Author: David Barker

Categories
City Life

Photographing Singers

Baritone Danlie Rae Acebuque sings at the Orpheus Choir of Toronto's Sidgwick Salon

I sing with the Orpheus Choir of Toronto (tenor) and we support a scholarship program for students in programs like the Glenn Gould School and the U. of T. Opera School who are on the cusp of careers as professional performers. To raise funds for the program, we host an annual salon where, in effect, our scholarship students sing for their money. They get a few things out of the program, including a regular stipend (students can always use money), an opportunity to work closely with our artistic director, Robert Cooper, and experience singing in an ensemble (where they have to rein in their big solo voices).

Each year, I photograph the event and each year it presents me with the paradox of capturing in one medium the artistry expressed in another. Singers sing. That’s what they do. There’s nothing I can capture in a photograph that conveys the auditory pleasure their skill produces. And yet …

These students are not just singers; they are performers. They project a presence. With bearing and gesture, facial expression, poise, a sidelong glance, they convey so much more than we find represented in the notes on a page. These are elements the camera can capture.

Featured here is baritone Danlie Rae Acebuque while looking on is Russell Braun. You can tell by the way Danlie holds himself that the music he makes is worth listening to.

Categories
City Life

Kelvingrove Lawn Bowls and Tennis Centre

Kelvingrove Lawn Bowls & Tennis Centre, Shot from Sauchiehall & Kelvin Way, Glasgow

And so I come to the end of a month-long series of images celebrating all things Glaswegian/Scottish to acknowledge Cop26, the UN Climate Change Conference.

I made this shot from Sauchiehall & Kelvin Way. With lawn bowlers in the foreground, you can see the Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum to the left and, in the distance, the tower of the University of Glasgow.

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
Street Photography

Shop Window on Glasgow’s Buchanan Street

Man adjusts a mannequin in a shop window on Buchanan Street, Glasgow

A man stands in a window display and adjusts the clothing on a mannequin. Reflected in the window, we see Buchanan Street, a pedestrian thoroughfare and one of the main shopping districts of Glasgow. Apart from a couple shops that sell tartan scarves and Scottish kitsch to the tourists, most of the shops here are what you find anywhere: Apple, Starbucks, Nespresso, Prada, Hermès, Omega, The North Face, Urban Outfitters, Victoria’s Secret, GapKids. Living as we do in a global marketplace, the idea of shopping on holidays seems silly. The supply chains that bring us these products have probably circled the globe several times already, then we purchase them and fly them another 5,000 km to bring them home with us. They hang in our closets. We wear them twice. Then, when we decide they make us look fat, we run them out to Value Village.

Categories
Street Photography

Glasgow’s Merchant City

Woman with cup of coffee & cigarette walks through the Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow

A woman holding a cup of coffee and a cigarette walks through Glasgow’s Royal Exchange Square. A reversed sign in the archway tells me I’m in Merchant City. Thanks to a light drizzle, the pavement is wet and reflective. Although it’s mid-July, everyone wears a jacket because there’s a chill in the air. Welcome to Scotland!

Categories
Landscape Photography

Milarrochy Bay on Loch Lomond

Tree on Milarrochy Bay, Loch Lomond, Scotland

Any photographer who has visited the eastern shore of Loch Lomond in the Trossachs has taken a shot of this tree sitting all by its lonesome. It’s an obvious shot that cries out to virtually everyone who wields a camera. The unfortunate consequence is that this scene has become a bit of a cliché. Just go to google images and do a search for “milarrochy bay tree” and you’ll see what I mean. That’s one of the hazards of the craft, I guess.

Speaking of clichés… We’ve all heard the song. I’m sure you’ve heard it. The chorus goes like this:

O ye'll tak' the high road, and I'll tak' the low road,
And I'll be in Scotland a'fore ye,
But me and my true love will never meet again,
On the bonnie, bonnie banks o' Loch Lomond.

Thanks to that song, Loch Lomond is one of the most famous lakes in the world. And yet, to stand on its banks and gaze across the water is something of a disappointment. What can I say? I come from a place that has shoreline on four of the Great Lakes, including Superior which, according to my calculations, has a surface area that is 1,156 times the surface area of the fabled Loch.

The closest we’ve got to “The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond” is Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”. With all due respect to Mr. Lightfoot, if I want a song to lift my spirits, I’d sooner take the high road.

Categories
Landscape Photography

Lighthouse of Portpatrick Harbour

Evening light falls on the lighthouse in Portpatrick Harbour, Scotland.

Evening light falls on the lighthouse that stands at the entrance to Portpatrick Harbour. Situated on the southwest corner of Scotland, if you look out across the water, you can see Bangor and the Belfast Lough. And if you hike further down the peninsula, it’s just a short skip across the water to the Isle of Man.

