NOW

NOW magazine newspaper box, Church & Wellington streets, Toronto, August 1990

I PROBABLY SHOT MORE PHOTOS FOR NOW MAGAZINE than any other client, by a very wide margin. I shot my first assignment for them in December of 1988 and handed in my last in November of 1999. I had a lot of other clients when I began working for NOW - including the Village Voice, the New York Times, Guitar World magazine (more on them later) - but by the time my decade-plus run with NOW was over, they were my only regular gig.

That was a problem. But more on that later.

My boss for the whole time I was at NOW was Irene Grainger, the paper's photo editor, and it was thanks to her that the paper had a reputation for interesting, creative photography, the sort of thing that the dailies would have considered too "arty." I was the youngest regular shooter on the masthead, and Irene's relationship with me had a maternal aspect - alternately solicitous, encouraging, concerned and disappointed.

I tested her patience by handing in work ever closer - and past - deadline, struggling in my airless, makeshift darkroom to satisfy my own (often incoherent) vision and the peculiar technical demands of a newsprint publication in the mostly pre-digital age. Thanks to NOW I had some pretty amazing access, and produced most of my best work. I also shot an awful lot of stuff that no one has any reason to look at ever again.

Since my posts on this blog have gotten more chronological, it follows that much of what I'll be putting up here in the coming months will be from my NOW years. Looking back, the wonder of my time at the paper wasn't that it basically gave me a living, but that I lasted as long as I did, as the course of my time at this very left-leaning alternative free weekly coincided with my own gradual drift politically rightward.

The scan above was shot for an in-house ad campaign, and involved the nice people in circulation dropping off a brand new newspaper box on the traffic island right across from the Gooderham Building, where I set up with a flash and a softbox at dusk, shooting westward toward the business district skyline with my Bronica SQa.

I believe the cover of the paper in the clear window on the door of the box is by me as well - Moe Berg of The Pursuit of Happiness, a band much beloved by NOW and Toronto at the time. This photo - a minor technical challenge, probably interesting today mostly for its glimpse of a cityscape that's changed quite a bit since then - pinpoints a particular time in my career, when I had a steady gig and a growing reputation and didn't need to do anything but take pictures to make my rent.

AN APPEAL: This blog is celebrating its first anniversary, and hard use has taken its toll on my old HP scanner, which now only produces clear scans on a narrow strip on the right margin of its glass. I'm on the market for a new scanner, but the only comparable replacement costs several hundred dollars beyond my budget, so I'm asking anyone who's enjoyed what I've been doing here - and wants to see more - if they can chip in and help. There's a PayPal button up near the top, and anything would be appreciated. Also, if you feel moved, please click on my Amazon.com links - a small percentage of anything you buy helps fund this blog. Thank you so much in advance.

Tilda

Tilda Swinton, Toronto, Sept. 1992

WHILE WATCHING TRAINWRECK THE OTHER DAY I found myself laughing hardest at one particular performance. Tilda Swinton, her hair brittle with bleaching and covered with liquid tanner, played the appallingly cynical British editor of an American men's magazine by channeling Russell Brand. It occurred to me that I've photographed Swinton a couple of times, over a decade apart and on either side of the analog wall, and it would be as good an excuse as any to dig out those photos.

The first time was during the film festival, when Swinton, known mostly for her work in Derek Jarman's films, was here to talk about her title role in Orlando, Sally Potter's adaptation of the Virginia Woolf novel. There was no small amount of buzz around Swinton, and I'd asked a publicist who I got along with to try to get me a few minutes with her despite not having a particular assignment to shoot her. (You could do that sort of thing back then.)

Tilda Swinton, Toronto, Sept. 1992

It was the same festival where I'd shoot Steve Buscemi and John Turturro, in the public rooms and hallways of the (now closed) Sutton Place hotel. The kind publicist called me over in the press room and told me she'd arranged a few minutes with Swinton, adding breathlessly, "You won't believe it - and I don't normally say stuff like this. But she's gorgeous."

