Running on fumes

Alright, this every day thing is just not going to work.

My arm is aching from the H1N1 vac­cin­a­tion, and I’m feel­ing woozy. I just worked 13 hours. My feet are swollen and my head is throb­bing. Can I have a day off? Nobody wants to read my half-baked late-night ram­blings. How about I prom­ised to write when I’m inspired?

I really did have the best inten­tions, but there’s really noth­ing left in the tank. Except for this:

Suitcase histories

Here’s a fas­cin­at­ing web­site sent to me by my friend Saty about a The Wil­lard Suit­case Exhibit. The back-story:

When Wil­lard Psy­chi­at­ric Cen­ter in New York’s Fin­ger Lakes closed in 1995, work­ers dis­covered hun­dreds of suit­cases in the attic of an aban­doned build­ing.  Many of them appeared untouched since their own­ers packed them dec­ades earlier before enter­ing the institution.The suit­cases and their con­tents bear wit­ness to the rich, com­plex lives their own­ers lived prior to being com­mit­ted to Willard.

From http://www.suitcaseexhibit.org

And what a wit­ness it is. This is a rich and com­plex story, with a large web­site, and I had to revisit it a few times. It was worth the time inves­ted. The pho­to­graphs are fant­astic, full of life and mys­tery. Plus, the web­site includes some eight­een oral histories.

The  Wil­lard men­tal health insti­tu­tion has an import­ant place in the his­tory of forced treat­ment for men­tal health issues. This exhib­i­tion does a very good job at illu­min­at­ing that his­tory and human­iz­ing its char­ac­ters. It is a rare and beau­ti­ful example of his­tory that is worthy of being called art.

In and out of darkness

Novem­ber 1st, first day of National Novel Writ­ing Month (or should that be Inter­na­tional).  In the spirit of the month, I will endevour to write a post every day. Let’s hope this doesn’t kill me!

This week: lots more craziness, including a con­fer­ence I organ­ized, two new port­fo­lios (2!), and a trip to New York. That’s the Big Apple, we’re not talkin’ Syra­cuse here. Not that I have any­thing against Syra­cuse, I once heard some wicked-awesome jazz cla­ri­net there.

Edit­ing down to a new port­fo­lio is a tough pro­cess. It requires a lot of self-knowledge and intro­spec­tion. At least it does when I do it. Its always a little bit nerve-wracking, but fun in the end. I use a trick I learned a long time ago (but was reminded by Don Weber of how import­ant it is): I print out every photo I think has a shot at mak­ing it to the final edit. Even some oddball ones, pho­tos where you think “what was I get­ting at here”, or pho­tos you think don’t belong with any oth­ers. I print them all out, and lay the proofs on a big table. Then I push them around. I sit some by oth­ers, I make little col­lec­tions, remove a few. As everything slides around the table I start to see con­nec­tions, rela­tion­ships between the ideas. That’s how a story comes together.

I’m always try­ing to under­stand what my pho­tos mean, bey­ond the mere con­ceit of the image. Look­ing back over the thou­sands and thou­sands of pho­tos I’ve shot over the last eight yeasrs, I’m start­ing to see some trends. Most of the time, my pho­tos are about bound­ar­ies. No sur­prise there, I’ve been strug­gling my whole life to over­come isol­a­tion, abuse, and poverty.

I used to focus on the external world. My pho­tos were access­ible, they employed easy meta­phors that related to con­crete lim­it­a­tions. I pho­to­graphed things like fences and birds to illus­trate my desire to break free. Then I star­ted to look at internal lim­it­a­tions. For a long time I used blurry, foggy, murky pho­tos to exer­cise my ghosts. On my vaca­tions I went to places where people had been trapped: Granada and Sara­jevo. I think I’ve finally got­ten rid of most of those ghosts. Lately I’ve been think­ing about inter­per­sonal bound­ar­ies. Poverty is essen­tially an issue of social restric­tion (based on iden­tity), so I’ve been tak­ing pic­tures of people. My pic­tures of people are the most expli­cit of the pho­tos I’m mak­ing now. I’d struggled to pho­to­graph people for a long time, but I think I’m finally start­ing to find my groove.

