The North York shoebox model is two feet wide, twice that long and open at the audience end so you can see toward the proscenium. It’s beautifully done, even down to the tiny Steinway grand at centre stage. Despite parts of the ceiling being removable, the model is difficult to light. And every time I stare at the upside down and reversed image on the camera’s ground glass something bothers me. The hall plans undergo various changes weekly so the model leaves and returns several times for modifications and more photography. It continues to unsettle me.
I repeat the photography several times so the big brochure will be current. My pictures go back and forth to the graphic designers, the music producers, to Garth and his gang at Livent. Despite many opinions and small setbacks the publicity machine grinds on. Finally the promo book is in paste-up. Press time is imminent. I have a final troubled squint into the back-end of the model when the problem finally hits me. All those meetings, discussions and opinions and nobody had noticed that the micro Steinway had the bass strings on the right and the short ones on the left. The teeny piano was built backwards. Architectural model-makers are not musicians.
As this was before Photoshop the mockup went back once again to the architectural model studio to get fitted out with a new mini nine-foot grand and I got to light and photograph it one more time.
For the time being my model photos satisfied the marketers but when the hall was actually finished and in operation Russell Johnson called me from New York. He wanted it photographed for his portfolio and he had very specific ideas of what he needed. Could I make a photograph during a performance in a larger format that would show the audience, the performers and the hall all at once, sharp, clear and perfectly illuminated? Again, since this was before digital and Photoshop it was going to be tricky but I agreed to try. Shutter and SLR mirror noise ruled out using a Hasselblad and the light levels were too low for slow view camera lenses. Fortunately I owned a couple of curious Fuji cameras. Those things were like huge Leicas — no clanking mirror, just a rangefinder viewer. Quiet. And they made a negative that was 6x9 centimetres, a reasonable substitute for sheet film. More difficult was getting permission to shoot during a concert. But Johnson’s name carried the day. I got in, I did it, I got it. I’d arranged for the house lights to come up during the closing bar. I had a window of a few seconds. It was enough.
I couriered the pictures to New York. When I got a letter and a cheque back within days, Johnson said he’d asked for that photo for every hall he’d ever done anywhere in the world. This was the first time he’d gotten exactly what he’d requested. And it was the first and only time in 35 years of freelancing that I got a thank-you note from a client.
The challenge had come from the slow emulsions and low tolerance for high contrast subjects inherent in the film stocks of the day. Today’s digital shooter can crank the ISO up to 3200, even 6400 and beyond to deal with the low light and shallow depth of field issues. And now even a simple amateur program like iPhoto can open the shadows and flatten highlights. Composing photographs while viewing a directly projected image that is inverted and flipped right to left is now a lost and unnecessary skill. Today I’m somewhat amazed that I’d been aware of the piano reversal when viewing a ground glass image that had so little relation to conventional seeing. Of course our eyes work the same way as a camera lens and focus an inverted image on our retina. We actually see upside down. It is our brains that automatically erect the eye’s image and restore the correct handing — a nice little piece of unconscious software that proved quite difficult to make conscious.
After Livent blew up in a storm of papered performances and bubble books Garth was reborn as a resort marketer. We convened at the Muskoka Sands one winter weekend morning. His gang — girlfriend and associates — are all tricked out in brand-new white snowsuits. They look like urban polar bears. A brace of identical snowmobiles is lined up outside reception. After a blue smoke rev-up we’re off, Garth in the lead, on a photo reconnaissance. First stop is a small cliff with Christmas card icicles decoratively dangling. “See that? Shoot it!” he growls. The convoy thunders off over the snowy Shield. “See that!” he barks. A log cabin with smoke spiraling up from a stone chimney makes another postcard. “Shoot it! Get the woodpile!” We race over frozen lakes, plow through drifts, skid across frozen streams and rocket down forest trails. “See that: shoot it. And that!” In a couple of hours we’ve catalogued every possible winter wonderland cliché and head for home. Nobody can keep that guy down, not polio, not even the courts.
***
With historically low waters in the Bay my small island is separated from the much larger empty one behind by little more than a metre of water at one point. I keep a compost pile on the back island as defence against unwanted visitors — coons and bears to my little rock. As I leap over the gap with a compost pail in each hand I realize that a fox snake swims in mid-crossing below me. It’s as big as they get, closing in on six feet, and so elegantly scaled and patterned that it looks like glazed ceramic. As it’s in the water it can’t do the rattler imitation that always gives me chills. I carry on and dump my load of peels, shells and moldy bread. It will all be gone in hours unlike the bleached coffee filters I used to add to the pile. I haven’t done that for a half-dozen years and they’re all still there in defiance of sun, rain, freeze and thaw. I gather and burn them.
When I return I see the snake scaling the rockface onto my island. It glides like grease up the rock face and into my junipers. Now I’m sharing a very small island with a very large sneaky snake. Where is it?
During the 1980s I was constantly on the road, flying back and forth across Canada and up and down America. When I was in town I put in long hours at my studio editing, filing and working in the darkroom. While I was absent with busyness my children were growing up. I was missing it like a ’50s dad.
