Author: David Barker

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.