Swinton was, indeed, striking - tall and thin, with long red hair and pale skin, dressed in a black shirt and wide-legged, flowing trousers that gathered and tied at the front. As I've written before, it was less a sexually arresting kind of beauty than a kind of aesthetic perfection - she was a beautiful sort of thing, less androgynous than alien. I took out my Rolleiflex and found a spot in front of the huge tapestries where I'd shot Sam Rivers a few years previous. The shot at the top of this post found a permanent place in my portfolio.

Tilda Swinton, NYC, Oct. 2005

I'd photograph Swinton again over thirteen years later, in New York City, where I was doing a press junket for the first of Walden Media's Narnia films. Swinton played Jadis, the White Witch, and somehow I ended up getting a few minutes to photograph her - a rarity at these sort of international movie junkets, which were based mostly around processing large groups of journalists through strictly scheduled round table interviews.

I'm amazed it happened at all. During my own round table interview where Swinton shared interview time with young Skandar Keynes, I had asked Keynes how he'd been prepared to play Edmund, a role that, in the C.S. Lewis novels, is meant to stand in for mankind, spared Jadis' wrath by the sacrifice of Aslan. I didn't think even mentioning Lewis' obvious Christian allegory would be a problem, but Swinton - a member of the British Communist Party at one point, and later the Scottish Socialist Party - took obvious offense and became very protective of Keynes, and even went so far as to speak for him, insisting that this wasn't important.

I photographed Swinton with the newspaper's Canon digital SLR in a big banquet room at the junket hotel, in front of a black curtain that happened to be set up in the middle of the room. I like to imagine you can see some of her wariness of me - inspired, no doubt, by our brief clash earlier during the interview - but frankly it's echoed in some of the photos I took over a decade earlier, and might just be how Swinton regards portrait cameras in general.

It's a far less flattering set of photos than my earlier shoot. This might be a combination of many factors - my less overawed regard for Swinton and celebrities in general after twenty years in the business, the rather harder, more clinical quality of digital imagery as a medium, an evolving artlessness in my own style, or simply the reality of aging; none of us maintain our youthful freshness for very long, and to Swinton's credit, she'd never bothered trying.

AN APPEAL: This blog is celebrating its first anniversary, and hard use has taken its toll on my old HP scanner, which now only produces clear scans on a narrow strip on the right margin of its glass. I'm on the market for a new scanner, but the only comparable replacement costs several hundred dollars beyond my budget, so I'm asking anyone who's enjoyed what I've been doing here - and wants to see more - if they can chip in and help. There's a PayPal button up near the top, and anything would be appreciated. Also, if you feel moved, please click on my Amazon.com links - a small percentage of anything you buy helps fund this blog. Thank you so much in advance.

 

Weekend

Christian Island, August 2015

EVERYBODY LIKES TO GET AWAY IN THE SUMMER. After my last post, it seemed fair to post something more recent, and thanks to the generosity of our friends Judy and David, we spent a weekend up at Georgian Bay, and a couple of my cameras went along.

Christian Island is a native reservation and historical site - the place where survivors of the Huron massacre of 1649 fled to after the Iroquois destruction of Sainte-Marie among the Hurons. There's a pilgrimage route nearby, but we only passed through that on the way home.

We took the ferry over on Friday evening as the sun went down and arrived at Judy and David's cottage after dark. The sun came up bright and clear the next day - perfect cottage weather. Down to the beach we all went.

The key - or so I am told - to a perfect cottage weekend is not doing much at all besides eating. Without the distractions of internet or even a strong phone signal, everyone spent most of the sunny hours either in or beside the water. (Except for me: I don't do water.)

High and dry, I spent time wandering up and down the sand with my cameras, a little dazed by the sun and heat. I think that shows.

If you don't swim, you eventually get enough beach, so I headed off into the woods.

We returned home tanned, rested, well-fed and relaxed. Which was good, since the week that followed wasn't nearly as relaxing.

Some old pictures I didn't take: Summer vacation

My brother Marty floats, Belmont Lake, Ontario, 1958

SUMMER IS ALMOST OVER, and over the crest of the warmth and sun we can see another year ending. This old photo of my brother floating in a lake in southern Ontario makes me think of those last days of the season. He told me that he remembered this as the moment he could no longer float; there's an inflatable tube underneath him, he recalled, which he needed for the first time that summer to keep himself buoyant - a childhood gift suddenly taken away. A small thing, but one of those memories that stick with you, since they seem to be a milestone. He'd be in high school in a year.

