Tag: Street Portrait

Categories
Street Photography

Ordering À La Carte

Black & white photo through a window of a man sitting at a restaurant table and texting.
Texting at Sorrelle's, SE corner of Avenue Rd & Yorkville

Nice restaurant. Upscale. A little beyond us. But now and then, when we’re in the mood for something special, we change our clothes and go out for a treat. The people at the other tables are beautiful. Bright smiles and perfect hair. Gleaming eyes and posture that never flags. The brighter the smiles, the more Barb tells me not to slouch. I want to tell her that, unlike the other people in the room, I’m subject to the laws of gravity which drag me down toward the ground, and one day under it, but I hold off because the waiter has magically appeared beside our table. I realize he didn’t magically appear; it just seems that way. It’s more like he was a predator stalking our table from the long grass when he suddenly pounced. He asks if we’d like a drink to start. Or an hors d’oeuvre? We both ask for cocktails. Barb asks for some duck pâté while I settle for something from the vegetable realm. Two minutes later, the waiter appears again at our table, this time without the magical aura, and announces they have no more duck pâté so madam will have to select something else.

An underling arrives with our drinks, a sub-sub-bartender, someone who lost the latest round of dominance contests: head butting or chest thumping or whatever it is the wait staff do to decide who gets to wear the smartest clothes. Me Tarzan, you busboy. We smile at one another. We clink our glasses. We watch the hostess seat a couple at the adjacent table. Your server is Raoul and he’ll be right with you, she says, and she sashays back to the entrance. Our neighbours are young, hip, unsullied the way Brad and Angelina were unsullied before the tabloids turned them into twisted freaks underneath a Barnum & Bailey circus tent. He wears tight-fitting pants and reminds me of a flamenco dancer. She wears a black dress with a V cut so low we can see the diamond stud in her navel. Raoul creeps from behind a pot of tropical plants and asks if they care for a cocktail or an hors d’oeuvre. They order their drinks and tell Raoul they will be sharing a plate of duck pâté. Raoul says very good and waddles away.

Did you hear that? I whisper. And Barb whispers back that, yes, she saw how Raoul nodded and didn’t advise that they were out of pâté. It isn’t long before our neighbours are swiping dollops of pâté across their crackers and stuffing them into their mouths like kids with popcorn at the movies. I wave the waiter over to our table and challenge him, pointing to our neighbours and the dainty bits of pâté stuck in the corners of their mouths.

You told us you were out of duck pâté.

That is true.

Yet you served them duck pâté.

No, that is not pâté.

Of course it is.

Raoul looks to our neighbours and shakes his head. That is a spreadable meat made from duck liver.

Which is the definition of duck pâté.

You are mistaken, sir.

Increasingly, I find myself experiencing vertiginous moments like this when I grip the edge of the table and gaze across it to Barb and beg her to assure me that the table is real. I don’t think this is me growing old; I think this is the world turning on it’s head. Should we stay for the rest of our meal? I worry they’ll set coq au vin in front of me and try to persuade me it’s the aged bison I ordered. Carrots are beans. Water is wine. Jolly fascists will march from the kitchen, singing the national anthem, and serve my head on a silver platter while telling everyone it’s wild boar.

Categories
Street Photography

Flash Fiction: Interview with the Greatest Living Poet

Candid street portrait from behind, focussing on ear lobes and facial tattoos. The subject has hair slicked back and smokes a cigarette. The smoke obscures an already blurred background.
X’s features lay indeterminate inside that grey smog.

Everyone has heard of X, our country’s preeminent poet, a fact made more remarkable because, in today’s prosaic world of Tik Tok influencers and power-hungry demagogues and anti-vaccination marches, it seems improbable that there would be widespread interest in the traces of one person’s poetic imagination. I already knew something of the enigmatic X because, when I was an undergrad student, I roomed with someone who went on to do a Ph.D. thesis on the poetics of X so, when I got the call to do a profile piece for the zine, I had an in.

My friend sent me to a non-descript address in the suburbs. It could have been anywhere. Dandelion infested lawns. Power mowers whining like cicadas in the heat. Garden hoses left uncoiled by the garage. It was a matter of some embarrassment that I hadn’t read anything by X, but every bookstore (even virtual bookstores) told me they had nothing in stock. I couldn’t even reserve any of X’s works through the public library system; the people I spoke to speculated that maybe clients were stealing X’s books (even virtual books). X was, after all, a popular figure. Legendary even. If it came to specifics, I’d have to bluff my way through the interview.