Returning home late at night my two sons and their mum would be asleep. We were living at that time in a wonderful Darling and Pearson turn-of-the-century bank building. That neoclassical building, bow-fronted with Ionic columns, keystones and pediments had the address carved in stone over our entrance door. I would climb the stairs after midnight to confront a dozen silent rooms littered with evidence — of the day’s work and my sons’ play. These traces of the ongoing family life that I was missing were often mysterious.
In order to understand and in some way participate in my family’s life I began to photograph this evidence. It was frequently very dense so I soon began to use a large format view camera the better to describe the complex tableaux that were the days’ witness. I was always a purist in this work — never touching or adjusting what lay before the lens and always honouring the available light. The late-night lighting dictated complex camera movements — tilts and swings, rising fronts — as well as very long exposures. The resulting photographs were exhibited and collected numerous times and published in books and art magazines. They found an audience but one that wasn’t always amiable. There were some women photographers who specialized in domestic and family themes. They protested that their work was often ignored but when a man — me — explored the same territory he was listened to. Upon eventually publishing part of the series as a small book called Staying Home I wrote a short introduction in an attempt to explain myself.
“Making a photograph is an act of recognition. What we chose to exclude and retain is based on what we know. If we are working well, not photographing intellectually but intuitively, we can sometimes catch up with ourselves and pull together strands from the past or even from the future. It is a visual way of making personal sense of what is probably truly random — the whole mess of life.
“We seldom know much about ourselves. We go about, acting and reacting, being pulled by strings that were attached in childhood. A child’s life is the experience of causes. Then we grow into forgetfulness and usually only desperation makes us attempt recovery. Sometimes we have small moments of recognition.
“These pictu
res have now been around for a while. They have travelled my country and crossed an ocean masquerading as a family diary. This was a partial truth. Some of these pictures are still travelling while others have found homes in what must seem to my children to be very strange places — a doctor’s waiting room, government buildings, a brewery head office, the homes of friends and strangers, several museums and, undoubtedly, a few basements. During the past half-dozen years I would think that anyone who is curious has had time to make them theirs. Now it is my turn. I want to know why I took them. Why I spent so many nights labouring in the low light with a big awkward camera when I really needed sleep. For three years.
“This is a small book about meaning. It traffics in recognitions. It claims to make recoveries. The stories are all true.”
***
The first of summer’s convection storms catches me on the river run. Gore-Tex is no match for the downpour’s violence and after a couple of miles I’m completely soaked and shivering. The rain drives so hard that my face stings and I can’t see. When I reach the beginning of the inlet the seas are high and the skiff begins to pound. I plough along pathetically until I reach my harbour and turn in. I run into the cabin and build a fire. A leak in the cupola drips on the dining table and pings on the kitchen pots. I find a dry corner and sleep.
1986
This is another cruel November rain. Photographer Doug Clark has been assisting me all day on a difficult location shoot — tricky lighting, an impatient client and extremely difficult subject matter: transparent acrylic furniture on an arctic white background. We’re both exhausted. I offer to drive Doug home in the rain.
Halfway there he changes his mind — he wants to go to his gym. I turn the van around and begin grinding through the dark, drowning rush-hour streets. After we negotiate a few blocks in heavy downtown traffic he realizes that his plan is unrealistic — he wants to go home. I backtrack once more and soon we’re approaching Bay Street from Dundas West. So much water streams down the windscreen of my Chevy van that the wipers can’t keep up. I see the road briefly after each sweep before it disappears in a greasy moiré of coloured lights and reflections. The rain is hard-driven by wind.
We’re in the curb lane making for a green light at Bay Street when the truck in front of us suddenly cuts into the centre lane leaving us facing an enormous orange construction sign that has blown down during the storm. I skid to a stop.
Looking in the mirror I see a TTC streetcar approaching a block behind us — more than enough time to back up from the sign, switch lanes and get through the intersection before the light changes. Seconds after I start this reverse maneuver the van cants up steeply on its curbside wheels and we’re showered in glass shards and splintered wood. We wheeze to a halt and so does the vintage 1948 Toronto Transit Commission Presidents’ Conference Committee car that was supposed to be a block away. My van is now balanced off its side at a 45-degree angle. Scrambling out the downside passenger door feels like leaving the Titanic.
The intersection is instantly invaded by maroon-jacketed TTC inspectors mumbling into little collar radios. It’s amazing — there are at least a half-dozen of them hatched somewhere in the Chinese restaurants and donut shops lining the street. In minutes their mutterings have effect — a police cruiser pulls up. The cop gets out in the downpour, looks at my yellow van hanging off the side of the PCC and the already long line of rush hour streetcars backing up behind and starts shouting. He’s so angry that after venting for three minutes he jumps back in his cruiser and drives away. By the time more cruisers arrive the PCCs are backed up across University Avenue. The maroon mumblers call a tow truck.
The streetcars are lined up past McCall when the tow vehicle pulls up and a big tattooed biker gets out. He stands akimbo in the rain. His head turns toward the streetcar, then toward my van, then toward the construction sign, a lamp post and finally toward me. He then reels off a hundred feet of cable with a snap hook at the end, feeds it around the lamp post, a telephone pole and then around my van. He cranks up his winch and deftly lifts my vehicle off the side of the trolley — beautiful!
