Sally

Sally Lee, film test, Parkdale, April 1991. Kodak VPS rated at ISO 20, pushed 1 stop, 30R filter

MY RECENT POST OF OLD FASHION PHOTOS featured some shots of Sally Lee, my onetime roommate in the Parkdale loft and sometime model for my studio experiments. When I was scanning those shots, I remembered that one of the thankless favours I asked of Sally was being the model for my attempts to calibrate the results of cross processing colour negative film through E-6 chemistry.

While it's true that Sally was a convenient model, living as she did in the next room, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I knew that scrutinizing rolls of slide film for contrast and tonal shifts would be generally more pleasant with an attractive model. She was agreeable enough to stand in front of one of my strobe lights for two sessions in the spring of 1991, holding up my homemade colour chart while I changed filters and made notes on f-stops as I worked.

Sally Lee, film test, Parkdale, April 1991. Kodak VHC rated at ISO 20, pushed 1 stop, 40M filter

Sally Lee, film test, Parkdale, April 1991. Fujicolor 400 rated at ISO 50, pushed 1 stop, 40M filter open 1 stop

I'd first seen cross-processed photos in American music magazines, in work by people like Michael Lavine. Not long after my predecessor at NOW magazine, photographer Chris Nicholls, had done some early work with cross-processed slide film, and he was kind enough to sit down with Chris Buck and I in an east end diner and give us some basic tips on how it was done.

He said that you could cross-process both ways, but that you needed to do a lot of testing to see how pushing and filters and exposure would effect the results, especially when working with colour negative film. After some early success with slide film-turned-negative, I picked up a variety of negative films and tried to find something workable. I carefully recorded my results and offered them to anyone who wanted to try it out, figuring that it was better to share information than hoard it.

In the end, negative-through-slide cross-processing turned out to be too unpredictable to work with, though I'd keep going back to slide-through-negative cross-processing on and off for the next decade, looking for a way to get punchier colours and interesting historical effects. Nowadays almost all of this can be approximated roughly in Photoshop, though to my eye there's always something specific and unique to film chemistry - some peculiarity in the tonal shifts - that no one has ever been able to recreate digitally.

Sally Lee, film test, Parkdale, April 1991. Fuji Reala rated at ISO 12, 85 filter

Sally Lee, film test, Parkdale, April 1991. Kodak Ektar 25 rated at ISO 3, pushed 1 stop, no filter, closed 1 stop

Sally Lee, film test, Parkdale, April 1991. Agfa Portrait 160 rated at ISO 20, 85 filter closed 1 stop

How I ended up living with Sally is another story. She was, by the time I took these shots, my ex-girlfriend's sister, or very nearly. The three of us had moved into the Parkdale loft together, subletting the space against the wishes of a rogue landlord who tried to force all the tenants out with intimidation and threats. Sally's sister broke up with me after moving to New York City to study, leaving us in a somewhat awkward living situation.

We lasted a year after the breakup as roommates before it got all too much for Sally and she moved out. I was so desperate to have a shooting space that I was apparently willing to endure thug superintendents shoving toothpicks in my door lock, writing threats on our door and blaring country radio in the empty unit next door, along with the emotional awkwardness of living with the sister of my ex, as nice as she could be. I'd end up living in that loft for the rest of the decade, though the landlord and his thugs were gone not long after I took these photos.

Sally's essential likability has always made her popular in Toronto's overlapping worlds of art, music and film, where she's worked since we were roommates. I've always felt that I must have tested her amiability with my own basically grouchy temperament, not to mention my increasingly fragile emotional state during and after the break-up with her sister, but we've somehow managed to stay friendly in spite of it all. She took up the bass while we were living together, and she's till at it today, playing with our old upstairs neighbour Don Pyle in a new band. I'd like to post these old photos as a belated thank you, both for helping me out and for enduring.

Chris Buck

Chris Buck, Parkdale, Sept. 1989

IT'S MY OLD FRIEND CHRIS BUCK'S BIRTHDAY TODAY and I'm posting some old pictures of him as part of a tradition I began with this blog. We're both 53 this month; it's not a round number or one that looks particularly significant on the page, so there's not a lot I think I can say about it except that it feels neither young nor old. Somewhere between the parlour and the kitchen of middle age, the front door behind our backs and the back door in sight.

As I said when I began this tradition, I probably photographed Chris more than anyone else I knew (with the possible exception of my roommate Sally, who I was constantly pressing to hold up colour grids for film tests.) We'd use each other as guinea pigs to test out new cameras or lighting setups, and these two shots were taken just a month apart. The photo at the top is probably the closest thing I ever got to a nude in my career; I'll let you decide if that's a pathetic admission.

