This scene reminded me of a sign I saw as a child at a restaurant beside a gas station. It read: Eat and Get Gas. I found the double meaning quite amusing and never forgot seeing it. Some fifty years later I saw an opportunity to illustrate that sign.
I plan on spending more time on my blog and will be posting a photo every day–recent photos like this one, taken yesterday, and also older images from my archives. And if you haven’t done do already, please subscribe to the Image Journey. Cheers!
Toronto Flashback (1980-1986) was self published in 2016. It came about with the scanning of negatives that had lain dormant for over thirty years. I was surprised by what came out of the scanner, as I had forgotten many of the images. Thirty plus years will do that to one’s memory. And there are so many images in the Toronto work to recall–over 800 rolls of film.
Recently blogTO, a popular online Toronto publication, reposted a feature about my Toronto Flashback series. It touches on my motivation for taking the photos, and why I decided to scan and publish them. I’ll include a link here: https://www.blogto.com/city/2016/08/a_flashback_to_the_gritty_toronto_of_the_1980s/
Back in the 1980s I would shoot a roll of film (usually black and white), process it a few days later and make a contact sheet. After that I might make an enlargement of one or two of the strongest shots, and then move on. The contact sheets may be reviewed from time to time when preparing for an exhibition, but basically I didn’t look at them for years and years.
Looking back, I wish I had taken more colour photos, but am thankful for the ones I have. There were reasons for not shooting much colour. First, there was the added cost; second, I didn’t have much access to a colour darkroom to make prints. And in those days black and white was the preferred medium for fine art and documentary photographers. William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Edward Burtynsky and other colour specialists were just emerging in the art world, and colour photography was not yet fully accepted in the art world.
There is a sense of hyper realism in a colour photograph, like looking at a Technicolor movie, that you don’t get with the more abstract black and white view. And there’s also the psychological component of how the colours make us feel. There have been numerous requests that I post and publish more of my Toronto colour work, so my next book will be “Toronto Flashback in Colour.” Stay tuned.
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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.
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During the years 1980-1986, I did a lot of street photography in Toronto. For the past four years I have been scanning an archive of this material, and posting it online. Toronto Gone represents the final photos, the ones that have been recently scanned or have not been published in my Toronto books.
My memories of living in The Junction have faded. That’s why I’m so glad I have the photos to help me remember my time there (1982-1986). They bring back the feeling of living there and, for me, the colour photos seem to carry a more emotional and psychological component than the black and white ones. It also reminds me the importance and value of the documentary photograph.
Looking at a photo many years later, you may not know exactly why you took it but still be glad you did. Among other things, photography has been a visual diary for me. It helps me remember the places I’ve been and things I’ve seen. Photos can also become valuable documents of things and places that no longer exist.
We never know the full significance of the photos we take. They’re a picture of a moment, and that moment is gone as soon as you’ve taken the picture. That place–or that person, or cloud, or animal–is already changing before you’ve even walked away. We don’t know until much later whether those changes will accrue quickly or gradually. We don’t know if we’ll ever be there again, ever talk with that person again. The relentlessness of change is masked by its ordinariness.
This has been so evident to me in hearing people’s responses to my Toronto series. Taken in the 1980s, they show a city that many feel no longer exists.
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I’ve always been amazed at how images, like words, can convey so much emotion. I have always thought of black and white photography as an abstract medium and colour photography as a psychological medium. American photographer Elliot Erwitt said, “With colour you describe; with black and white you interpret.” If it’s true that colour appeals to our emotion and leaves less to our imagination, then it makes sense for us to be judicious in using it.
This can have a lot to do with how the photo is framed—how much of a particular colour, or colours to leave in or crop out. When I view a scene, then, I look for ways to combine colours–for me, it’s about balance. Sometimes a tiny splash of red is enough to counteract a sea of green, or a little orange goes well with a lot of blue. There are no hard and fast rules here, but the conscious combining of colour is something to keep in mind when you’re out taking photos.
On Instagram there are dozens of filters to choose from, each giving the image a certain look, but it seems the most-used Instagram filter is “normal”–that is, roughly the colours our eye sees. And that’s good news for an old-school guy (like me) who believes that colour is something to be observed, not added with a filter.