Tag: Graffiti

Categories
City Life

The Lost Basquiat

Abstract image formed by multiple layers of graffiti on the glass of a bus shelter.
Shot in bus shelter on NW corner of Dupont and Dovercourt

I confess: I’m responsible for rumours of a lost Basquiat. I’d written a story about how Basquiat painted a fence and I posted the story on my website. It turns out there are a lot of people who can’t tell the difference between a story (work of fiction) and a story (piece of news). I’m not sure the difference is all that meaningful, but that’s another story. In any event, my story (work of fiction) sprouted legs and skittered into the shadowy reaches of the internet where it got quoted as god’s awful truth in threads about neo-expressionism. Faster than you can say “by-line”, somebody on Wikipedia posted a link to my story (work of fiction) as evidence for the existence of a lost masterpiece. Given that a Basquiat sold in 2017 for $110.5 million, you can understand why the hunt for a lost Basquiat turned into the art world’s equivalent of a gold rush. People flocked to the Lower East Side, pulling up graffiti covered fence slats and inundating galleries with demands for authentication.

I took down my website at the beginning of the pandemic because I got tired of all the questions coming through my contact form. In retrospect, it was naive to assume that most people have the fiction version of gaydar that automatically alerts them when they’re reading fiction even when it masquerades as reportage. Anyways, to my story. As I say, I took down the website, so my story has gone missing even on websites like the Internet Archive with its Way Back Machine. But I remember how it went, so here it is in broad strokes:

In the mid 80’s, when Ronald Reagan was still using shoe polish to colour his hair and Oliver North was still siphoning money to the Contras in Nicaragua, Jean-Michel Basquiat shot up in a 3rd floor tenement apartment on the Lower East Side. The owner of the apartment wanted to watch TV but the young artist was splayed across his favourite spot on the couch so the owner dragged him onto the fire escape and forgot about him. Almost a full day later, Basquiat woke to the sound of a basketball banging on the pavement of the parking lot below. A refreshing breeze cooled his body. Slivers of light fell through the ironwork of the fire escape and settled on his face. Like pigeons taking flight, laughter rose up from the parking lot. And, for a few minutes at least, Basquiat was happy. He felt gratitude. Like St. John of the Cross, he had known his dark night of the soul and now he lay on the metal landing, safe and awake and free from the harrowing.

Struggling to his feet, Basquiat leaned on the railing and watched the kids shooting hoops. The far side of the parking lot was bounded by a plain wooden fence and, at least in Basquiat’s mind, its plainness cried out to him the way a blank canvas cries out for paint. Its plainness was a blight. Its plainness was an insult to the joy of the kids running layups in the sunlight. He crawled back through the window where he found his canvas shoulder bag full of spray paints and he stumbled downstairs. He would thank the kids by turning their fence into a testament to their joy.

It wasn’t long afterwards that the artist OD’d and, as always seems to happen, Death strolled through all the galleries of Manhattan, waving a bony finger and converting Basquiat’s art into money. But Death forgot to wave a bony finger as he passed the parking lot where the late artist had lately spray painted his message of gratitude and joy, so the owner of the tenement building, (mis)taking it for vandalism, painted over it with a dull grey wash. And there the painting lay, hidden beneath a soul-deadening layer of paint and accumulating grime, on through HIV/AIDS, and the Gulf War, and 9/11, and the invasion of Afghanistan, and the collapse of the Lehman Bros., and the election of Obama, and the defeat of Clinton at the hands of an overblown grifter, and the arrival of Covid-19, and rants about a stolen election. All these layers of misery laid down over a single fleeting moment of gratitude.

And that was my story. Or at least the gist of it. As I say, I took the original down and it’s since disappeared. If I rewrote the story, not as fiction but as reportage, and I scraped away all the layers of this historic palimpsest, I’m not sure I’d ever come to a sunny day in Basquiat’s youth when a wave of gratitude and joy swept over him. That is the fiction. As reportage, I’m inclined to think I’d find misery all the way down to that very first needle in the arm, maybe even down into the cradle. The idea that he might once have known joy: that is the lost Basquiat.