I found X sitting in a garden of plants I couldn’t identify. X was smoking a cigarette—vaping is for pussies (not my words)—and the hot afternoon air was so still that each exhalation added more smoke to a growing cloud that had settled around the poet’s head. X’s features lay indeterminate inside that grey smog. The hair might have been blond or brown; the eyes, green or blue. In fact, I couldn’t be certain X was a man. I had assumed, but maybe I wasn’t even using the right pronoun. When X greeted me, the voice gave no clue as to gender. Years of smoking had turned the voice into an understated gravel pit that could have belonged to anyone.

So what’ve you written lately? And as soon as the words had bounced off my tongue, I felt like an idiot.

Through the cloud of smoke, X offered what may or may not have been a smile. I am a poet, X answered.

The economy of words. The compression. The indeterminacy of meaning. The shamanic vibe. All these things were the hallmark of a great poet. And yet all these things were also a source of frustration for someone trying to nail down a piece for a struggling arts zine.

I am a poet because I am a poet. Not because I write poetry.

But if I apply a Butlerian approach to identity, I’d challenge your poetic essentialism and say your identity as a poet depends on the performative aspects of poetic production.

X laughed and laughed until the laughter turned into a hacking fit and X nearly fell onto the patio paving stones. Christ, you’ve been spending too much time with that postdoctoral nitwit friend of yours.

But you still write poetry, don’t you?

I tried once, but it scared the shit out of me.

Referring afterwards to my notes, I see that I wrote a gigantic “PHEW!!!” And underneath: “At least I know now why I couldn’t find any of X’s works.” Then, on the reverse side of the same page: “This A-hole has never written a single fucking word!”

So what is it? I asked. Anxiety? Fear of failure?

X drew on a freshly lit cigarette, held the smoke in for a minute, then expelled it into the ever-present cloud: Nothing so pedestrian.

As I understand it (assuming there’s anything at all to understand), X rests the full weight of personal poetics on a notion of opportunity cost which (because X wants to appear intellectual) can be reduced to the Latin maxim: expressio unius est exclusio alterius. Saying one thing forecloses the possibility of saying something else. If we say X has green eyes, then we have prevented ourselves from saying that X has blue eyes. But X wants to savour the possibility of having both green and blue eyes and wants the feeling to go on and on forever. So it’s impossible to say either. X struggles against the law of non-contradiction. X wants to kick the young Wittgenstein in the nuts. X wants to drown positivists in Heraclitus’s river.

In a way, said X, I’m the greatest poet who’s ever lived. By writing nothing, I leave the field open to infinite possibility. No other poet has been so expansive.

X wrapped things up with a personal mantra: Specificity destroys possibility!

Even so, for all this abstraction, I faced the practical matter of a deadline. Zine publishers love their specificity. In the end, I wrote the best article it was possible for me to write. I submitted a blank page and a yellow sticky with a note: “Feel free to make of this whatever you like.” I may well be the greatest zine writer who’s ever lived.

Categories
Street Portrait

Flash Fiction: The Race

Street portrait of an elderly woman wearing a hat and watching the Pride Parade marshall at the corner of Park and Rosedale Valley Road in Toronto
Waiting for Pride at the corner of Park & Rosedale Valley Road, Toronto

I visited my grandma three weeks before she died. Two days after I visited, according to my mom, the old woman drifted into a cognitive fog and never came back. But on the day I visited, a cool Saturday afternoon in April, my grandma was as sharp as grandpa’s fresh stropped razor. She knew her lungs were failing her. She knew her time had come. With her clear blue eyes, she stared at me from her recliner chair and said: “I hope Ethel dies by July.” Those were her last words to me, or at least the last words that made any sense.

Iris and Ethel had been inseparable. That’s what everyone said, though anyone who knew for sure was long dead. They’d grown up on neighbouring farms, played together as infants, went to the same one room school house as children and, when the time came, stood in each other’s wedding party. While everyone said they were two peas in a pod, it was a pretty competitive pod. When their husbands died and it seemed a good idea to move into an assisted living residence, it was Ethel who was first out of the gate, scoring a lovely apartment in the Blessed Garden Seniors Home on Maple Street. Iris followed a few months later, but she got a unit that had an extra bathroom so guests would have their own place to pee. Ethel said she’d rather have the view than an extra pee closet. Ethel was on the fourth floor whereas Iris was only on the third floor. The building was ell-shaped which meant that Ethel could sit on her balcony and gaze sideways down into Iris’s sitting room and track all her guests. The two kept guest books by their front doors and once a week compared notes to see who had the most visitors.

