There were several barbershops in West Toronto Junction when I lived there in the 1980s. I liked Ralph’s Barbershop because of the nice light and ambiance. It was the classic community gathering place where men sat and talked as they waited their turn. I asked Ralph if I could take some photos, and went there a few times with my camera.
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.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I spent a few days in Moscow in late June, 1993. My journey began in Kobe, Japan and a ferry ride to Shanghai, China. After that I made my way to Beijing where I caught the Trans-Siberian to Moscow. I had been working in Japan and decided to return to Canada heading westward across Asia and Europe, rather than the usual flight to Toronto.
My impressions of post-Soviet Russia were that it was generally run down and in disrepair. People in Moscow were quite friendly and welcoming, though some of them were suspicious of my picture taking. Shelves at the supermarkets were quite bare and my morning breakfast was lard on bread. I felt sorry for the women selling dogs and cats outside the train station, trying to earn a living. The economy was in rough shape and American dollars were preferred over Rubles. I got a drive across the city in an ambulance; the driver was earning extra money using it as a taxi. It seemed that the free enterprise system had yet to catch on. It also seemed to me like the wild west.
At the same time there was a great sense of art and history everywhere–amazing architecture and museums. The Moscow metro has some extravagantly designed stations such as Electrozavodskaya that resembles a museum rather than a subway station. In 1993 a metro fare was the equivalent of one cent. There were lots of buskers and street performers on the tourist filled Arbat Street. Some young people were playing American blues songs–a sense of the pervasiveness of American pop culture. I did some street photography there, as well as around the Kremlin.
1993 was the year of the Russian constitutional crisis— a political stand-off between the Russian president Boris Yeltsin and the Russian parliament that was resolved by military force. This took place in early October. The ten-day conflict became the deadliest single event of street fighting in Moscow’s history since the Russian Revolution–147 people were killed and 437 wounded. The country was in a state of drastic change.
Perhaps my photos don’t capture this sense of unrest and transition, but they serve as a document of life in Moscow a few years after the the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991.
More photos this series are in the Moscow 1993 menu. I will be posting colour photos from this series at a later date.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
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.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
When it comes to documentary photography, the more visual content, the better. The information, i.e., the visual content, in a photograph can tell you so much, especially when looking at it in a historical context. In the above photo there is so much more to be learned with the variety of elements than if I had zoomed in on just the storefront, or just the on cyclist. For instance, we can see that children’s car seats were not yet required–the child is sitting on his mother’s lap in the front seat. Sony Walkmans were being used; the cyclist is carrying one. And the bicycle is a ten-speed touring bike–mountain bikes were not yet a thing. Lucky Variety has a hand-painted sign, and sells cassettes (not LPs or CDs). The phone number for the business doesn’t have the 416 area code in front of it.
I’ve been a fan of Lee Friedlander since I discovered his photographs in 1978, in a book titled Concerning Photography. His photos are bursting with creativity, intelligence, and deadpan humour–they seem to be the visual equivalent of jazz music. He has been one of my main sources of photographic inspiration over the years.
Lee Friedlander, famous for his pioneering photos of the urban social landscape, has a talent for filling his photos with visual content without making them seem overly crowded. Eric Kim writes on his blog, “Friedlander was very conscious of how he framed his scenes, and wanted to add more complexity to his shots through adding content of interest.”
He accomplished this by using a wide-angle lens—usually a 35mm. That way objects in the foreground can remain in focus along with background elements. Though complexity is not always the answer, it certainly adds interest.
It’s something to think about when you take photos. While minimalism may work for some photos, when deciding whether to leave something in the photo or crop it out, I usually leave it in.
.
.
.
.