Categories
City Life

Flash Fiction: Death Knocks On Luther’s Door

Black and white painting of skulls and hellish faces on fence in Toronto's Kensington Market
Painting on Fence in Kensington Market, Toronto

I must confess I was rather pleased with myself, almost giddy, for arriving at the Luther household with a hammer and a bag of gleaming nails to mark the 10th anniversary of that most illustrious of illustrious events. Like many of the others who shared schnitzel and beer at Martin’s table talks, we had taken to addressing him as Herr Doktor even though he affected modesty and insisted we call him Martin. So I felt somewhat deflated when the eminent man himself pulled open the door and, before I could utter a greeting or proffer my gift, advised that if I wished to cross his threshold I would first have to don a mask. They had received word only that morning of a fresh outbreak, a family on the next street manifesting buboes on their armpits and groins, and a little one who, sadly, had succumbed the night before. I complied of course, drawing from my pocket a face covering made from multiple layers of a fine linen which my Helga had purchased in the market.

Martin ushered me indoors. After surrendering my hammer and nails, I asked if he had any more theses he wished to add to the 95 he had already fixed to the door in Wittenberg, to which he answered that he could not say for certain; he would leave that for Herr Gott to conclude. I chortled until my corpulent midriff shook the floor and remarked that hopefully Herr Gott would conclude it in favour of brevity, otherwise the work would grow so large—

As large as you? and he elbowed me in the gut.

—grow so large that the weight would pull the door off its hinges.

I took a seat at the table where I stared directly at a woodcutting on the opposite wall, a framed work in the manner of Albrect Dürer, Death riding through the town on an emaciated steed. By contrast, Martin’s Katharina offered portions which were generous and, as she often said, would keep me looking as little like Death as any live man would care to look. I declared that I preferred not to be a Diet of Worms, but my joke fell flat amongst those at the table, most of whom were students from the university and either too thick or too drunk to appreciate the humour of intellectuals like myself.

Martin commented on the redness of my nose to which I answered that it was better red than black, for a red nose meant that I was still above ground.

As we ate, and as the Herr Doktor held forth on his latest theological musings, a knock came at the door. We fell silent while Martin opened the door and greeted a student, glassy-eyed and thin. As with me, Martin requested that the young man don a mask.

The young man’s voice rose as he spoke, and we could not help but hear his refusal.

Then I’m afraid I can’t allow you into my home.

Well then fuck you, Herr Doktor.

As the boy grew louder, it appeared to us that he also grew larger, as if by a magical mechanism that pumped air into his body and expanded it, as one sometimes sees with sausage casing that fills with a noxious gas when the meat inside begins to rot.

The boy proclaimed Herr Doktor Luther a hypocrite who, though he held himself out as a reformer and man of the people, what with his shitty Bible translation and his cavorting with drunks and his rescuing nun/whores from the clutches of the Church, but he was still nothing if not orthodox when it came to public health protocols. Wear a mask! Your mind has been taken over by the forces of evil.

The boy pointed to the woodcutting of Death fixed to Luther’s wall.

You think a little bit of cloth will do any good? It seems you’ve fallen in with that Copernicus heretic who puts his science before faith.

Luther said he was sorry the boy felt that way. But it didn’t matter because, at least in his own home, Luther was free to exclude whomever he pleased. And it pleased him very much to exclude drunken fools who refused to wear masks.

With that, Luther slammed the door shut in the boy’s bare face and returned to his schnitzel.

Categories
Wildlife

Dreaming Black & White

A black and white photograph of a black bird perched on a branch with its beak open as if singing.

When colour film became commercially feasible, it didn’t exactly sweep the photography world off its feet. Part of the reason may have been the cost. Colour film might be commercially feasible, but black and white film was still cheaper. However, when digital photography put an end to the price differential, black and white still retained its appeal.