I think that competitive edge explains my grandma’s last words to me. If Ethel lived into July, that would mean she won. She would have lived longer than grandma. They were both 97, which I figure is a remarkable thing, especially when you can hit 97 and still play with all your marbles. But grandma was damned if she’d let Ethel hit 98. She toyed with ideas like poisoned darts and curses, but didn’t have the energy to follow through with any of her plans. When she said she hoped Ethel died by July, she waved a hand up and to the left, indicating the balcony where her friend usually sat and watched.

Three weeks after my visit, mom called and said grandma was fading fast; if I wanted to be there when she went, I’d better scoot. It was a two hour drive and she might be gone before I got there. There’s something about imminent death that heightens the senses. When I arrived, I took in so much more than I usually do. It was the first time I’d noticed that grandma Iris lived in a Christian residence. I stepped out of the elevator onto the third floor and faced a big picture on the opposite wall. I’d always assumed it was a bearded millennial at a local Pride celebration. But no. It was Jesus. The lamb gave it away. You’d never see a lamb at a Pride celebration.

They’d provided one of those roll-away hospital beds with side rails so grandma Iris could die in familiar surroundings. We sat with her in the living room, me on one side of the bed, mom and dad on the other side of the bed. Mostly, she lay with her eyes closed, shallow intermittent breaths, then a long stretch of silence which we spent wondering if she was gone. Then a big gasp and another series of shallow intermittent breaths. Sometimes she opened her blue eyes and stared directly at me. At least I thought she was staring at me until I realized that I was sitting in line with her view out the living room window to the far balcony where Ethel sat watching.

Blessed Garden had provided a nurse to attend to grandma’s care, a millennial with a well trimmed beard. We asked how long, in his experience, it took for someone in grandma’s position to, you know. He shrugged and said it was impossible to say. She might go in a minute. Or she might hang on ‘til midnight.

I said I was hungry. Mom and dad telepathically agreed that they wouldn’t be much good to anybody light-headed and stomachs rumbling, so we left grandma with the nurse and went to an A & W. While we were waiting for a bored teenager to fill our order, mom’s phone rang. Uh huh. Uh huh. Nod. Nod. When she was done with her call, she said: Well, Grandma’s gone. We asked the bored teenager to wrap things up to go and we took our burgers back to Blessed Garden.

With a small tear trailing down his left cheek, the nurse said Missus Iris just stopped breathing, no distress, just a gentle fading. Peaceful. I took my burger and sat in my usual chair. The nurse hadn’t closed grandma’s eyes so she was still gazing past me, on and up to the balcony where Ethel sat. I eased the lids over the milky blue eyeballs, then thought maybe I should use some hand sanitizer before I handled my burger. Mom checked her purse but couldn’t find any and grandma didn’t appear to keep any in easy reach, so I gave my hands a good wipe on my thighs before I pulled my burger out of the bag.

I could tell the nurse was trying to be super sensitive. Probably nurses have a code of professional conduct they’re supposed to follow. He wondered if we’d like him to say a prayer. Maybe ask for Jesus to be present at this difficult time. I stared across the body to my parents, who were both busy with their burgers, and did my best not to laugh out loud.

When July arrived, mom phoned the Blessed Garden Seniors Home and learned that Ethel was still kicking around on her balcony. Mom and dad sent her a big bouquet of spring flowers. I sent her a card. Actually, I bought two cards but I ruined the first one. I wrote: “Congratulations on winning the race!” I decided that was inappropriate, so I threw it out. The card that made it to the mailbox congratulated her on reaching 98 and wished her health and happiness for the year to come.

Categories
Street Portrait

Street Portraits at Toronto’s Pride Parade

Street portrait of a man wearing sunglasses and a cannabis decorated fishing hat.