Marty says that this was Belmont Lake, outside Peterborough, where our father's brother, Uncle Tommy, had a cottage. He says he went there once, maybe twice, and stayed for a couple of weeks. He remembers fishing, the loons on the water, watching sea flea races and pitching horseshoes. It sounds idyllic - Canadian cottage life in an age before distractions.

Mary and Marty, Belmont Lake, 1958

He says our sister Mary, then only six, and our mom came up for a weekend. I'm assuming it was her behind the camera. This would be six years before I was born; I don't ever remember going to Belmont Lake.

Chris

Chris Buck, Parkdale, Toronto, June 1990

MY GOOD FRIEND CHRIS BUCK HAD HIS BIRTHDAY THIS WEEK, and as I promised a year ago at this time, I thought I'd dig out some more portraits I took of him back when we were young photographers, testing out film and equipment with each other as subjects. I found these buried in a binder of unedited slides, and found them interesting, if only for technical reasons.

They were taken in my Parkdale studio, shortly before Chris moved to New York. We were constantly on the search for any technical or creative edge we could find while still searching for something like a unique style, and while playing around with cross-processing, old cameras and alternate printing processes, we came across Polaroid's line of instant slide films.

Chris Buck, Parkdale, Toronto, June 1990

Polachrome (the colour film) and Polapan (the black and white version) looked like regular 35mm canister film, but had to be developed with a hand-cranked film processor and a pack of processing chemicals. Eager for any sort of edge we could find, we both bought a batch and went to work in my studio/bedroom, setting up seamless backdrops and strobe lights.

If you zoom in close on the colour scans, you'll notice the very wide grain, separated into red, green and blue. It was a film-chemical process, but the result anticipated digital photography for some reason I can't explain. It produced a pointillist sort of effect that I very much liked, but after testing the film out with a variety of filters and exposures, I think we both came to the conclusion that it was risky to work with, mostly because we couldn't guarantee a consistent result that we could sell to a client.

The black and white film, on the other hand, had a remarkable smoothness - a grain-free texture that was reminiscent of Polaroid's Type 55 positive/negative film. Unfortunately both films left a notable amount of debris on the film - a cinch to Photoshop away today, but a deal-breaker back in the days of drum scanners, before digital image processing was cheap and easy.

Chris Buck, Parkdale, Toronto, June 1990

Chris was - still is, I'm sure - a ham in front of the camera. These are a selection of some of the more restrained poses from the slides. I promised him I would try to respect his dignity when choosing photos for these posts.

I think Chris must have been going through a Morrissey period when I took quite a few of our portraits of each other, but since I didn't have vases of gladioli sitting around the studio, he had to make do with looking moody and a bit diva-esque.

From the #bucklikeness Instagram series - photos by Chris Buck, 2015

Chris has been having a good year down the States, as far as I can tell - surviving the shrinking of the ice shelf that is editorial portraiture by branching out ever further into corporate and illustrative work. He's also begun a series for Instagram featuring a 3-D printed likeness of himself, which he carries around and poses daily wherever he goes.

He's having more fun with this than I think he'd like to admit. And for the first time I think he's found a subject that's as pliant and cooperative as he's always wanted.

AN APPEAL: This blog is celebrating its first anniversary, and hard use has taken its toll on my old HP scanner, which now only produces clear scans on a narrow strip on the right margin of its glass. I'm on the market for a new scanner, but the only comparable replacement costs several hundred dollars beyond my budget, so I'm asking anyone who's enjoyed what I've been doing here - and wants to see more - if they can chip in and help. There's a PayPal button up near the top, and anything would be appreciated. Also, if you feel moved, please click on my Amazon.com links - a small percentage of anything you buy helps fund this blog. Thank you so much in advance.