Chris Buck, Parkdale, Oct. 1989

The next shot was part of my struggle to master high key lighting; I've posted a frame from this shoot before. As much as these were tests of cameras or film or lighting, they were also an opportunity for each of us to experiment with how we presented ourselves to the camera. Chris would become much better at it than I ever did; I have never overcome my unease on the wrong side of the lens.

The final shot is recent, taken in the middle of our day long epic hang in New York City earlier this summer when I came to town to see the Irving Penn retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It had been a big year for Chris, who had published a thick monograph of his portrait work just before Christmas. Walking through the Temple of Dendur, I impulsively asked him to stand between two statues of Sekhmet, the Egyptian goddess of healing. I have no idea if that means anything. Happy birthday, old friend!

Chris Buck, Temple of Dendur, NYC, July 2017

Three years

Selfie in front of Irving Penn's backdrop, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, July 2017

IT'S BEEN THREE YEARS SINCE I STARTED THIS BLOG, after my wife noticed that I was moping around the house a bit too much. As a make-work project, she told me that I should start digging through my old negatives to see if anything was worth scanning and putting online. I frankly dreaded the thought, but my wife is usually right about most things, so I swallowed hard and got to work.

Three years later I'm shooting more than I have in a decade, and feeling a lot better about my work than I imagined I would when I cracked open that first binder full of negatives. I know, however, that I'm entering the home stretch with this blog project - there are only a few dozen worthwhile shoots worth digging up from my old negatives before I hit the dawn of digital photography, and once I've gone through whatever was worthwhile from my time shooting at the national free daily, the project of discovery and appraisal will be over. I'll be surprised if there's a fourth anniversary post in a year.

In front of framed Bjork print, Analogue Gallery, 2016. Photo by Steve Stober

In front of framed Patti Smith print, Analogue Gallery, April 2017

One of the milestones of the last year or two was my decision to enter my work in a juried competition and see what happens. In late 2015 I entered five shots into the Sound Image show at Analogue Gallery, a Toronto photo gallery that specialized in music photography. My portrait of Bjork made the cut so, when the next Sound Image show was announced after Analogue moved its premises, I sent in another five entries.

My Patti Smith portrait made the cut, and to my surprise won the Photographer's Choice award this year, which felt very gratifying. Neither print sold, however, which reminded me of something I learned over twenty years ago: Gallery shows are mostly pointless. The walls of our house are full of framed prints from gallery shows I've done since the early '90s, and I can count my sales from all of them on one finger.

Steve Lacy print, ready to mail, Dec. 2016

Montana print, framed, 2016

Which doesn't mean I haven't sold any photos. Far from it - thanks to this blog I've managed to sell a few prints, which is a big ego boost (and far more economical than shouldering the expense of printing and framing without a guarantee of a sale.) I should probably try and think of a way to sell prints more aggressively online, and maybe I will, but I do know that it will take a lot to convince me to do a gallery show again.

I've also returned to something I haven't done in at least twenty years - band photography. It began with a Facebook message from Joel Wasson, an old friend and compatriot from the Toronto music scene. He'd done something really remarkable and basically grown his own rhythm section - he'd started a punk band with two of his sons and wanted me to take the album and publicity photos.

I met Joel at Ian Blurton's studio in the Portlands and headed out for an hour of shooting in the August sun. There were a few shots I liked, but my favorite was the one at the top, shot by the entrance of the go-kart track just down the street from Ian's studio. In my mind, this would have been a fantastic picture sleeve for a 45, but people don't do that sort of thing much anymore. It was a pleasure working with Joel who, bless him, was the first person to actually bother to ask if I wanted to shoot their band in ages.

The biggest coup of the last year was getting a photo in the New Yorker, at least judging by the reaction when I announced it. It would never have happened without this blog, but I was loathe to tell anyone it was happening until the issue was in my hands, as this was the second time the magazine had wanted to use one of my photos.

Thea Traff, a photo editor at the New Yorker, had contacted me about a year previous about using one of my Spalding Gray photos but it had fallen through. She e-mailed me very soon after my Jay McInerney post had gone up, and after an anxious wait told me that she was pretty sure my shot had made the cut. I'd thought the McInerney shots looked like they belonged in a magazine like the New Yorker when I shot them; I only had to wait thirty years for it to happen.

A highlight of the year was Seth's Dominion, a graphic autobiography published by Drawn & Quarterly to go with a documentary on my old friend, the comic book artist Seth. My very Irving Penn-esque portrait of Seth with Chester Brown and Joe Matt has always been one of my favorite shots, and after the contact sheets from that shoot ended up forming a two-page spread in D&Q's 25th anniversary book, Seth asked if he could use one of the better frames in his new book.

As the project grew, a portrait I'd taken of Seth and his then-fiancée Tanya was added, as well as the wedding photos I'd shot for them. I was happy to help Seth out with the book, though everyone involved was shocked when the print run ended up stranded at sea in a container when the shipping line that was bringing it back from the printers went bankrupt.