While there are probably many reasons why people continue to shoot in black and white or to convert their colour images, one possible explanation is that some people dream in black and white. A monochrome palette feels natural to them.

A cursory search with Google suggests there is no definitive answer as to why some people dream in black and white and others dream in colour. For example, this Penn State course blog cites two principal reasons for black and white dreaming: 1) some people just don’t dream that vividly and so recall their dreams as black and white, or 2) people lose the ability to dream in colour as they age. However, a post on Psychreg suggests that most black and white dreamers were exposed to black and white media (and therefore tend to be older because they grew up in the days of black and white TV).

Personally, I recall my dreams in colour, although I do confess that the colours tend to be muted if visual concerns are incidental to the dream. For example, if the dream concerns a conversation or an argument, colour doesn’t really matter and so I don’t remember it. To that end, I share my two most recent dreams, both of which involved conversations.

Dream 1: Maya Ang;1ou

I dreamt of Maya Angelou. Instead of being dead, she was running for governor. I had volunteered to help her out. She needed technical advice on how to keep the haters from inundating her email account and flooding her social media with hate-bots. My big contribution, apart from telling her to use proton mail, was to suggest she use a special spelling of her name and distribute it only to her closest most trusted friends. So we came up with Maya Ang;1ou. I can think of no reason on earth why, at this particular moment, it should occur to me to dream about Maya Ang;1ou.

Dream 2: Bloomsday

Honest to god, on June 16th I dreamt it was Bloomsday. I was riding my bicycle through the streets of Dublin when I came upon a dingy row house with an old tin plaque beside the front door. The plaque commemorated the deeds of the fictional Leopold Bloom: “On this day in 1904, a fictional character in a James Joyce novel did take a shit on this site.” Or words to that effect. I had arrived with a paring knife in hand and meant to pry the plaque from the wall so I could take it home as a souvenir. However, before I could start, a woman opened the door and gave me proper hell in tones only the Irish know how to produce. I looked at her, sheepish, and when she saw that I was harmless, only drunk on Bulmer’s Cider, she softened her tone and, looking from side to side, said she didn’t think it would do any harm for me to steal the sign, and what did she care since it wasn’t her as put it there in the first place.

A black and white photograph of a graffiti-covered double door in Dublin.
A Door In Dublin
Categories
City Life

Fading Street Art: The Times They Are A Changin

Old graffiti painted on paper that is peeling off a rotten sheet of plywood.
The Times They Are A Changin, Dupont/Christie, Toronto

This concludes a month of images curated on the theme of “things which were but are no more.” My final image captures a rotten sheet of plywood that covers the window of a decrepit building, former home of a hair salon near the southeast corner of Toronto’s Christie/Dupont intersection. Someone spray painted bubble letters on the plywood and then someone else (or maybe the same person) added words inside one of the letters: “The Times They Are A Changin.”

It’s the title of Bob Dylan’s song released in 1964 on his album of the same name, a call to hippies to resist the oppressive forces of the day, McCarthyism, Jim Crow, the police action in Vietnam. On this sheet of plywood, someone has invoked those times to resist the oppressive forces of today. But the times aren’t really a changin, are they? The fact that people say this over and over again demonstrates how little the times are a changin. To bastardize lyrics by Dylan’s son, Jakob, the only thing that’s changed is that things are exactly the way they used to be.

Things have taken a turn to the pernicious. In 1964, Bob Dylan didn’t have to name the forces of evil at work in his world. He sang his song and everyone in the audience knew exactly what he was singing about. But things have gotten confused since then. As someone who feels politically aligned with the hippies of Bob Dylan’s world, I look at my current world and name certain things: the oil and gas industries, consumption beyond the planet’s limits, accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. I want to sing “the times are a changin” but the world doesn’t agree with me.