 

Photographer, Havana

Photographer, Parque Central, Havana, 1991

THE OLD MAN SET UP HIS CAMERA IN THE PARQUE CENTRAL, just across from the Capitol building and a block up the street from my hotel, the Inglaterra. He was one of the few private businesses that was operating in Havana at the time, just after the Soviets cut off aid to the country, and just before they ceased to exist altogether.

I don't know whether he had to pay someone off for the privilege or whether the authorities made an atypical exception for this sort of activity, but I saw him there nearly every day. I had to get a portrait done as soon as I saw him, and asked his permission to photograph him while he worked. I'm sure I asked him his name, but if I wrote it down it's in a notebook that I've either lost or filed away somewhere obscure even to me.

He worked in a method that's common in poor parts of the world, but has come to be known, apparently, as the "Cuban Polaroid." He had a large view camera on a tripod fitted out with a long cloth sleeve on the back, a porthole viewer on the top, and a little drawer near the base. His machine was both camera and darkroom, and he seemed to be doing a booming business with both locals and tourists.

Film was scarce in Cuba - you could buy a few rolls with US dollars in the tourist shops that were out-of-bounds for locals, but the single camera store I saw in downtown Havana had none for sale. They did have an artful and tantalizing display of boxes of Eastern European film in the window, all of which were empty and covered in a layer of dust, upon closer inspection.

The old photographer somehow managed to get photo paper - I don't know if it was imported, manufactured locally or coated with homemade emulsion - and used that for his negative. He would take his photo with a strict process, setting up his big view camera, focusing by distance and composing with a little wire frame, then stick his hand in the camera and look down the porthole at the top as he developed the paper negative.

He would extract the paper negative from the little drawer at the bottom of the camera and stick it, still wet, to a piece of wood that folded up in front of the lens. He would take another photo of the paper negative, put his hand back inside the camera and develop the print he'd just made of the negative.

When he was done he handed you a little black and white print, just 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches, with ragged edges, still wet and smelling of vinegary fixer. It lacked detail and grain but was sharp and well-composed, and seemed to have come from some sort of time machine, with a slight sepia tint and a flattering softness.

My buddy Howie and I briefly conferred before we paid him a few US dollars - I'm sure his tourist price was higher than the one for locals, but it was so cheap in any case that you couldn't imagine complaining. Howie said we should put on our shades and try a pose like we'd seen in old photos of the Dadaists. My Rolleiflex is around my neck, my camera bag on the ground by my feet.

It's a fantastic photo, and it's held up well after nearly a quarter century, considering how primitively it was produced. I'm amazed at how thin I am; my girlfriend had recently broken up with me and I hadn't been eating well. I can't imagine that the old man is still working in the Parque Central with his camera today, but I hear there are still photographers there making their Cuban Polaroids.

Me and Howie Cramer, Parque Central, Havana, 1991. Photographer unknown.

AN APPEAL: This blog is celebrating its first anniversary, and hard use has taken its toll on my old HP scanner, which now only produces clear scans on a narrow strip on the right margin of its glass. I'm on the market for a new scanner, but the only comparable replacement costs several hundred dollars beyond my budget, so I'm asking anyone who's enjoyed what I've been doing here - and wants to see more - if they can chip in and help. There's a PayPal button up near the top, and anything would be appreciated. Also, if you feel moved, please click on my Amazon.com links - a small percentage of anything you buy helps fund this blog. Thank you so much in advance.

 

Slim

Slim Gaillard, Toronto, Nov. 1989

MY BEST FRIEND FROM HIGH SCHOOL HAS A HABIT of using the suffixes "-aroonie" and "-areenie" as a sort of antic affectation. I think he got it from old movies or Looney Tunes. One day, years after high school, he told me he'd run into an amusing, rather eccentric older gentleman at the Squeeze Club, a pool hall and hangout of ours. The man, he recalled with amazement, also used "-aroonie" and "-areenie" liberally when he spoke. It was the strangest thing, he said.

"You idiot," I told him. "That was Slim Gaillard. He invented '-aroonie' and '-areenie.' It was part of a made up language he came up with in the '40s called 'vout.'"

