Author: David Barker

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
Still Life

Pinhole Still Life

Still life of orange tulips in a turquoise vase

In the early days of Covid-19, after the WHO classified it as a global pandemic and local governments declared a state of emergency, I found myself looking for creative ways to use my camera. Certain of my habits–like street photography–were suddenly verboten and I had to do things that didn’t involve close interaction with other people. One thing I tried was setting up modest still life arrangements and photographing them with a pinhole attachment. Some people call it a pinhole lens but, technically, there is no lens, just a tiny aperture. Here, I taped together 3 white foam boards to create a simple background then placed my flower arrangement on a table beside a window. On an overcast day, the simple natural light was enough. The pinhole produces a soft dreamy effect, nicely matching my mood at the time when I told myself: this can’t be real.

Categories
Bugs

Fly and its Reflection

Fly and its mirror image reflected on a glass door.

I’m not an entomologist so I have no idea what kind of bug I’ve captured here. If I had to understand everything about a scene before I photographed it, I’d never photograph anything. I was mesmerized by this insect and its doppelganger and that was good enough for me.

I’m not sure what it is about reflections that is so universally compelling, like the twins in Kubrick’s The Shining, or virtually anybody taking a selfie these days. Maybe it has something to do with ancient myths like Narcissus. Or maybe it’s something lodged in our Jungian collective unconscious. Or maybe it has to do with the bicameral structure of the human brain. Or maybe I’m overanalysing things.

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 Photography

Cycling on Queen Street with Umbrella

Person cycles down Queen Street West while holding an umbrella

I’m grateful I live in a city where it is possible for people to be unafraid to live as they are. It isn’t perfect, of course. Wherever they are, people will always struggle to negotiate with grace the challenges of difference. But here, at least, I witness more moments of grace than not. That leaves me free to notice little details I might otherwise miss: a yellow pepper in the basket, a plastic Dumbo the Elephant fixed to the handlebar.

Categories
City Life

Grasett Park, Toronto

View through the "cheese cloth" installation at Grasett Park on Adelaide Street West, Toronto.

This is a view of Adelaide Street through one of the glass panels of Grasett Park, created by the Canada Ireland Foundation and opened on July 16th 2021 to commemorate the many Irish refugees who died of typhus on their journey to Toronto in 1847, and to celebrate the medical staff, like Dr. George Robert Grasett, who succumbed while treating them. It is a timely monument to mark the contributions of front line medical workers. During the typhus epidemic, Toronto’s original General Hospital was overwhelmed and so they built fever sheds where dying patients lay on cots between sheets of cheesecloth intended to keep away the flies. The memorial’s glass panels are embedded with a lacey design which evokes the cheesecloth partitions of the earlier epidemic.

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
Landscape Photography

Barnum Creek Nature Reserve, Haliburton, Ontario

Forest scene overlooking Barnum Creek in the Barnum Creek Nature Reserve, Haliburton, Ontario

This is an appropriately autumnal photo I shot at the Barnum Creek Nature Reserve just weeks after it opened to the public in 2020. Presumably, the water in this image is Barnum Creek. It is located in the Haliburton Highlands of Ontario in the prosaically named township of Dysart et al. Yes, Dysart et al. The et al appears on all the official signs.

If I were a philosopher (I’m not, but if I were) I might wonder about what it is that makes a creek a creek. When I talk about Barnum Creek, what defining feature gives it its distinctive creekiness? It can’t be the water. In a variation on a theme by Heraclitus (you can’t step in the same river twice), the water in a creek is never the same from one instant to the next. This photo captures an instant in time, but if I released the shutter again a few minutes later, most of the water in the photo would have been replaced by fresh water flowing from upstream. Some of the water in this photo might go on to Kashagawigamog Lake then into Lake Ontario, St. Lawrence River, and the Atlantic Ocean. Some of it might evaporate and quickly recirculate through the hydrologic cycle. And some of it might sink down to the water table and lurk in deep aquifers for hundreds of years. I can’t say for certain what would happen to any given water molecule, but I can say for certain that none of it would stick around to pose for another photograph.

What is true of the water is true, too, for the leaves, the soil, the trees, even the rocks. Like the water, it all flows, but on a different time scale. Whatever we call Barnum Creek and fix with pins to our map is only a provisional naming. I’m certain indigenous people living here named it something else. And people yet to come will name it something else again. And then it will vanish.

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.

Categories
Street Photography

Huawei Watches You

Huawei advertisement overlooks O'Keefe Lane in downtown Toronto.

I was framing a shot of this Huawei advertisement overlooking O’Keefe Lane (which, despite its name, is really an alley) when a woman stepped into the shot. It looks as if the woman in the ad is watching everyone on the street. I don’t know if concerns about Chinese surveillance through Huawei 5G infrastructure are warranted. Maybe it’s just another conspiracy theory that has somehow connected 5G networks to Covid-19. The only surveillance I know about for certain is the surveillance happening behind the camera that made this shot.