In all of this, it is my desire to make dark places access­ible. I want any­one look­ing at my pho­tos to under­stand what it feels like to long to be free, to feel haunted, or to be isol­ated. I want to sug­gest ways out of dark­ness, and to give hope.

This is pretty much what I feel like right now.

I follow the river

For about a week, I’ve been work­ing my way through the video archives of the Inter­na­tional Centre for Pho­to­graphy. They have a series of recor­ded artist talks that are simple but very well done. I was really taken by Jeff Liao, a young pho­to­grapher in New York. His “Hab­itat 7″ pho­tos are a series of high res­ol­u­tion (wall-sized) pan­or­a­mas taken of, from, or about the num­ber 7 sub­way line from Queens to Times Square. Liao uses the com­muter train-line as a lovely meta­phor. He likens it’s course to that of a river val­ley, along which can be found the myriad of com­munit­ies that make up the liv­ing city. He puts it bet­ter than I ever could:

Click to see more of Jeff Liaos work

Like river val­leys that flowed through and gave birth to early civil­iz­a­tions, the IRT 7 train of the New York City sub­way sys­tem serves as the con­duit that con­nects many eth­nic­ally diverse neigh­bor­hoods in north­w­est Queens to the heart of Man­hat­tan. While I’ve been liv­ing along the “Inter­na­tional Express” for years, I am still con­stantly awed by the com­plex­ity of the com­munit­ies formed along­side it as well as the har­mony so many people of dis­tinct eth­nic back­grounds are able to live in. I’ve come to see the 7 train as a “hab­itat” of these immig­rant set­tlers who pur­sue the typ­ical “Amer­ican Dream” way of life while uphold­ing their eth­nic traditions.

from http://www.jeffliao.com

I’m head­ing to New York for a visit next week. I’m look­ing for­ward to rid­ing the sub­way, with Liao’s beau­ti­ful pho­tos tucked in the back of my mind. I’d really like to see these pic­tures in per­son. The inter­net just doesn’t seem to do them justice.

I’ve always loved rid­ing the metro. The train is a great place to sit and to think. Of all of the great moments of clar­ity in my life, three have been on the sub­way. In 2005, on my way to Coney Island in the late after­noon, I watched a butch lat­ina and her femme girl­friend talk and smile. The intox­ic­at­ing pace of the crazy big city star­ted to sink in, and I knew I was hooked on cit­ies. A few years later on a gray New Year’s in Paris, on my way to pick up bar­be­cue pork, I real­ized that I was actu­ally enjoy­ing trav­el­ing alone. A few days later in the tube in Lon­don I had the start­ling sen­sa­tion of being at home in a com­pletely new place. I love the train as a way to under­stand the urban social and archi­tec­tural envir­on­ment.

We just don’t do sub­ways right in Canada. We don’t do tran­scend­ent sub­ways . You might think we would, what with the blis­ter­ing win­ters we endure. And really we should build bet­ter sub­ways, but Cana­dians live in car com­muter cit­ies. We’re not even close to being eco­lo­gic­ally friendly, let alone mul­ti­cul­tural in our approach to pub­lic transit (although that point is debat­able for all colo­nial cit­ies, of which I include Amer­ican ones). It’s a shame to live in a coun­try with an abund­ance of real rivers but so few social water­ways.

Screen Time

Holy, I am tired. It’s like I’ve been sprint­ing for four months straight. Work­ing two jobs is get­ting to be pretty rough. I spend all day wish­ing for one of these:

Mattress and box spring on Booth St., Lebreton Flats.

Mat­tress and box spring on Booth St., Lebre­ton Flats. I’m going to miss Lebre­ton Flats when the devel­op­ment is done.

My co-workers joke that I’ll be bring­ing a bed-roll into work soon. Late in the after­noon the other day, my neigh­bor came around the corner to find me sit­ting in front of the com­puter, blank star­ing, with the tele­phone receiver just hanging in my hand. “Go home” she said.

I see the screen-zombies all over, trans­fixed like I was. When did it become nor­mal to spend 16 hours a day in front of a glow­ing panel, whatever the size?  I see them , the walk­ing not-quite-dead-but-entertained, tak­ing their dogs out in the even­ing. I see them on the bus. I see them doing all kind of things. What does it mean that so many people absent them­selves from real­ity to spend time with a tech­no­lo­gic­ally medi­ated cul­tural product?  I feel anti­so­cial when I click-clack away at my very very import­ant meet­ing regis­tra­tion emails on my Black­berry. Are we all scared of shar­ing space with other people? More likely we’d rather spend our time with our own little niche of social and cul­tural secur­ity than think about the world “out there” bey­ond our skin.