My friend didn't believe that someone - some actual person - had come up with that whole thing. I had to pull out a record and play it for him to prove it. I might have even had to find a couple of passages in a copy of a book I knew he'd never read:

"...we went to see Slim Gaillard in a little Frisco nightclub. Slim Gaillard is a tall, thin Negro with big sad eyes who's always saying 'Right-orooni' and 'How 'bout a little bourbon-arooni.' In Frisco great eager crowds of young semi-intellectuals sat at his feet and listened to him on the piano, guitar and bongo drums. When he gets warmed up he takes off his undershirt and really goes..." 

"... Now Dean approached him, he approached his God; he thought Slim was God; he shuffled and bowed in front of him and asked him to join us. 'Right-orooni,' says Slim; he'll join anybody but won't guarantee to be there with you in spirit. Dean got a table, bought drinks, and sat stiffly in front of Slim. Slim dreamed over his head. Every time Slim said, 'Orooni,' Dean said 'Yes!' I sat there with these two madmen. Nothing happened. To Slim Gaillard the whole world was just one big orooni.'"

- Jack Kerouac, On The Road 

Slim Gaillard, Sneaky Dee's, Toronto, Nov. 1989

Slim Gaillard came to Toronto in the fall of 1989 for a series of frantically booked and rehearsed gigs organized by my friends Jane Bunnett and Larry Cramer. They had played with him before - I don't know if they backed him up for this show, but it's likely - and were used to the benign chaos Slim brought with him.

I already knew about Slim. I'd read about him a few years earlier and had a dubious British bootleg record that mixed some old radio sessions with some later, Latin-themed recordings. I thought he was fantastic. While I'd been struggling to understand jazz with records like Kind of Blue, Slim's weird, cartoonish pre-bop sides helped me get the music better than anything else.

And so I had to tag along when Jane and Larry told me that Slim would be playing an impromptu gig at Sneaky Dee's, a hole-in-the-wall Mexican eatery on Bloor Street that would later become a legendary punk and alt-rock venue when it moved south to College. (It's still going today.)

I stationed myself at the corner of the stage and shot the very loose, rehearsal-like show, with a band that Larry had pulled together at the last minute. I was transfixed by Slim, who effortlessly made himself the focus of the room, and wondered that the guy who recorded "Cement Mixer Putti-Putti" and "Flat Foot Floogie" was just a few feet away from me.

Slim Gaillard, BamBoo Club, Toronto, Nov. 1989

A few days later I got a panicked phone call from Larry asking if they could borrow my electric guitar - Slim wasn't in the habit of traveling with one, and they had a gig coming up at the BamBoo. I can't believe it, but I was actually hesitant; my guitar wasn't a collector's item or anything, but I'd saved up for a while to buy it and money was scarce enough that I wouldn't have another if something happened to it.

I made Larry promise to keep an eye on it all night and to make sure, I asked if I could come along and shoot the show, as a document of Slim Gaillard playing my guitar.

So I ended up with another couple of rolls of Slim live, full of great frames. The camera loved the man. What I can't understand is why, with Slim spending so much time in Toronto, I didn't ask for Jane and Larry to bring him by my studio - just around the corner from their house - for a quick portrait session.

Perhaps it was the customary madness that seemed to surround Slim wherever he went. Perhaps I felt intimidated. Perhaps I assumed that he'd be back in town to play with Jane and Larry again, and that my live shots would be a nice calling card to grease the wheels for a few minutes in the studio. In any case I was very pleased with the photo at the top of this post, and let myself believe it would be a close stand-in for a portrait until I had another shot at Slim. My mistake, and I regret my lack of initiative to this day.

Slim Gaillard died in London on February 26, 1991.

AN APPEAL: This blog is celebrating its first anniversary, and hard use has taken its toll on my old HP scanner, which now only produces clear scans on a narrow strip on the right margin of its glass. I'm on the market for a new scanner, but the only comparable replacement costs several hundred dollars beyond my budget, so I'm asking anyone who's enjoyed what I've been doing here - and wants to see more - if they can chip in and help. There's a PayPal button up near the top, and anything would be appreciated. Also, if you feel moved, please click on my Amazon.com links - a small percentage of anything you buy helps fund this blog. Thank you so much in advance.