Other’s challenge my perception of reality. They tell me the forces I name as forces of oppression aren’t even real. Climate change isn’t real. Collectively, we’ve never been better off than we are right now. Soon I begin to doubt myself. In another time, I might have called this gaslighting. But today’s forces of oppression take it one further and tell me their gaslighting is really gaslighting at all; it’s just a description of the way things are. In fact I’m gaslighting them.

For the sake of clarity: I’m not gaslighting these people even though they say I am. The purpose of gaslighting is to destabilize a person’s basic beliefs about the state of the world by injecting profound uncertainty into their thoughts. These people—the denialists, the conspiracists, the ideologues—haven’t enough uncertainty amongst them to fill a thimble.

Which takes me to my final observation: maybe Bob Dylan’s call for change is misdirected. The times are never a changin, or if they are, it has little to do with human agency. The only change we can ever effect is the change we inject into our personal thinking. And the only way that happens is if we cultivate mental habits like curiosity, and if we revel in the pleasure of uncertainty. The problem today with the people we disagree with is not that we disagree with them, but that we have all turned to stone.

Categories
City Life

Empty Parking Lot in Downtown Toronto

A plastic bag blows across a dusty gravel parking lot while in the background is a graffiti mural on a wall.
Plastic bag blows past mural southeast of the Church/Dundas intersection, Toronto

Maybe you remember the scene from the 1999 film, American Beauty, the scene where the boy next door, Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley), videos a plastic bag as a breeze buffets it no place in particular. Ricky Fitts is utterly transported by the beauty of the moment and in the background we hear Thomas Newman’s haunting “Any Other Name.”

Ricky intuits that the beauty of the moment is somehow related to the fact that it is fleeting. I have been reading the novellas and short stories of Thomas Mann where he poses questions about the relationship between beauty and decay. In a cruder form, Milan Kundera wonders if, in the absence of shit, beauty is nothing more than kitsch. The film, American Beauty, holds to a similar line; the passing moments we stitch together to make a life would come to nothing without the certainty of death.

A few years ago I found myself standing in an empty parking lot on the southeast corner of Dundas and Church Streets in Toronto staring at a scene chock full of ephemera and wondered if I hadn’t stumbled onto the set of an American Beauty sequel. A breeze kicked up the dirt and, with it, a plastic bag. The bag never got very far before the breeze changed and blew it in the opposite direction.

On the wall behind, a mural, itself a piece of ephemera. Etched on the wall, the outline of a building that had once stood where there was now a parking lot. Even the wall turned out to be a piece of ephemera. Shortly after I made this shot, a demolition company enclosed the lot with temporary fencing and tore everything to the ground. After that, a construction company took over, excavating and putting in footings to support a condominium tower.

Now, everything is gone and I can scarcely remember what stood there before.

Categories
Street Portrait

Adrian Hayles: Yonge Love Mural North

Adrian Hayles works on Yonge Love Mural, north side of 423 Yonge Street

Graphic artist Adrian Hayles takes a break from working on the Yonge Love Mural North, a project commissioned by the Yonge Street BIA and decorating the north face of 423 Yonge Street. The mural celebrates the many styles of music that accompany people as they move through the streets of Toronto. I captured this moment in September, 2016 when he’d come down from his cherry picker to take a breather and, presumably, wipe the paint spackles off his glasses. The building that serves as his canvas is 22 stories high so, beyond a certain height, he had to give up the cherry picker and shift to a swing stage platform. If he’s afraid of heights, he hides it well.

Yonge Love Mural - north side of 423 Yonge Street
Categories
Street Portrait

Street Portrait – Graffiti Alley

Graffiti Alley, Toronto

I was wandering through Graffiti Alley when a woman stepped outside for a cigarette break. For reasons unknown to me, I happened to be shooting with a proper portrait lens, my Canon 85mm f/1.2 so how could I not ask if she’d pose for a shot or two? And, of course, the graffiti makes a great backdrop.

