October 2020 - The Image Journey

Published October 16, 2020 by avardw

Toronto Gone – Random scenes, random moments

random scenes, random moments, colour, photography, — High Park, Toronto, 1984 – © Avard Woolaver

I enjoy capturing random scenes and random moments–a stream of consciousness approach that is a bit like meditation with a camera. When I used to walk around Toronto with my camera in the 1980s, I usually had nothing special in mind that I wanted to photograph. The same is true today, some forty years later. It could be the right light or interesting patterns, or a sudden silhouette, any number of things that propel me to press the shutter. The capturing of random scenes is both a strength and a weakness. One one hand there is an absolute freedom to it–capturing anything that gets my attention. On the other side, if there is often no project in mind it seems aimless.

I have learned over time to see themes in my photos that may become apparent after years or may be pointed out by viewers online. That’s part of the beauty of the random approach. It’s like letting your mind wander with a camera in hand, then putting a shape to it later on. For me, editing is a more difficult task than taking the photos, but both are rewarding.

The photos I have chosen for this post have been scanned quite recently, so I find a freshness to them even though they were taken decades ago. Probably only 10 percent of my output in the 1980s was in colour, and for this reason I have a special fondness for them.

The series “Toronto Gone” puts a focus on things that have disappeared–buildings, businesses, parking lots, cars, people that used to be a part of the city in the 1980s and 1990s prior to the condo boom, and before the widespread use of computers and cell phones.

Downtown Toronto, 1982 – © Avard Woolaver

Colour Photography Toronto

colour photography random scenes Toronto Gone

Published October 10, 2020 by avardw

Recent black and white photos

During the pandemic I have been in relative isolation, and have taken some comfort in returning to black and white photography. It takes me back to the late 1970s when I first learned to process and print black and white film. These days, however, I shoot everything digitally in colour, and do the conversions to monochrome later–it leaves more options.

I’m in my early sixties, which means I grew up with a black-and-white television. When I was young our TV got two channels, both of them snowy. Even shows that had been filmed in colour were, in our household and others like ours, translated into varying shades of grey.

And I loved paging through Life magazine; there, too, reality was shown in black and white. It became my default understanding of what a photo was.

Old family photos in my parents’ and grandparents’ albums, similarly, were in black and white. We had colour film, of course, and I enjoyed my father’s colour slides (shown on a big screen in the living room when we had company or at Christmas). But the basic set of beliefs I had about photos or images was that they were in black and white.

I think there’s some level at which, when I got seriously into photography in my twenties, I was working from that assumption. I still love looking at tonal variation and shades of grey—how a black-and-white photo can contain everything from deepest inky black to a pale, foggy, mist, to white and nearly silver. Black and white isn’t lacking, or second-best; it’s just different. American photographer Robert Frank called it the colours of hope and despair.

And it’s not better. There can be a kind of high-handedness about it, a sort of snooty, superior quality. A whiff of reading Russian novels at breakfast and watching only foreign films, an “I’m better than you” air. That’s an empty pretense, though. There doesn’t need to be any message in using it.

It’s beautiful. Colour is beautiful. Both are great—a pleasure to shoot, a pleasure to look at.

Black and White Photography

black and white monochrome photography

Published October 3, 2020 by avardw

Toronto Gone – allokataplixis – seeing the city for the first time

Toronto Skyline from Bleecker Street, Toronto, 1980 – © Avard Woolaver

There’s a new word for describing the marvel of seeing a place for the first time. It is allokataplixis, a conjunction of two Greek words: allo, meaning “other,” and katapliktiko, meaning “wonder.” Professor Liam Heneghan of DePaul University in Chicago coined the word in 2018. He had been taking his students to Ireland every year and noted that they delighted in many things–the food, the smell of the air, architectural details, the local language, as well as many small things they had never seen before. Heneghan grew up in Ireland, but had lived in the United States for many years and no longer looked at Ireland with fresh eyes or noticed its peculiarities. His word really describes my experience of discovering Toronto for the first time. Fresh eyes notice things that accustomed eyes don’t.

The above photo, taken in 1980 shortly after I arrived in Toronto, seems to be a good example of allokataplixis. I had grown up in the country, and never lived in the city. In the first several months everything seemed brand new and my photography studies at Ryerson meant that I had a camera in hand at all times to capture what I saw. I discovered the photo just recently while scanning negatives, and it’s like seeing it for the first time. I marvel now at the numerous geometric shapes, and the contrast between the old buildings and the modern ones in the background. And how the old fashioned antenna and power pole seem to dwarf the CN Tower. After having lived in Toronto for twenty years, I can no longer see it with country eyes. When I visit now, everything seems familiar.