Another big project this year was a set of photos for Natalie Merchant's career retrospective box set. It was another job that wouldn't have happened without the blog, and I spent several long nights scanning and re-scanning my portraits of Natalie, taken for the National Post almost twenty years ago, to get them to the quality she wanted for the package.

There's another box set I'm very excited about working on, but I don't have a finished product to show yet, so it'll have to wait, perhaps for that fourth anniversary post.

While I was hanging around Ian Blurton's studio with Joel and his sons, Ian asked if I'd be available to shoot a reunion of his old band, Change of Heart, for some shows organized around the 25th anniversary reissue of the band's most ambitious album, Smile. I met Ian and the core band who made that record (bassist Rob Taylor, keyboardist Bernard Maiezza and drummer Glenn Milchem) at his studio and after shooting inside, we headed out into the inclement April weather and the same go-kart track where I'd shot The Discarded.

The band ended up using the shot I did there with a fisheye lens, but my favorite was the one just beneath it, deep in the building's basement by the freight elevator. I can see why they might not have thought it the best choice for a publicity shot, but I can't help but like it as a portrait of four men I've known on and off for over three decades. I've since worked with Ian on another project, but the results of that collaboration will probably have to wait for that putative fourth anniversary post.

It's been a great year. I've traveled to some great places, worked with people I like and taken photos I'm proud to show here. There's some good stuff coming up just over the horizon, God willing, and I'm cautiously hopeful that, once I've exhausted my stock of old photos in my archives, I might continue to showcase what I'm still in the habit of referring to sarcastically as my career's "second act."

Selfie at Calgary Stampede with cowboy hat, July 2017

West

Train Station, Banff, Alberta

CROSSING THE CANADIAN ROCKIES FOR THE FIRST TIME was probably a bigger deal than it should have been. Nonetheless, I was over fifty when I finally managed it earlier this month, on a travel junket to take the Rocky Mountaineer luxury train from Vancouver to Banff. It's a trip that it seems most Canadian have wanted to take, and I was lucky to do it for work.

I love trains. They're the perfect balance between a car and a plane - you get to cover distances and see the sights while someone else does the driving and navigating. Taking a train with a gourmet kitchen and a glass-domed roof enhances this comparative advantage, of course, and it goes without saying that I took a lot of pictures.

Vancouver, BC

As a city, Vancouver is often described by Canadians as the anti-Toronto - coastal and laid-back instead of lakeside and work-obsessed. That might have been true at one point, but both cities have been experiencing real estate booms for so long that their differences have been minimized; making the money to afford to live there has become enough of a common endeavor that I imagine Vancouverites need to get a glimpse of the mountains every now and then to remember where they are.

I didn't get to see a lot of the town apart from a couple of walks down to the water from my hotel, but my travel media status did get me out onto the roof of the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver to photograph the skyline from behind the magnificent carved gargoyles that have been brooding over the town for over seventy years.

Nancy Lanthier, Vancouver Art Gallery

If you've read this blog regularly, you'll know that I got my start as a photographer thanks to Nerve magazine, a ragged little music monthly published by the couple I usually referred to as the aggregate "Dave and Nancy." The end of Dave and Nancy also meant the end of Nerve, and Nancy eventually made her way to Vancouver. I hadn't seen her for years so when I knew I'd be passing through town I had to get together with her again.

While I feel older, grayer and fatter, Nancy didn't seem to have changed at all - still lovely, and full of the same enthusiasm and curiosity that have always made her so charming. We met in the hotel lobby and drank beer on the patio of the Vancouver Art Gallery next door, where I took a quick portrait of Nancy amidst the columns and umbrellas.

Alex Waterhouse-Hayward in his Kitsilano studio

An afternoon free also gave me a chance to meet someone whose work has been inspiring not only to my photography but to this blog in particular. When I started scanning my old photos and putting them online almost three years ago, Alex Waterhouse-Hayward's long-running website was the best model for this kind of thing I'd ever seen, so I had to ask if he had an hour or two free when I passed through his (adopted) hometown.

Alex began working as a professional over a decade before I did, and got to experience ten more years of what was probably editorial photography's last golden era. We talked about that, among other things, at his home in Kitsilano, where he and his wife Rosemary were kind enough to invite me for coffee and pastry. At the end of my visit he took me out to his studio, where I asked him if he'd sit for a quick portrait; I shot him looking back through the door of his shooting space to the filing cabinets where he keeps his work meticulously archived.

Rocky Mountains, British Columbia

Shooting from a moving train requires a steep learning curve; a steady hand isn't as important as timing - getting your camera out and ready when a new vista sweeps into view, and keeping one eye open for the break in the trees to get an unobstructed frame. There was a lot to shoot, and I had to suppress my street photographer's aversion to the scenic with the justification that I rarely get to photograph anything really spectacular, so it was time to relax into the picture postcard majesty of it all.