In a way, it’s harder to do street portraits of women. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first relates to the power dynamics between a photographer and the subject. If I approach a man like Scott and he doesn’t want to pose, he won’t hesitate to tell me where to shove my camera. But it isn’t necessarily the same when approaching a woman. I have to be sensitive about how I present myself. Do I come across as intimidating? Does she feel free enough to tell me to take a hike? The exchange should feel natural, comfortable. Otherwise it shouldn’t happen at all.

The other reason is more practical. There are far fewer women out and about. The people with the most time to spare for a street portrait are the homeless. But almost always they are men. I’m not sure why this is. Maybe it has something to do with the way social supports are administered, offering more protection to women and keeping them off the streets. Whatever the reason, my portraits of the homeless are almost invariably portraits of men.

Categories
City Life

Good-bye 2021

E & N Railway Trail, Victoria, B.C.

Tonight we show 2021 the door. A year ago, people made jokes about saying good riddance to 2020. By implication, 2021 had to be better because nothing could be worse than 2020. And then 2021 came along …

To be fair. It’s not a competition. Each year has turned out to be shit fucked in its own special way.

This image nicely captures how I feel about 2021. I identify with the skeleton playing the mandolin. I didn’t even bother to interrogate the year or give it a fair trial. Instead, I chopped off its arm and ran a sword through its chest. Then I sat on a log and played a madrigal. They call them madrigals for a reason. If you sang them when you’re happy, they’d call them gladrigals.

Categories
City Life

We’re all in the same basket

My parents have resumed their usual habit of wintering in Florida with hundreds of thousands of other retired Canadians who’ve had enough of winter living. Recently, my dad told how he went to a meeting of the local camera club and was the only one wearing a mask. They met in an enclosed space. They didn’t enforce any distancing protocols. Meanwhile, the news tells of omicron ripping its way through European countries as a portent of things to come in North America. But people in Florida have had enough of Covid-19 protocols and all the accompanying talk of vaccinations. They want to get on with their lives the way they lived them back at the beginning of 2020. And so my dad sat by himself, masked and triple vaxxed.

My dad’s account offers an interesting reversal of an already interesting reversal in the narratives people tell about mandated protocols. Here, in Toronto, where vaccination rates are some of the highest in the world (86.2 % fully vaccinated among those aged 12 and up) the anti-vaxxers take to the streets, marching through the downtown core every Saturday and telling onlookers to stop being sheeple, to start thinking for themselves. (I call this an interesting reversal because, before the pandemic, the same protesters insisted on wearing masks because they feared government surveillance.)

The situation in Florida illustrates a further reversal. When the anti-vaxxers dominate the public discourse, they lose the advantage of their usual arguments. They can’t accuse people like my dad of being sheeple anymore. And they can’t say that he isn’t thinking for himself because, obviously, he’s asserting his independence of thought when he’s the only one choosing to wear a mask.

Context is everything. In the context of an unmasked majority, we see them clearly for what they are: people who have cast aside all pretense of argument and will do what they want to do for no other reason than that they want to do it. But we can’t very well call this libertarianism, can we? Not when everyone is doing it. I’m more inclined to call it sheepleism.

Categories
City Life

Photos to calm the nerves

Graffiti on the side of a chimney, E & N Railway Trail, Victoria, B.C.

New infection rates are going up by leaps and bounds. They call it exponential. The omicron variant is taking over. Governments are imposing restrictions on gathering sizes. Schools may have to shut down again. The stock market is plummeting. Day traders are jumping off rooftops. And I haven’t got my wife a Christmas present yet. Ah, the anxiety!

For me, one of the antidotes to anxiety is to find a calming photograph and simply stare at it. It’s like an intervention. It interrupts all the voices that clamour for my attention. Most of that clamour is just click bait anyways. Why would I want to reward it?

There’s something about this chimney I found in Victoria a couple weeks ago, the way the green siding and the off-beige cinder blocks interact with the blue trim and blues of the sky. I treat it as shapes and colours with no particular message, and it sets my heart at ease.

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Uncategorized

Family Portraits

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.

