Tag: People

Categories
Street Photography

What’s The Story

One man accosts another man in Toronto's Dundas Square

I have no idea what’s going on in this photograph. I had parked myself in the southwest corner of Toronto’s Dundas Square, framing a shot and watching as people moved through the frame. It’s a bit like setting a trap and waiting to see what wildlife I can capture. Eventually, these two men walked through my frame and I shot a burst of about 10 stills.

Even though I was within spitting distance of the pair, I have no idea what was passing between the two of them. The guy to the left is wearing a shirt decorated in cannabis leaves. He holds a lighter in his left hand and a cigarette in his right hand. He’s saying something to the guy on the right, waving his left arm as if he’s trying to get the other man’s attention. It’s impossible to hear what he’s saying because there is loud music blaring nearby and because the fountains are splashing water.

The guy on the right is eating a hot dog and continues to walk, either not hearing or deliberately ignoring the man on the left. Is the man on the left trying to sell him something? Drugs, maybe? Is he uttering a racial slur? There’s no way to know simply by staring at the photograph.

I like it when my photographs defy my expectations for them as documentation or evidence. I like them best when they prove to be documentation of nothing. Or documentation of ambiguity. At most, they are evidence of an unknowability at the heart of human experience. We really don’t know what’s going on in any of it.

Categories
Street Portrait

Are the Eyes the Window to Anything?

Street portrait of Ben.

We’ve all heard that the eyes are the window to the soul. I can’t find a source for this cliché, but both Shakespeare and the New Testament offer passages that suggest we can know a person truly by gazing into their eyes. I base my street portraiture on this supposition, and when I post these photographs, I do so on the assumption that you, the viewer, share this supposition too. You gaze into the eyes of my subject and feel you know something about them.

Nevertheless, I find this supposition problematic for several reasons:

First, like most people, I’ve had the unsettling experience of being deceived by a convincing liar. I look into a grifter’s eyes and see nothing but sincerity. Part of what makes this experience unsettling is that it undermines a basic assumption I have about human interaction: I can know a person just by looking at them.

Second, the cliché obviously favours sighted people. And yet people with low vision or with injured eyes manage quite nicely to know and to be known. They demonstrate that my basic assumption is not so basic after all.

Finally, new technology shows how easy it is to fabricate faces. This person does not exist is a web site that generates a face you would swear belongs to your next door neighbour. You gaze into their eyes and impute to them a lifetime of experience when, in point of fact, those eyes have existed for only a couple seconds.

The photo featured above belongs to Ben who posed for me on Yonge Street a few years ago. He is very real, but you’ll have to take my word for it.

Categories
Street Photography

Nudity on Social Media Sites

Nude pedestrians making the peace sign while walking down Toronto's Church Street during Pride celebrations.

A recent article in The Guardian documents a number of incidents where Viennese Museums have fallen afoul of social media user guidelines. For example, the article states that “[i]n 2018, the Natural History Museum’s photograph of the 25,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf figurine was deemed pornographic by Facebook and removed from the platform.” It appears that social media platforms have no mechanism to distinguish between nudity as art or as social commentary and nudity as exploitation or pornography. By “mechanism”, I’m not talking about an algorithm to sift through image files; I’m talking about the means to engage in meaningful internal debate about underlying philosophical issues.

Despite a market capitalization that has topped a trillion dollars, Facebook doesn’t appear to have the resources to engage questions that are central to what it means to be human. Questions like those of aesthetics, embodiment, and mortality. The lack of meaningful guidance from platform owners like Facebook has a chilling effect upon users who then err on the side of caution by avoiding limnal cases. Vienna’s solution to the problem is to develop an OnlyFans account where images of famous art won’t be banned or its account terminated.

My personal solution to this problem is to maintain my own domain where I’m not at the mercy of ill-conceived or poorly interpreted user guidelines. I suppose my host could shut me down, but that would only mean a brief interruption; I can always take my backup and go somewhere else. I suppose, too, search engines can choke access to my site. I’m not sure what to do about that except to recommend that you turn off safe browsing and risk stumbling upon the occasional bit of porn as you surf your way to enlightenment.

Categories
City Life

Construction Site in Downtown Toronto

Construction worker reaches for piece of metal suspended by a chain

There is a 50+ story condominium going up across the road from me. I like to complain that it’s blocking my view of the 49 story condominium south of it. And when the 49 story condominium was under construction, I liked to complain that it was blocking my view of the 30 story condominium south of it. And so on down to the lake. Such is life in a city.

One compensation is that the construction offers up no end of visual opportunities for a photographer. Like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, I sit by my window with a long lens mounted on a tripod and I scan the scene across the road. I’m looking for action, workers doing things, people in motion.

Categories
Street Portrait

Homeless Woman Walking on Bloor Street

Homeless woman walks in the middle of the road at the Bloor/Yonge Intersection, Toronto.

I had crouched just west of the Bloor/Yonge intersection in Toronto, shooting cyclists as they whizzed past, when this homeless woman wandered into the frame. She’s a familiar face and I know that she makes little distinction between a sidewalk and the middle of a road, yet somehow she doesn’t get mowed down by speeding cars. If you look closely, you’ll see that she’s carrying a cup of coffee in each of her jacket pockets. She is wearing fresh clothes and has a new “do”. Some of the local women’s shelters, like Lazarus House, give their clients new outfits and offer help with personal grooming. I saw this woman repeatedly in the days after I shot this photo and she continued wear the same clothes while her hair grew increasingly unkempt. Two weeks later, she had ditched these clothes and was wandering down the middle of the street in a hoodie.

Categories
Street Photography

I Hate Rubber Boots

Walking up Yonge Street in Rubber Boots wearing a T-shirt that reads: "I hate rubber boots."
Man wears "I Hate Rubber Boots" T-shirt in Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto.

The “I Hate Rubber Boots” guy is becoming a fixture around downtown Toronto. The first time I saw him was in June 2018 when I was carrying my Konica T3 loaded with 35mm black and white film. This time, I was carrying my Sony A7R IV. I saw him in the distance walking north up Yonge Street. Anticipating his approach, I dropped to my knees. Instead of approaching, he stopped and posed, but I was shooting with a 35mm lens and he was still just a small figure in my frame. I motioned him to keep walking and he obliged. Better an action shot than posed, not that walking is much of an action.

In The Global Soul, Pico Iyer includes an extended meditation on Toronto. He observes that the people of Toronto have a well developed sense of irony. The “I Hate Rubber Boots” strikes me as typical of that sensibility. We all hate rubber boots but go on wearing them anyways. Same goes for masks.

Categories
Street Photography

Buying a Wedding Dress During Covid-19

Mother & Daughter carry wedding dress across Queen Street West, Toronto

It’s easy to stand near an intersection and shoot people as they pass; it’s a different matter to shoot them in a way that hints at larger story. In this instance, I saw two women carrying a large bag. In itself, it’s visually interesting. On closer examination, I see that the bag is from a wedding dress boutique in The Hudson Bay Store (across the street). The two women appear to be mother and daughter just picking up the daughter’s wedding dress. Of course, I could be reading the scene wrong. It could be the mother’s wedding dress. The women could be unrelated. Who knows? Nevertheless, the scene suggests a story and it raises enough questions to keep us looking.