Pride events offer the perfect opportunity to shoot street portraits. This is especially true on overcast days when shadows are soft and natural sunlight is kind to photographers. But the enemy here is not light so much as time. Interactions are so fleeting that you may have only a second to make a connection and take the shot. Everything has an ADHD vibe to it. Catch someone’s eye; raise the camera as if to ask “mind if I take a shot”; get the nod; frame the shot; click; move on to the next person.

This year, there was only one person who declined to pose. That’s exceptional. Most years, the number is zero. In the fenced-off portions of Church Street, consent is assumed, although that consent is given to Pride Toronto and not to the thousands of unofficial photographers roaming at large. The release notice says that “you consent to the use of your image” etc. for eternity. That strikes me as optimistic. Eternity is a long time. A lot can happen between now and eternity.

For example, on some views of inflationary cosmology, the universe expands forever and the distribution of energy within an infinite universe means that the average temperature approaches absolute zero. In other words, eventually it will become too cold to care about the rights we’ve assigned to Pride Toronto.

But there are other issues to consider before it ever gets to that. For example, after about 5 billion years, our sun will become a red giant, expanding well beyond Earth’s orbit, which means that our home planet will be consumed in a great ball of Jerry Lee Lewis. In that scenario, assuming our genetic progeny still exists but hasn’t figured out how to migrate elsewhere, it will become too hot to care about the rights we’ve assigned to Pride Toronto.

Somewhere between hot and cold, there is a lukewarm position occupied by smaller stars that consume their fuel more sparingly. Although the universe is too young for us to gauge the potential lifespan of such a star, it is plausible to suppose it could continue to burn for hundreds of billions, perhaps even trillions, of years. Assuming we escape our solar death trap and migrate to one of these smaller stars, we could carry on for a long time. But somehow I think that, after evolving for the next trillion years, we might grow bored of staring at old photos of pride events from those early days when we’d barely learned to walk upright.

Categories
Street Portrait

Curiosity

A woman with a heavily tattooed arm, and wearing strong makeup and a hairnet, sits in Toronto's High Park.

Curiosity is a mental posture worth cultivating in the pursuit of street photography. There is something to be said for revisiting the mind of a three year old and asking Why? Why? Why? wherever we turn our gaze.

I’m not a Roman Catholic, but curiosity has led me to delve into Roman Catholic theology. I am particularly taken by the writings of the Jesuit philosopher, Bernard Lonergan, whose monumental work, Insight, rests on a simple observation: all human beings are born with an unrestricted desire to know. Curiosity.

For Lonergan, curiosity is the default condition of human consciousness. At one time or another, virtually all of us stray from that default condition, pulled by what he describes as distortions in our thinking. Many of these distortions happen because of the socializing process we call growing up. Adulthood has many things to commend it, but sometimes its demands can stifle curiosity.

Street photography (or any photography for that matter) can be a wonderful antidote to the dangers of growing up. It stimulates curiosity by encouraging us to look at our world in fresh ways. This is especially important when we encounter people as the subjects of our photographs. Curiosity pushes us to see beyond those habits that distort our seeing, habits like the impulse to judge and the entrenchment of personal bias. Curiosity demands that we see the more that rests inside each person we encounter.

Alongside curiosity, I find a delight in difference. This delight doesn’t find expression in a salacious voyeurism: look at this strangeness I’ve captured. Instead, it’s more an expression of relief. It’s such a relief that people don’t look or think like me. What a dull and narrow world that would be!

Categories
Street Portrait

Handling Dark Skin in Post-processing Software

Candid street portrait of a Black person wearing decorative earrings.

It’s well-established that film was optimized for light-skinned subjects. Manufacturers dodged allegations of racism by arguing that the principal market for film was light-skinned purchasers. They were simply meeting demand. If racism accounted for the fact that there was less demand from dark-skinned purchasers, that was a social problem. Not something that companies like Eastman Kodak could do anything about.

Except that they could. Part of the problem was that white photographers were complacent and simply assumed there was some immutable technical reason why film was the way it was. A notable exception came in 1977 when Jean-Luc Godard went on assignment in Mozambique and refused to use Kodak film.

It turns out manufacturers could address the issue if given the right incentive. For example, the vintage ID-2 Polaroid camera came with a boost that enhanced the flash by 42% which is exactly the additional level of light that black skin absorbs. The reason for the boost was to meet the requirements of the South African government. At that time, the apartheid regime required Blacks to carry a passbook and the photographs had to accurately reflect the skin colour of the subjects. It seems manufacturers were happy to meet the demands of apartheid but not the demands of a Black family trying to make a photo album.