Family photo
Categories
City Life

I Like Trains

Boxcar at the E & N Roundhouse, West Victoria, B.C.

I like trains. On November 23rd, I found this scrawled on the the side of an abandoned boxcar that sits by the E & N (Esquimalt & Nanaimo) Roundhouse in West Victoria, B.C. This message or declaration or cry to the gods was brand new. I know this because I had shot the same boxcar only two days earlier and, at that time, it had no message spray painted on its side.

I don’t know why people need to declare to the world their privately held personal preferences. Isn’t it enough just to stare at the boxcar and admire it? Maybe the message isn’t about what it says, but about what it does. Maybe there’s an implied bit that can be added to the message: I like trains and I exist. The spray painted message satisfies a basic existential need: it confirms to the spray painter that they aren’t invisible but can act in the real world. I arrive on the scene with my camera and amplify that confirmation by sharing it with the rest of the world.

Boxcar at the E & N Roundhouse, West Victoria, B.C.
Categories
Street Photography

Signs of the Extinction Rebellion

Woman walks past a sign advertising retail space for a flagship store.

By the intersection of Buchanan & Sauchiehall, a large poster advertises a retail opportunity for a flagship store. Two women walk past, apparently unconcerned, one wearing headphones, the other staring at her smart phone. As a photographer, my primary interest lies in the fact that the pavement is wet and offers a nice reflection of the colours in the poster. It isn’t until later, much later, two and half years later to be precise, that I notice the Extinction Rebellion logo spray painted onto the poster.

Personally, I don’t like aggressive activism. I avoid confrontation and prefer reasoned debate. That may have more to do with my personality that with my view of the Extinction Rebellion’s tactics. However, I do feel a change within myself and wonder how long before I see aggressive activism as the only path forward. When debate turns to the livability of the planet and the future of my children well, then, it ceases to be a debate, doesn’t it?

Categories
City Life

South Portland Street Suspension Bridge

South Portland Street Suspension Bridge across the River Clyde, Glasgow

This is the most sentimental photograph you are ever likely to see on this web site. If you were expecting a colder gaze from me, I apologize and promise not to do anything like this again.

This is a sign that stands at one end of the South Portland Street Suspension Bridge, a pedestrian walkway across the Clyde River in Glasgow. Maybe it upsets you that somebody vandalized the sign by painting a heart on it and the words: “i love you.” Personally, I regard the sign as a form of vandalism. It’s title is “Clyde Bridges.” We don’t need a sign to tell us that; it’s fucking obvious. All the sign does is get in the way. The graffiti is an improvement.

Categories
City Life

Cop26 in Glasgow

Keep your coins, I want change - graffiti in Glasgow

This year’s iteration of the UN Conference on Climate Change (Cop26) is sponsored by the UK and held in Glasgow. Needless to say, plunking a UK-sponsored event in the middle of a Scottish city must cause tension given that there is a concerted separatist movement afoot in Scotland that has only gained momentum since Brexit. It must also cause tension for a more practical reason. Cop26 will see 30,000 delegates and support staff descend upon a relatively small town (as a Torontonian, I compare it to Hamilton) with only 15,000 hotel beds. Maybe visitors can double up.

To mark the occasion, I thought I’d devote the month of November to photos from Glasgow and environs. I love the city. I have friends who live there and so I have visited roughly 10 times. I feel at ease there. If not for the insurmountable paperwork, I can imagine myself making it my home.

I shot this piece of graffiti during my last visit in 2019 a little before the pandemic. It nicely captures the conflict at play in these conferences between economic interests and environmental concerns. Mud and grit have accumulated especially over the lower half of the mural. Grit floats on the air in Glasgow. Every time I get off the plane at the airport in Paisley, I can taste it. It serves as a reminder of Glasgow’s role as a ship-building, coal-burning, chemical manufacturing centre of modern industry. No matter how hard it works to scour the city’s dirty corners, it can never quite get rid of all the accumulated grit.