Continuing my virtual Scottish junket (as a hat tip to Cop26), I find myself dwelling upon the fate of coastal regions as sea levels rise. This Guardian article suggests that by 2050 sea levels will have risen by between 2 and 3 feet, and between 20 and 30 feet within the next century. It is conceivable that within the next century the scene I have captured here will no longer exist. A future photographer will still be able to reach my position, but they will confront a very different scene. Maybe open waters and the mostly submerged ruins of a once vibrant coastal village.

Categories
Wildlife

Jellyfish on Croy Shore

Jellyfish on a beach south of Dunure, Scotland

Featured above is an image of a jellyfish, one of thousands washed onto a beach in Ayrshire in the southwest of Scotland. Walking along a beach on the western shores of Scotland makes me mindful of how important the Gulf Stream is to life in this part of the world.

Glasgow sits at 55.9 degrees latitude. It is a northern city. By way of comparison, Toronto sits at 43.7 degrees and, despite what people say about Canada, it isn’t a particularly cold place. In fact, it’s further south than a third of the continental US. And it’s further south than almost all of France. Summers are hot and humid; winters are moderated by its position in relation to the Great Lakes.

A few years ago, I sat up all night with friends around an open fire on the outskirts of Glasgow. At three in the morning, I gazed up into the sky and noted that it wasn’t really dark. This was the end of May, three weeks from the summer solstice and I was closer to the Arctic Circle than I was to Toronto’s latitude. For a comparable view in my home province, I’d have to travel up to Fort Severn, the northernmost settlement in Ontario.

Periodically, scientists express concern that maybe the Gulf Stream, aka the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), might shut down as climate change progresses. See this Guardian article for an example. If this happened, it’s impossible to predict what impact that might have on Scotland’s climate. Currently, it’s moderate there: summers are never terribly warm, but winters are never terribly cold either. This is, after all, the land of the kilt. But if all that warm water stopped flowing through the North Atlantic, Scotsmen might have to start wearing something underneath.

Jellyfish on a beach south of Dunure, Scotland
Categories
Public Art

Gallery Of Modern Art

Man smoking a cigarette walks past the Gallery Of Modern Art in Glasgow

Like most art galleries, museums, and historic sites in the UK, Glasgow’s Gallery Of Modern Art, GOMA, is free. When you walk through the front door to use the gallery’s washroom, you pass a statue of Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington, on horseback and wearing a traffic cone on his head. When the Italian artist, Carlo Marochetti, completed the sculpture in 1844, it didn’t include a traffic cone. Someone added that later and it has become an essential feature. Inspired by the quality of whimsy that GOMA fosters, I found art in the plastic chairs and folded tables on the sidewalk outside. A man in a hoodie and smoking a cigarette completed the image.

Night time in front of the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow
Categories
City Life

Think Before You Step Out

Sign on pole: "Think Before You Step Out."

I captured this image on Sauchiehall Street at its intersection with Renfield Street. Although Sauchiehall is pedestrian friendly, it still requires people to deal with vehicular traffic at intersections. Here, a visually challenged person waits to cross Renfield Street while a sign on the adjacent post states: “Think Before You Step Out.”

This is reminiscent of signage in my hometown, Toronto, where a spate of cycling deaths prompted the ironically named Vision Zero program. The city developed an advertising campaign directed at cyclists to take more care on busy urban streets. It has a lot in common with “blame the victim” rhetoric. It tries to persuade the most vulnerable people on the street that it’s their responsibility to take precautions for their own safety. Meanwhile, infrastructure continues to favour the least vulnerable people on the street i.e. the people driving vehicles.

But when a sign asks a blind person who cannot see the sign to think before they step off the curb, as if thinking has anything to do with it, we note the absurdity of the rhetoric. Drivers have responsibilities too, and maybe those responsibilities should be in proportion to the harm they can do.

Cop26 gives us an opportunity to rethink the role of vehicular traffic, especially in densely populated areas. Maybe we can rethink the rhetoric, too.

Categories
City Life

Changed Priorities Ahead

"Changed Priorities Ahead" sign in front of St. Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh

Strictly speaking, this photograph shouldn’t be included in my Cop26 Glasgow series because it’s a shot of a sign in Edinburgh with St. Mary’s Cathedral in the background. However, I think the sign’s message is fitting to the occasion.

As a Canuck, I had never seen such a sign before. Fortunately, Transport Scotland, in cooperation with the UK’s three other regional governments, has kindly posted its Traffic Signs Manual on Scribd. We find an explanation in Chapter 8 – Traffic Safety Measures and Signs for Road Works and Temporary Situations. Although Chapter 8 runs to 229 pages, if we dig into the document, we find an explanation on page 43. Basically, in the case of a street that can accommodate only one lane of traffic, traffic from one direction gets priority and traffic from the other direction has to yield. Unless, of course, a temporary sign advises that the priorities have been changed.