As a pho­to­grapher, I feel some­times that I’m exper­i­en­cing the world from behind a fil­ter. I won­der if look­ing at the world through a key­hole is lim­it­ing. But then, think­ing back through photo-school, to my days at the night lab, I remem­ber the won­der­ful feel­ing of dis­cov­er­ing pho­to­graphy. It was more like dis­cov­er­ing how to see crit­ic­ally. I remem­ber the sen­sa­tion of sur­prise and glory of look­ing at the world in with a new aware­ness. Pho­to­graphy is not about tak­ing pic­tures, its about noti­cing the world and mak­ing note. Pho­to­graphy is about a kind an aware­ness of the world and one’s self that you just can’t get in front of a screen.

I miss you

"I miss you", in Trinity-Bellwoods park, Toronto

“I miss you”, in Trinity-Bellwoods park, Toronto, April 2009

Well, time flies. The MSF show was tonight (and through Sunday) at La Petite Mort and everything went well. Turnout was great, and most of the peices sold — mine was snapped up pretty quick. My favor­ite peice is a pho­to­graph by my friend Pedro Isztin of his father and nephew. Check out the show if you’re bum­ming around Ott­awa this week­end with noth­ing to do. The pho­to­graph above, “I miss you,” was my donation.

I was in Toronto last spring for a con­fer­ence. After the second day, I rode my bor­rowed bicycle home from the CN Tower, through Trinity-Bellwoods park, up the little hill, and along the path past the ten­nis courts toward Col­lege and Dan­forth. That is where I saw the let­ters stitched into the fence. It was spring, still wet, and although the sun was warm it was still a little cold too. I don’t know why the words were there, or what they mean. I found them com­fort­ing, in a way, like I had been let into a private con­ver­sa­tion between lov­ers, albeit in one direction.

It was a pho­to­graphy con­fer­ence. Not want­ing to look like a big nerd (or at least a big­ger one than I already am), I brought my little Min­olta pocket cam­era with me. Maybe that makes me even nerdier. Whatever. In any case, the little no-controls-all-automatic brick of hard plastic and metal did a great job on that trip, and I got a few great pho­tos. Great because they are import­ant to me.

It was a heady time, those months that I spent shut­tling back and forth to the Big Smoke. I was there three times in six weeks. Each visit brought me a little closer to the pos­sib­lity of mak­ing some­thing of pho­to­graphy. Every time I went things seemed a little more real. I gained a lot of con­fid­ence. Going to Toronto gave me the push I needed to start a series of invest­ments that have res­ul­ted in some inter­est­ing, excit­ing, and reward­ing work over the past few months. This photo is a product and a sym­bol of the pro­cess of re-investent that has allowed me to grow as an artist. It was long overdue.

It’s really nice to see your work hanging in a gallery.

MSF Photo Fundraiser

a lost white diaper

a lost white diaper sits on the pave­ment out­side the First Baptist Church, corner of Elgin and Laur­ier, Ottawa

In just under two weeks, I’ll be par­ti­cip­at­ing in a fun­draiser for Méde­cins Sans Frontières involving many of Ottawa’s best pho­to­graph­ers. Held at Ottawa’s most pleas­ure ori­ented gal­lery come party spot, it’s shap­ing up to be a not-to-miss event. Par­tic­u­larly so because all prints will be $100, a real steal, and all pro­ceeds go to MSF. Asuage your guilty con­science, enjoy art, and get drunk all in the same place. Would I ever steer you wrong?

La Petite Mort Gal­lery presents…

Human­it­ari­an­ism through Art A Fun­draiser for Méde­cins Sans Frontières / Doc­tors Without Bor­ders (MSF) Canada

Septem­ber 25 — 27, 2009

Ver­n­is­sage: Fri­day Sept 25 / 7 – 10 pm
Proudly sponsored by CKCU 93.1 FM

More info: http://www.lapetitemortgallery.com/events/DoctorsWithoutBorders2009.htm

See you there!