Despite claims that the shift to digital photography has solved the problem, that isn’t universally true. Facial recognition algorithms have a persistent problem accurately detecting darker skinned faces. And since the principal function of these algorithms is to assist law enforcement and border controls, current shortcomings continue to promote the racial biases historically embedded in these roles.

For an individual photographer, or even someone wielding an iPhone, post-processing apps have made it easy to accurately correct for different skin tones. In my own work flow, I rely on programs like Lightroom and Nik Effects. There are still challenges, especially when people with radically different skin tone appear in the same frame. For the time being, I have adopted the practice of optimizing for the person with the darkest skin. It’s a bit like the practice news agencies have adopted of capitalizing the word Black. It’s one small step on a path to right relations.

Categories
Street Portrait

How does The Amazing Spiderman go to the Bathroom?

Spiderman struggles to line up the eye holes of his mask

Does Spiderman have a fly? (I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself.)

But seriously, if Spiderman struggles to find his eye holes, don’t you think he’d struggle even more to find his pee hole? I guess it depends on how desperate he is.

And what happens when Spiderman hits middle age? In the entire 60 year lifespan of the franchise, I don’t think Peter Parker has ever been more than 19 years old, complete with acne and cracking voice. But realistically, I don’t think the spider bite changed the fact that Peter Parker has a prostate gland which, like all prostate glands, enlarges as he ages and correspondingly reduces his storage capacity. By now, he probably needs to whizz every hour or so. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that his initials are PP.

Assuming Mr. PP does have a pee hole and has no trouble finding it, there’s still the problem of how to handle his equipment without getting sticky webbing all over it. Or maybe that’s not webbing.

Now you know why I never got that second interview for a job at Marvel Comics.

Categories
Street Portrait

Man Sitting Outside Sultan Mosque, Singapore

Portrait of elderly man wearing glasses and white cap

As the title of this post indicates, I shot this impromptu portrait as I was walking along Muscat Street outside Singapore’s Sultan Mosque. This gentleman was happy to pose. As always, the key is to screw up the courage to ask. Even though he didn’t speak any English, my camera made it obvious what I was asking of him.

Revisiting this image, I’m reminded of why I never travel on tours. To capture an image like this takes time, or at least the illusion of time. It’s important for me to present as someone with all the time in the world, or at least as someone who has the time to pay attention to the person sitting right in front of me. Tours are frenetic affairs where a guide whisks you one place for five minutes and then the next and then the next with hardly time to get your bearings. In a situation like that, I could never relax enough to establish a connection with a subject. I prefer to plop myself in a city and then work things out in my own time. Part of that is just me: I’m slow and methodical. To be honest, when I have a camera in my hands, I’m frustrating to be around. Just ask my wife. I lose myself in the process.

This wraps up a month of street portraits. On to a new project. While portraits are by no means the mainstay of my practice, for personal reasons, I regard them as essential. Portraits force me to do what makes me most uncomfortable. I am an introvert and, years ago, found myself overtaken by a paralysing anxiety. The combination of introversion and anxiety militates against spontaneously striking up conversations with strangers. For me, the practice of street portraiture serves as a form of desensitization. Go gently at first, doing only what feels comfortable, rewarding myself for my successes, taking it easy on myself for my failures, and gradually pushing myself into increasingly uncomfortable situations. Looking back over the years, the results of this strategy have been startling. Now, the biggest impediment to taking good street portraits is the fact that so many people obscure their faces with masks.

Categories
Street Portrait

Singapore Street Portrait

Smiling woman wearing hat and sunglasses with red scarf

I made this image in Singapore when I tagged along with my wife who was working as a consular assistant. Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had brought consular assistants from all around the world for a week of training. I came along for the ride, and while my wife sat all day in an office, I wandered around the island (Singapore public transit is fantastic!) while carrying a ridiculous amount of gear. This is one of those consular assistants. I can’t remember her name although I believe she is from Italy.

Perhaps it’s worth noting that I shot this in January. Now, I prepare this post sitting in my Toronto condo while, outside, the streets are covered in January snow and the temperature has dipped below -20ºC. In Singapore, the coldest temperature ever recorded is 19.4ºC and more typically hovers around a humid 30ºC.

