Tag: Street Portrait

It was June 15th, 2021. The third (Delta variant) wave had peaked in Toronto on April 16th and the numbers were steadily declining. After two months on a downward trend, it seemed reasonable to break out of my cocoon and spread my wings. (Feel free to substitute a better metaphor if you like.) I was feeling cooped up and needed to get outside with my camera.

I was on the Bathurst Street Bridge, shooting Go Trains passing underneath, when Bob approached. As often happens, my camera was a pretext for conversation. Like me, Bob needed to get outside to stretch his limbs. Like me, Bob had taken off his mask so he could feel the late spring air on his face. It turns out Bob likes to walk with a camera, too. You can view some of his work on Instagram. We talked about cameras. We talked about places in Toronto we like to track through our photography. Mostly we just talked.

Naturally, the moment came when I asked to take an impromptu portrait. It wasn’t until later, when I was processing the images I’d made, that it struck me Bob wasn’t wearing a mask. How quickly we discard these habits. Sometimes we think the pandemic has been with us so long it will traumatize us for life. But I have my doubts. I recall all the times I’ve left home without my mask and haven’t realized until I’m halfway through my grocery shopping: oh, so that’s why everyone was glaring at me. It’s so easy to revert to old habits. It takes all of about two minutes to recover the natural feeling of an uncovered face. I expect what is true of mask-wearing will prove true of everything else we’ve experienced through the pandemic. We’ll remember the experience but we’ll forget the pain and simply get on with things. Years from now, when we tell those who follow us what it was like, our stories will take on a “when I was you age I went to school uphill both ways” quality, a tall tale we like to tell as we get on with our lives.

I met Moses Adolphe as I was walking south down Sherbourne Street on a hot mid-July day when bodies were strewn across the lawn in front of the Moss Park arena “while the lizards lay crying in the heat” to quote a David Bowie song. This is the closest I’ve ever come to getting into a fight when I’m out shooting street photos. Not because of Moses, but because one of the lizards who lay crying in the heat said he wanted to take my picture with my camera and I told him no. He really wanted to get his hands on my camera and I really wanted him to fuck off. It looked like we were going to get into it (and with 20 or 30 of his homeless friends looking on, I didn’t stand a chance) when Moses came up to us like a dolphin swimming amongst the sharks.

Moses was soft-spoken and, whether he intended it or not, he defused the situation. The guy who wanted my camera went back to his place on the grass and Moses and I had a brief chat. I asked if he’d mind me taking his photo and he was happy to pose. When I was done, he wanted to see. I think this is one of the great advantages of digital vs. film. One of the most important moments in an encounter like this comes when you show the person the images you’ve made. You can’t do that with film.

As you thumb through the images, implicitly, what you say to them is: “I see you.” I can’t emphasize enough the importance of seeing the people you photograph. The need to be seen is a fundamental need, no less important than access to food and shelter. Without the sense that we are seen, that we matter, that we take up space in the real world, we wither and die. Street photographers are ideally positioned to offer such an affirmation.

At the risk of making an unfounded generalization, I am beginning to suspect that when I shoot street portraits, older subjects tend to be more passive while younger subjects tend to treat the interaction more as a collaboration. So, for example, when I saw Jaleel standing across from Bellevue Square Park in Kensington Market and asked if he’d pose for a portrait, he came to it with a clear idea of how he wanted to present himself. He found a reflective door to serve as a backdrop, then put on his face. Usually, I do a lot of yakking to keep the subject engaged while I fiddle with camera settings. Here, that wasn’t necessary. Jaleel waited patiently because he knew he’d get something out of the deal: a shot he could post on social media.

I think social media explains the difference in the way younger people respond to me. They worry about things like personal brand and managing their public face. I never grew up with these concerns and I’ve reached an age where it doesn’t matter anyways. Nobody is going to fire me for doing something stupid online. And nobody is going to shame me, either; none of my peers care what I look like and, honestly, I’ve grown past caring what my peers think of me.

But if I were in my 20’s and a stranger approached me asking to take my photo, I think I’d want some reassurance that they weren’t going to make me look like a fool. It was so much easier when I was in my 20’s and the worst thing that could happen to me was that people found out I like listening to classical music.

I met Bonnie on King Street West just east of Bathurst Street. She’s another one of those people who sees you carrying a camera and insists you take her picture. She said she’d pose for five dollars. I told her I didn’t have any money on me (which was true, in case you’re wondering). She said: oh, well, take my picture anyway. At the time, I was shooting with a 35mm lens. Given that focal length, and given that she takes up a good portion of the frame, you can tell that she was really in my face, no more than half a metre away from me. I shot this in beforetimes. Had I shot it in pandemic times, I might have felt uncomfortable and pulled way back. She would have occupied far less of the frame.

Ross stopped me on College Street, asking for directions. Although I had a camera slung around my neck, clearly I was not giving off a tourist vibe. He’d just arrived from Saskatchewan and was walking up from the bus depot. He was in town for a medical appointment at Women’s College Hospital. Ross was munching on a muffin and trying hard not to spew it on me as he spoke. The clenched jaw in the photograph is not some tough guy pose; he’s picking poppy seeds out from between his teeth.

I love the cow skull string tie. I love the leather jacket. But, of course, the prize is the eye patch. People writing about photography (see, for example, Geoff Dyer’s The Ongoing Moment) make a lot of noise about photographs of blind people. They speculate that there’s an affinity between those who devote their lives to looking closely and those who can’t look at all. Forgive me for what I’m about to say but … I don’t see it.

I would think there’s a stronger affinity between photographers and those who are blind in one eye. After all, isn’t our patron saint Polyphemus? The thing about a one-eyed view of the world is that it appears in two dimensions, like a photograph. One-eyed people see the world the same way a photographer sees it through the viewfinder. It is depthless. Like all good multivalent words, that means the world presents either as flat or as so deep it is unfathomable. Whenever I make an image, I aim to produce something that is both.

I used to see Atta all the time in Dundas Square. He would sit cross-legged in front of a chess board and play with anyone willing to sit on the ground across from him. When it came to personal details, Atta wasn’t big on specifics: he was from Afghanistan; he’d been living in Toronto for nearly 20 years. Maybe he treated all his personal interactions the way he treated a game of chess. You keep things to yourself so your opponent doesn’t know your strategy; and you assume they are approaching you in the same way. All my dealings with Atta felt like they were tinged with suspicion verging on paranoia. Why was I asking such questions? Nobody is interested in somebody else for no reason; they must be after something.

An interesting thing: in addition to the chess board, Atta kept an arrangement of objects close at hand, precisely ordered according to principles only he understood. A feng shui of the street. Pop cans. Rocks. Photographs torn from magazines. The talismans of an obsessive mind. He needed the sense of order his precise arrangements gave him. At the time, I thought it was odd. Now, almost two years into a pandemic, I think I understand how order can be a comfort.

As I say, I used to see Atta all the time, and I would photograph him whenever I passed through Dundas Square. At first, he was open to my intrusions, then grew reluctant to pose, then turned positively hostile to my camera. In my last photograph of him, he raises his hand to block my shot. That was on January 18th, 2018. I haven’t seen him since. Other people have replaced Atta in that space, which causes me to wonder. Although he might think it a suspicious thing for someone to do, I worry about him.