Song of the Summer

Well, it was late arriv­ing, but this is offi­cially the song of the summer:

This little pop gem is on repeat at my house, and I almost have the dance moves nailed. Amaz­ing. Rap­ture. Once it gets in your head, there’s no turn­ing back. Finally, credit where credit is due: this video was a tip from my friend Catri­ona Stur­ton.

It was a long year

Welcome Home balloons

Wel­come Home balloons

I walked into my father’s bar last week, and was met by a room full of fresh faces, young and tanned. That is the sign, that is how I know sum­mer is soon to be over. Every­one is back from hol­i­days, and school is about to start up again. There were a lot of new back­packs on the bus today. On my ride to work, a teen­age girl didn’t know how to get off in front of the high school. She couldn’t find the pres­sure strip, with all it’s mark­ings worn off by end­less fin­gers. I had my own bus woes to start the day. Stand­ing on the plat­form, I watched 3 buses pass as I waited for my con­nec­tion. It was a half hour before I real­ized that con­struc­tion had fin­ished on the other side of the sta­tion, and that my stop had moved. It’s a con­fus­ing and excit­ing time for every­one, me included.

I was late for work.

This time last year, I was just get­ting ready for another new start. Going back to school was excit­ing. I’d been out for two years. With all the float­ing around and drop­ping out I’ve done, I was wor­ried about being older than all the other stu­dents. It turned out that I actu­ally liked being older. When you’re one of the few adults in a room of 500 seventeen-year-olds, the other adults have a way of find­ing you. That in itself was a bit of a rev­el­a­tion. It was the first year I actu­ally felt like an adult. It was a hard year, an adult year. I was work­ing two or three jobs a week, and going to school full time. Things were going alright, until our land­lord star­ted to go crazy. My room­mate and I were almost illeg­ally evicted in the middle of the winter. It was too much, and life star­ted to fall apart. I showed up to work in ripped jeans once or twice. We relied on my father to bring gro­cer­ies from Costco, and ate a lot of Chinese pork buns. Some­how, I scraped through the end of school and ended up doing fairly well. I was look­ing for­ward to going back this year. I was look­ing for­ward to end­ing the mara­thon, get­ting settled, and focus­ing on my studies.

Then the offer came. A good job. A real Job, with a desk, and a salary, bene­fits. A “bridge in” that I took.

This is my fourth week. Tech­nic­ally, my title is “Ana­lyst, Inform­a­tion Trans­fer and Out­put” as part of the Policy and Research depart­ment of the Canada Mort­gage and Hous­ing Cor­por­a­tion. In real­ity, I am an online pro­du­cer and (mostly digital) out­reach worker for hous­ing research­ers. I pull the strings that sup­port an online com­munity. I do everything from organ­iz­ing con­fer­ence calls and social net­work­ing to inform­a­tion archi­tec­ture design and usab­il­ity meas­ure­ment. It is an inter­est­ing little eddy of the gov­ern­ment that I’ve found myself in, and a scary new world out there on the inter-webs. Luck­ily, the work I do is for a leg­ally dis­tinct non-governmental organ­iz­a­tion, so we can do some fun stuff.

Discarded clothes at night

Dis­carded clothes under the streetlight

And the mara­thon con­tin­ues. This time, how­ever, it’s dif­fer­ent. This time, it is my choice. It was hard to put down my plans to go to school, hard to switch gears so sud­denly. But with the oppor­tun­ity of steady employ­ment comes the free­dom to do what I couldn’t before: per­sonal work. In my opin­ion, all good pho­to­graphy is per­sonal. I am a feel­ing pho­to­grapher, I go by emo­tion and see by feel. Work­ing lets me pur­sue per­sonal the pro­jects I could never jus­tify when I was hust­ling work and scrap­ing by. In the long run, I feel that it  is my per­sonal work that will mat­ter most. Chris­topher Mor­ris once said that the best way to suc­ceed in pho­to­graphy is to quit. I think that this is what I am doing.