Whenever I travel, I ask myself: would I want to live in this place? While Singapore has many things to commend it, four distinct seasons is not among them. I wonder how I would feel about living in a place without clear seasonal variation. The transitions, especially in spring and autumn, have an affective quality that I cherish: the feeling of optimism that comes as the snow melts and the ground thaws; the feeling of wistfulness as the leaves turn and the days shorten. I’m not sure I would want to live without these feelings.

Even so, like most Canadians, I enjoy it when I can interrupt my winter with a little time in the sun. This woman’s smile nicely captures that feeling of delight at being able to cast off heavy jackets and to bask in the warmth.

Categories
Street Portrait

My Name Is Earl

Shot in front of the Toronto Reference Library on Yonge Street

I had just bought my first full-framed mirrorless camera and was anxious to take it for a test drive. Within minutes, I had made this image of Earl who was standing outside Toronto’s Rosedale Library and immediately I was sold on the idea of the mirrorless camera.

There are drawbacks to the mirrorless system. For example, swapping lenses is a problem because it’s so much easier for stray dust particles to find their way onto the sensor. If I’m outdoors on a windy day and I want to switch lenses, it’s almost guaranteed I’ll end up with a dust spot on all my subsequent images. And then there’s the whole issue of hand size. Mirrorless cameras look like they were manufactured in a workshop owned by dainty-fingered elves. Finally, there’s the issue of heft. If I’m tramping around in the woods, I want a camera body that can get knocked around a bit without giving me grief.

On the plus side … A mirrorless camera isn’t likely to cause curvature of the spine. And travel! I can’t believe all the gear I used to haul onto an airplane. But most of all—and this is what I realized when I met Earl—, a mirrorless camera is unobtrusive, so people are more likely to feel comfortable when you frame them in your viewfinder. Never mind that the Sony A7 Mark IV is a 60 megapixel beast. The camera is easy to mistake for a simple point-and-shoot.

So I struck up a conversation with Earl. The conversation wasn’t going anywhere, partly because he mumbled so I heard only every third word, and partly because the words I did hear made no sense. To save the situation, I held up my new camera and asked if he was okay posing for a shot. He smiled and nodded and mumbled something incomprehensible and the rest, as they say, is photography.

Categories
Street Portrait

Pachycephalosaurus

Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto

It was in Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto City Hall. A guy in a suit with an open collar had stepped outside for a break and sat at a picnic table. On the picnic table, there was a green plastic dinosaur, a friar tuck, as the hunter in Jurassic Park II calls it or, as his more knowledgeable companion corrects, a pachycephalosaurus which literally means “thick-headed lizard.”

There are many mornings, before I’ve had my first cup of coffee, when I feel like a thick-headed lizard. Maybe that explains why I was drawn to this scene. The man was texting on his cell phone, apparently oblivious to the dinosaur lurking nearby. I thought to myself: this is a photograph! I knelt on one knee and set up the shot, focusing on the dinosaur in the foreground, blurring the man behind. Then, when I was ready to release the shutter, I called out: “You realize there’s a dinosaur on your table, don’t you?” He looked up from his cell phone: “Huh?” Click.

What you can’t see from this image is the grin that followed. He immediately saw the humour of the situation and was fine with me taking the shot. I showed him the result in my viewfinder just to certify that I hadn’t caught him looking foolish. No tongue stuck out, eyes closed, boogers, zits, that sort of thing. Only the plastic pachycephalosaurus.

Categories
Street Portrait

Minnie Mouse Bow

When I first say this woman locking up her bicycle, my impression was that the Minnie Mouse bow on the helmet looked silly. But later, it struck me as eminently practical, at least from an urban cycling point of view. Yes, she shouldn’t have to make herself more visible, and yes, victim blaming should have no place in our public conversations about urban traffic. For the latest iteration of this, we have the December 26th rollover in downtown Toronto that injured 8 pedestrians, killing one of them. Toronto police const. Tony Macias drew flack when commenting on the accident and advising pedestrians to “keep their eyes open.”

But given that many drivers don’t pay attention, and given that the cars they drive can be lethal to those who aren’t in them, and given that existing infrastructure favours those lethal cars, I can understand if someone wants to use a Minnie Mouse bow to make themselves more visible. Certainly, Toronto’s Vision Zero program isn’t doing any good.

