife’s brother and his family, my sister-in-law wondered if maybe I could shoot some family photos. I had minimal kit with me, so I had to think for a bit about what I could do to compensate for technical limitations (like no flash). I suggested we go casual. The big graffiti murals on the E & N Rail Trail would offer a huge selection of possible backdrops. Let’s grab a couple lawn chairs and go for a hike.

The walls on the Rail Trail face north, so they throw everything in shade, perfect for eliminating shadows on a sunny day. Yes, despite flooding in B.C., it was a sunny day. We found a mural with colours that worked, crawled through a hole in the fence, and set up the chairs.

It used to be that family portraits were a formal affair. Years ago, when it could take minutes to expose a glass plate (or whatever the photographer was using to capture the image), the subjects had to stand stock still. And because it’s difficult to hold a smile for minutes, most subjects resorted to an impassive expression. Sometimes, they looked ill-tempered or even evil. What started as a technical necessity morphed into a social convention. Even as film speeds improved and subjects no longer had to keep still for minutes, the process was cast in the pall of formality. People felt obliged to be stiff and humourless for family portraits. I remember as a child being scolded for ruining a shot because I laughed. Now, I look back on those photos—the outtakes—and they’re the only ones worth keeping, the only ones that really capture a sense of personality and family dynamics.

In this case, the portrait looks more natural. But don’t be deceived. There’s still plenty of artifice at play here. For example, when my sister-in-law folded her legs and leaned in, I moved my nephew from the centre to the side to create a long diagonal line from the top of his head to the tip of his mother’s toes.

After we finished there, we moved to a playground at the local elementary school where I could position everyone on upright logs. Here, I didn’t have the benefit of shade, but the results were better than I expected. This time, the diagonal line moved in the opposite direction.