Black and White Archives - Page 2 of 8

Published April 28, 2021 by avardw

I only know how to take one photo

In some way, I only know how to take one photo. I just do it at different times and locations. It brings to mind a quote from blues harmonica legend Charlie Musselwhite: “I only know one tune, and I play it faster or slower, or I change the key, but it’s just the one tune I’ve ever played in my life. It’s all I know.” There is a particular photo by Lee Friedlander that I believe may be the basis for my photographic approach. I discovered it in 1978, in a book titled Concerning Photography. At that time, I was just learning how to use a camera and was very passionate about this new endeavor.

Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1972 – Lee Friedlander

The black and white photo, titled “Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1972,” shows an intersection cluttered with a hydrant and various poles. There is a car tire in frame on the right, as well as a high-rise apartment building. In the centre, there is a small house (or small bank building), and on the right—the pièce de résistance – a dog sitting on the sidewalk, partially obscured by a pole, looking like it’s waiting to use the crosswalk. So much information, and wonderful balance of so many elements. And such beautiful, creamy black and white tones. The photo is bursting with creativity, intelligence and deadpan humour–and seems to be the visual equivalent of jazz music.

Over the course of forty years, I have taken many kinds of photos—landscapes, portraits, documentary, editorial, but I keep returning to this wonderful Lee Friedlander photo with its delicate balance of design elements, its visual humour and social commentary. When I go out into the world with my camera, the most satisfying moments come when I know I have taken a quirky photo, one that makes the viewer do a double take. It may be the only photo I know how to take, yet I was there, and I saw that!

Black and White Documentary Photography

black and white photography Charlie Musselwhite Lee Friedlander photography

Published February 13, 2021 by avardw

Documentary Photos in New York, 1983

These are some documentary photos taken in New York in 1983. Documentary photography can be defined as style of photography that provides a straightforward and accurate representation of people, places, objects and events, and is often used in reportage. It can be both significant and relevant to history and historical events as well as everyday life.

For me, documentary photos are ones that are taken without manipulation, or staging. My urban photographs from the 1980s, taken in Toronto, New York, Japan, and Asia are largely street photographs, but are also documentary in that they capture life as it is. And the passage of time makes them more interesting, and valuable, as documents of another era. The above photo, for example, shows a man sitting at the entrance to B. Altman and Company on 5th Avenue. It was the flagship store of a luxury department store chain that opened in 1906 and closed for good in 1989. It’s nice to have a record of this iconic store.

A recent article by Authur Lubow in the New York Times titled, Life As It’s Seen, Not Staged makes the point that documentary photography, which fell out of favor with the rise of manipulated images, is making a comeback. An exhibition at the International Centre of Photography highlights young photographers share “a commitment to portray life as they discover it in the world at large, without staging or manipulation; and by so doing, find and express themselves.” Lubow also makes the point that “nothing is weirder than a straight photograph of an uncanny subject.” In short, truth is stranger than fiction.

In my early sixties, I sill find everyday life endlessly fascinating, and continue to capture it with my documentary photos. They help me make sense of the world we live in, and also help me remember the places I’ve been, and people and things I’ve seen.

Black and White Documentary Film Photography Photography Social Landscape Street Photography

1980s documentary photography film photography New York New York City street photography

Published February 2, 2021 by avardw

Toronto street photos from the 1980s

Toronto street photos, 1980s, — Nathan Phillips Square Toronto, 1982 – © Avard Woolaver

Here are some Toronto street photos from the 1980s. They are images that I scanned quite recently, and have not been previously posted or published. There is a certain satisfaction for me in re-discovering these photos that I took so long ago. They tell me a lot about how much the world has changed, and I myself have changed. And, conversely, they also remind me that so many basic things in the world remain unchanged.

As we cannot travel back in time, photographs are a way to come face to face with the past–to reconnect with it without actually going there. Photographs are also a good memory aid. There is so much information crammed into our brains that forty year old information can slip away very easily. It’s funny that I can remember very clearly taking some of these photos, yet others are a complete mystery. I only know that I must have taken it for a reason. A few photos in this post were taken for a school assignment at Ryerson called “Exploration of the frame” – new and novel ways to frame photos. I’m not sure if I succeeded.

These Toronto street photos bring me joy and feelings of nostalgia. It’s hard to separate them from the memories that surround them: good times with friends at school and at parties, endless hours in the darkroom, the joy of being young and alive with a head full of tunes.

Black and White Film Photography Photography Toronto

1980s black and white film photography street photography street photos Toronto

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 September 28, 2020 by avardw

Toronto Gone – Toronto Stock Exchange, 1981

Toronto Stock Exchange, trading floor, Bay Street — Toronto Stock Exchange, Toronto, 1981 – © Avard Woolaver

In the fall of 1981, I photographed the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSE) for a school project at Ryerson. I spent three or four mornings on a viewing platform that looked down on the trading floor, trying to capture the activity and mood of the place. I remember borrowing a 300mm lens from the school–the longest lens I have ever used. The focus was so critical and as the lighting was relatively dim, I had to push the film to get adequate depth of field. I was satisfied with the results and produced a slide show programmed with a Wollensak, using the Beatles’ “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” as a soundtrack.

Looking back at these images after almost forty years, they look like relics of a different era. There are big clunky monitors, rotary phones, and paper slips strewn everywhere. There is almost a complete absence of women (they are still a minority, making up an estimated 10 to 15 percent of traders). A few women are visible, however, changing numbers on the boards, but not doing any trading. Traders are buying and selling on the phone, as well as yelling and using hand signals–a beehive of activity.

The Toronto Stock Exchange was on Bay Street in those days, in the elegant art deco building it occupied for sixty years–1937 to 1997. It then moved to the Exchange Tower on King Street, and is now the TSX. The trading floor has been replaced by an electronic trading system; gone are the men in suits, frantically yelling and gesturing. Most major exchanges in the world have also abandoned the “open outcry” method, except for the United States, where several exchanges (including the New York Mercantile Exchange and New York Stock Exchange) remain old-school.

Stephen Simpson in Investopedia talks about the pros and cons of open outcry trading. “Certainly computers are faster, cheaper, more efficient and less error-prone with routine trades – though the error rate in open outcry trading is surprisingly low. What’s more, computers are at least theoretically better for regulators in creating data trails that can be followed when there are suspicions of illegal activity. That said, electronic trading is not perfect and open outcry has some unique features. Because of the human element, traders who can “read” people may be at an advantage when it comes to picking up non-verbal cues on the motives and intentions of counter-parties. Perhaps analogous to the world of poker, there are some players who thrive as much on reading the players as playing the odds – and electronic trading removes those signals from the equation.“

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.