I push my way through the gaggle of inspectors and admiringly ask for his bill. He looks down at me pityingly. “Buddy, you’re in so much shit I don’t got the heart to charge ya.” He climbs into his cab and disappears as the inspectors close in like pack animals. A cop breaks in through their circle and shoves a clipboard into my face. I have a choice: I can sign a guilty confession now and agree to pay damages or I can choose to be charged and go to court and lose points. I looked at the now doorless rusty streetcar with its broken windows and long crease down the side. I look at the heaps of splintered glass and rotten door wood scattered through the puddles. I confess.
Decades earlier my father had gone car shopping with a friend, a juvenile and family court judge. The justice bought a brand-new top-of-the-line Buick and the pair of them set off along the Danforth to go home. While they waited at a red light a streetcar behind them failed to stop and demolished the Buick. Both men were slightly injured. The judge told my father that he, the judge, would be charged and the TTC driver would be blameless. Traditionally the streetcar tracks were legally a rail right-of-way. Anyone driving along a street with trolley tracks was effectively joyriding down the mainline to Vancouver. You had no rights. The judge was indeed charged.
It would be years before the law giving TTC lawyers so much pleasure would be changed. My embrace of the PCC came before that change.
Confession supposedly liberates but my trolley-abuse relationship only gave me months of anxiety. Every week or so I’d inquire about the health of my victim. She was an outpatient in the yard for several weeks while waiting for an appointment in the welding shop. When she eventually recovered from that operation she moved on to rehab in carpentry and got fitted with new doors. After convalescing there for a few weeks the poor dear moved on to glazing. A couple of months later she was still collecting full pay in the paint shop. She still needed decals and a boot stripe.
When New Year’s rolled around my personal PCC car was still on sick leave. I trudged into 1987 with a feeling of dread. I was going to lose my house, my cameras and my children. I should have gone to court and raised hell about the collapsed construction sign.
In late February I was in a restaurant after a Friday of tidying up things before flying south on a holiday assignment. On my way up from the basement washroom I stopped at a pay phone and called in for messages. This was the first time that the TTC had actually called me. Here was my second public-transit life crisis. The rainy night confession had been bad enough but now I was faced with either being a whimpering whinger worrying about the size of the bill all the time I was away or I could man up and face the music — now. “Have some gumption,” my father would have said.
I sided with gumption and called head office. The official assigned to my case conducted an extended reading from my invoice. Each department had left details of hours spent, materials consumed, duty lost. The whole thing ran to a half-dozen pages. I steadied myself by leaning on the pay phone. Finally he came to the money shot.
“I think there may be a zero missing here, possibly two, probably three, even four. But it’s Friday afternoon and I want to go home. If you come up here right now and settle your debt to society we’ll just close this thing off and end the week.”
“What’s the damage?”
“It says here that you owe the Toronto Transit Commission thirteen dollars and sixty-four cents.”
The VIA train from Toronto rocks and rumbles over a frost-heaved roadbed en route to Ottawa. I’ve got one whole car as a studio for the complete return trip. My light stands are heavily sandbagged, my strobe cables snake down the aisle and more gear is piled on the seats. While the models and assistants gossip in the forward section, I work hard in the rear of the car to execute a long shot list for a concertina-fold VIA promotion piece that will be mailed to every house in Ontario
. In it a pretty business woman will daydream out the window, a vigorous old couple will have geriatric fun on a train ride, a mother will travel with her perfect child and so on. It will be a very long day.
At Cobourg the train stops so I can set up a platform tableau of a perfect young couple kissing goodbye prior to boarding. When I finish the photograph the rail crew are anxious to get rolling as there are paying passengers in the other cars and a freight thundering up to rear. But I can’t find my crew. My film loader, my makeup lady, the wardrobe mistress and hairdresser have gone missing. A loiterer at the station claims they’ve all jogged into town to buy smokes. I run after them, peeking through store windows all along King Street searching for the renegade women. I finally spot the vagrants at the counter of a convenience store. It’s piled high with cigarette packs; its elderly proprietor looks harried. When I enter I discover that each member of my gang is trying to buy a pack but none of them wants to get throat, tongue, lip or lung cancer let alone heart disease so they’ve rejected all the packs that illustrate those pathologies. They keep the counterman busy opening new cartons to expose the pack illustrations. There will be a late train but no ugly deaths.
***
After four evenings of high winds the weather has fallen off a cliff during a very long night. Eighteen hours ago the barometric pressure went into a freefall so severe that in less than an hour it dropped right off the scale into an unknown place and stayed there, invisible, unmeasurable by any of my devices, for 13 hours. The accompanying downpour was so extreme that water sluiced down the interior walls, cascaded off the big oak table centered under the cupola and pooled on the floor. Everything got soaked. By dawn all the windows are opaque with condensation and the world outside was gone. I mopped up the water and built a fire. Angry breath and a great wet finger had reminded me that I’m not in charge. My place in this universe remains very, very, small.
Final Fire Page 9