And I’ve been invest­ing in myself at the same time. I found my voice at the end of a very long year. A con­fer­ence and a couple of work­shops helped. New friends and new per­spect­ives were invalu­able. A whole bunch of new gear, with new cap­ab­il­it­ies, made a big dif­fer­ence too. I’m more focused, more tuned-in, turned on, and aware. I read visual the­ory, and a bunch of good fic­tion. My thoughts are more clear. I feel like I am tak­ing the next step towards doing mean­ing­ful doc­u­ment­ary work on a reg­u­lar basis. I’m ready, and now I have the resources to make it happen.

Sum­mer is almost over, it’s time to get to work. Time for another long year.

Light tests from history — part 1

a little bit of alcoholic foreshadowing

a little bit of alco­holic foreshadowing

When it comes to pho­to­graphy, I’ve seen a lot in a rel­at­ively short time. I’ve been to crazy places, and met amaz­ing people. I’ve filled many dif­fer­ent roles along the way. Some­times pho­to­graphy is just a lot of hard work, but I’ve been lucky and priv­ileged to have a lot of fun at the same time. Today, part one of a three part series about assist­ing in the early-ier days of my pho­to­graphy career.

Back when my friend Aaron McK­en­zie Fraser was liv­ing in Ott­awa (and I was start­ing out in pho­to­graphy), we did a few jobs together. I didn’t assist for Aaron very much, but I was there for what were some pretty choice gigs. Like the time we pho­to­graphed Stephan Dion. In the lead-up to the Lib­eral lead­er­ship race, Aaron was hired to take por­traits of the can­did­ate. It was an early-morning appoint­ment, so we tested the light­ing setup a couple days in advance. I don’t remem­ber how Aaron got that job, but it seemed like a bit of a minor coup, and I sure did not want to mess it up.

When the day came, Dion brought a bevy of assist­ants in tow. His advisers and con­sult­ants installed them­selves on the big green couch in Aaron’s liv­ing room. The woman in charge of fash­ion decided that more red ties were needed. The young assist­ant was sent out, and soon returned with a fist­ful of crim­son cravats from Harry Rosen.

Dion was skinny and pale in his boxer shorts, like a boy. He seemed aloof, dis­tant. He was unin­ter­ested in the pro­ceed­ings unfold­ing before him in the little apart­ment in Centre­town. The large screw­driver he drank a few minutes later dis­pelled any delu­sions of polit­ical infancy or waver­ing of pur­pose.  The abil­ity to drink stead­ily at all hours of the day is mark of a seasoned politician.

There was a brain whirr­ing behind Dion’s eyes. Every few minutes he’d call an order for some mes­sage to be given, some report to be retrieved.

A sad day for Stephan Dion

A sad day for Stephan Dion

“Turn your head to the left.”

“Get so-and-so’s paper on envir­on­mental policy from my desk for my meet­ing with X this afternoon.”

“Tilt your chin up.”

“Ensure we get such-and-such state­ment on the website.”

“Smile.”

Flash. Click. Repeat.

He was a man on fire, but we gave him not a hope in Hades of win­ning the lead­er­ship. I spec­u­lated at the time that his can­did­acy was an attempt to become king­maker and secure a plum post in the com­ing Lib­eral gov­ern­ment. Funny how things turned out.

As the elec­tion pro­gressed, I was impressed by Dion. He seemed, by far, the smartest of the bunch of jokers we call lead­ers these days. He was earn­est, hon­est, endear­ing even. His policies were ahead of the times. His tax green tax scheme was pro­gress­ive (and not that hard to under­stand), if polit­ic­ally pois­on­ous. He spoke Eng­lish bet­ter than any of the oth­ers spoke French.  He may not have been a good politi­cian, but he would have made a great Prime Min­is­ter. It’s too bad the Lib­eral party was divided and broke. It’s too bad we have the same spite­ful and ill-spirited Prime Min­is­ter again. People say they want a politi­cian they can trust, but what they really want is tax-breaks.

Some­where between the day I saw Stephan Dion in his under­wear and elec­tion day, I changed my vote to sup­port the Lib­er­als. To me, Dion is the best of kind of Cana­dian: an intel­li­gent, just, and thought­ful per­son who could straddle the divides of our coun­try to forge a bet­ter future. Maybe one day we’ll get over our petty regional dif­fer­ences and be a real country.

Next time: Aaron and I on the tar­mac with fighter pilots, and one amaz­ing slice of bread.

Page 2 of 512345