I’m disinclined to say Tony Macias engaged in victim blaming. Criticism here strikes me as misplaced. It’s the same form of argument that was leveled against John Lennon when he said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. When the media pressed him to recant for being disrespectful, his response was: but it’s true. We may not like that pedestrians need to “keep their eyes open.” But they do need to keep their eyes open, and we can’t very well hold Tony Macias responsible for that. If we want to assign responsibility, we need to look at this from a broader perspective that takes into account matters like urban design and social attitudes towards transit. For now, put a bow on your helmet.

Categories
Street Portrait

Meet The Touchi Artist

Standing in the middle of Yonge Street at Dundas, Toronto

With taglines like Be Hap2py! Sexy@Work and Jucy in Bed, how can the Touchi Artist go wrong? I’ve run into the Touchi Artist on numerous occasions as I drift through the intersection of Dundas and Yonge where he spends a lot of his time flogging his ideas. While I don’t know his name (yet), I can point you to his web site which is the next best thing: https://touchiartist.wordpress.com/

There, in addition to discovering his favourite taglines, you can learn about his obsession with an idea he calls blockclerk which, as far as I can figure out, is a mashup of blockchain and local politics. He also promotes meditation and yoga. For good measure, he scribbles his ideas on just about every utility box in a 2 km radius of the Dundas/Yonge intersection.

The thing about the Touchi Artist is that he’s a pretty amiable guy. Whenever I raise my camera and point in his direction, he offers a broad smile and is happy to pose. I suspect he regards himself as a proselyte of his revolutionary breakthrough ideas, so it’s in his best interest to put on his best face and do whatever he can by way of self-promotion. I’m happy to help him in his cause. I have no idea what the cause is, but I’m sure that in his mind it all makes perfect sense.

The Touchi Artist in Dundas Square, Toronto
Categories
Street Portrait

Street Portrait of Ben

Man wearing backward baseball cap and with tattoo on his face.
Just hitchhiked from Brockville. Does graffiti – bubble letters. Walks 20-30 mi. each day.

I was standing at the curb on Yonge Street just south of Dundas. I’d done my research beforehand and knew this was on the route of the World Naked Bike Ride. By my estimate, the naked cyclists would be turning from Dundas onto Yonge any minute now. I planned to use that most phallic of lenses, the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8, fast and long, like the cyclists who’d soon be whizzing past me.

That’s when Ben stepped up beside me. He’d just bused into town from Brockville and looked like he was trying to get his bearings. Meanwhile, I looked like I was waiting for something. I told him about the naked cyclists; he thought that was cool so he waited with me. I had nothing much to shoot until the cyclists arrived, so I asked if he’d mind me taking some shots of him while we waited.

In my do-over life, or in an alternate universe where the human lifespan is long enough to let us get degrees in 25 different areas of study, I’d like to learn more about cultural anthropology. For now, I have to resort to intuition about what I suspect might be the case. For example, I suspect it might be the case that Western cultures find face tattoos problematic. But I have no data to back this up. All I have is an image of mother losing her shit if, when I was younger, I had come home with a tattoo covering half my face: What did you do that for? I can barely look at you now? What will the neighbours think?

I suspect it might be the case, too, that the Western bias against face tattoos is partly a prejudice we carry with us from colonial days: this is something “primitive” peoples do, but not us. It sullies our whiteness. It makes us more like “them”. This is pure speculation on my part, and it all vanishes from my mind when a glorious parade of flesh zips down the road.

Categories
Street Portrait

Elaine in Edinburgh

Elaine Davidson, most pierced woman in the world

At the outset of this series on street portraits, I suggested that my earliest shot came from 2014. I was off by at least 6 years. Here’s a shot I made while strolling down the Royal Mile in Edinburgh in 2008. The subject is Elaine Davidson, the world’s most pierced woman. Apparently, among other things, she has more than 500 piercings in her genitalia. I’m really curious to know how the official from Guinness Book of Records tabulated that count. Then again, I’m not that curious.

Of her many talents perhaps the most surprising is that she has a black belt in Judo which she earned in Japan. Three years after I took this photo, she married a local Scotsman named Douglas Watson. The headline in The Telegraph was: “World’s most pierced woman gets married to balding civil servant.” As a man with little hair, myself, I take exception to this headline. It implies that bald men like me are somehow unequal to the challenge of marriage to a more, shall we say, exotic woman. In the end, maybe he wasn’t up to it after all. They were divorced in 2012.