When I first made this shot, I thought maybe I could use it as a commentary on the way the spiritual life forces us to change our priorities. But now, as we come to recognize that certain of our habits have brought not just us, but all life, to the brink of an existential cliff, the image suggests to me that we need to rethink those habits. Now, this image speaks to me less of the spiritual life than of the practical matter of sustaining biological life. To the extent it invokes the spiritual life, it does so by calling on religious institutions to support us in our efforts to rework how we live in relation to one another, to all living creatures, and to the planet at large. This is a matter of justice and, as I view it, religion that doesn’t serve the ends of justice has no place in our future.

Categories
Street Photography

Entrance to the Argyll Arcade

Argyll Arcade, Buchanan Street, Glasgow, Scotland

I don’t know what you call this person in his morning coat and top hat. A valet? A beadle? Whatever you call him, the way he stands with his legs crossed, he looks like he has 15 minutes left before his washroom break and is doing his best to hold it in. He is facing south to Argyle Street. To his back is the Argyll Arcade. I’m not sure why the distinction between Argyle and Argyll. Apparently, in linguistic terms, there is no difference. Maybe the people responsible for the Arcade’s signage ran out of the letter E.

Laying out a jewelry display in the Argyll Arcade, Glasgow
Laying out a jewelry display in the Argyll Arcade, Glasgow
Categories
Public Art

Glasgow Botanic Gardens

Marble sculpture titled Eve, by Scipione Tadolini, in the Kibble Palace, Glasgow Botanic Gardens

The marble sculpture shown above is titled Eve, created by Scipione Tadolini in the 1870’s, and displayed beneath the glass roof of the Kibble Palace in Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens. Like all good Victorian nudes, this woman’s nether regions are discreetly hidden by greenery. Had Tadolini created this sculpture in the age of Instagram, he would have blotted out her nipples, too. Ah, we live in such times!

There is something sad today in art that aspires to realistic representation. In the case of Eve, that realism is not evident in her pose, but in her anatomy. I feel the same sadness in my photography when I try, sometimes obsessively, to capture the world as it is. This desperate documentation. I feel it, too, in the glass dome of the botanical gardens whose purpose is to cultivate interesting, rare, even endangered plant species. Botanists document plant life. Expand its taxonomy. Rush to produce a complete catalogue before it’s all gone.

I imagine an alien ship touching down on the grounds of the Glasgow Botanic Gardens in a post-human world. Maybe the lawn is scorched. They step inside the Kibble Palace, panes of glass shattered here and there. All that remains of the plants are woody stalks. The leaves have fallen to the floor and are turned to dust. In the middle of the desolation sits a white marble form with unseeing eyes and unfeeling skin. This is all that remains of the human species. That and a few photos.

The Kibble Palace at Glasgow Botanic Gardens
Categories
Street Photography

Street Scene in Glasgow

Pedestrians at the intersection of Mitchell and Gordon Streets in Glasgow

I’m standing at the intersection of Mitchell and Gordon Streets when a girl walks through the frame while a man smoking a cigarette approaches and gives me the evil eye. Or at least a vaguely suspicious glance.

One of the things I love about Glasgow is that, in the downtown area, there is a good selection of pedestrian-only streets. Sauchiehall, Buchanan, a portion of Argyle, the Royal Exchange Square. It makes these areas vibrant and safer. I wish my hometown would take a cue from this.

Another thing I love about Glasgow is that Glaswegians never leave you in doubt about what they think of you. They are honest. Some might say brutally honest. If Greta Thunberg decides to attend Cop26, she might find herself in a city full of kindred spirits. It’s a no-bullshit kind of town.

Categories
Street Photography

A Stormtrooper Wears a Tartan

A stormtrooper wears a tartan.

The conventional story holds that the plaid twills (tartans) we see in Scottish kilts are a relatively recent development from the 17th century. However, archeological finds in China of all places suggest that Celts have been weaving tartans for at least 3,000 years. But the fashion may go back even further than that. George Lucas presents convincing evidence that tartans have been around since the early days of the Galactic Empire.

Have you ever noticed that there is no sex in Star Wars? It’s implied by family lineages and we get a whiff of it in Luke’s kiss with Leia. The only overt act in the whole series is more reminiscent of West Virginia sex between siblings. I suppose Leia as Jabba the Hutt’s sex slave implies a certain quality of sex at play in the background. We see a similar arrangement in Solo with Qi’ra, which suggests Han Solo has a “type”; he needs to rescue troubled women from enslavement by domineering men (though I’m not sure Jabba the Hutt qualifies as a man). Even so, we never have any good healthy romps in the bedroom. It all gets sublimated into shooting blasters and waving light sabres. I guess that explains why Disney was comfortable buying the franchise.