Railyard workshop, Kamloops, BC

Lake Louise, Banff National Park, Alberta

I felt much more at home in the Kamloops railyard where the Rocky Mountaineer services their trains - a step off the beaten tourist path that I'd requested to see as part of my story on the effort and logistics that go into a luxury train. We also made a quick trip to Lake Louise after reaching Banff - one of the most iconic locations in Canada, and one that I perversely responded to with this photo of a stone wall buried in late winter snow.

Fenland Trail, Banff, Alberta

After two days on a crowded train I had an urge to escape crowds, so with an afternoon free I took a short hike on the Fenland Trail just outside Banff. Our host in the town helpfully told me that the recent grizzly warning for the trail had been taken down, so I got to enjoy the crisp, pine-scented air with only the slightest terror of predatory wildlife. We ended the evening of our final day in the mountains overlooking the town; I shot some scenic vistas, to be sure, but inevitably my eye was drawn to something a bit more man-made.

Sulfur Mountain, Banff, Alberta

Chris Buck: Uneasy

Chris Buck, Toronto, Sept. 2016

MY FRIEND CHRIS HAS PUBLISHED A COLLECTION OF HIS PORTRAITS. Uneasy: Portraits 1986-2016 is, as the title states, thirty years of his best portrait work. It came out last month, is huge and very expensive to ship, and might be one of my favorite photo books ever.

Twenty-seven years ago, when he was about to move to New York City from Toronto, I sat down with Chris in the basement of his parents' house in Etobicoke and interviewed him about his career so far, and what he wanted to accomplish with this very big, risky move. Part of that interview has been excerpted on the dust jacket of Uneasy.

A year and a half ago, when he was still working on the book, I sat down with him again for another interview and photo session. Here are the best bits from over an hour of talking about portraits, careers, family, digital photography, money and strippers.

Chris Buck, Etobicoke, 1990

ME: So, looking back, was moving to New York a good decision?

CHRIS: It was probably the most important one I ever made. The most important thing is that it took me out of the environment where I grew up. Being here in Toronto now is very pleasant and very livable but for whatever reason, whatever childhood trauma, leaving was very liberating. Getting away from my peers, my family, as much as I love them, was good for me psychologically. 

It's not that I remade myself in New York. It's that in Toronto, people perceived me the way I was when I was 12 or 14. In New York I could be me at 26, a grownup, having my wits about me and some sense of confidence, a man and not a boy. All these things I didn't feel when I was in Toronto, whether it was the local music scene or my peers from high school or middle school. I would recommend it.

For work opportunities it was the big pond - still is the big pond in most ways. That afforded me opportunities and access that I wouldn't have had here. For one, access to top cultural and entertainment figures for subjects. The magazines - I wanted to work for magazines at the time - that was where all the magazines were. But most importantly in New York I was among the best of the best. It put me in that environment where I had to rise to compete. That was challenging but was really good for me.

George W. Bush by Chris Buck, 1999

ME: You've shot three presidents. (Four, by the time Uneasy finally came out.) Did that help make your reputation as a portrait photographer?

CHRIS: I photographed W first, then his father ten years later, then I did my shot with Obama three years after that, and the shoot with Obama was the turning point in the way you're talking about. W was not president when I shot him, and he was so hated by everyone who mattered in my business that putting him in my portfolio was actually a negative. George HW Bush has become more respected in recent years, and certainly sitting with a sitting president who was as iconic as Obama...Getting him in a way made the other two significant. 

Now I've shot three presidents. With Obama it wasn't just doing a sitting with him as doing a portrait that looked like my work. I was kind of walking on air for six months. The shoot itself was pretty amazing and I'm proud of myself for the way I handled it in, like, four minutes. In many ways it felt like, in the 25 years I was working up till that point, everything I learned was used in that shoot.

Newsweek, portrait of Michele Bachmann by Chris Buck, 2011

ME: I think your portrait of Michele Bachmann was a real game changer for you. It was identifiably your portrait and it became a news story and a social media phenomenon. How much did it affect your career?

CHRIS: Only in retrospect, years later, did that became an iconic cover, and because of that I got seen as a great cover photographer. Six months later I started getting covers. The person on that cover was an A-list person. What had happened to me in the past was I'd be shooting the inside story people, not the A-list people. So what's ended up happening in the last five years ago is that half of the celebrities I shoot are household names - my last shoot was Trump. I did Yo-Yo Ma, Kendrick Lamar. 

I was either shooting people on their way up or their way down. Now I'm shooting people at their peak. One of my wishes was - I said this in an interview I did six or seven years ago - that I wanted to make Chris Buck portraits with A-list people. I don't always achieve it, but I do often enough to make it worthwhile.

The funny thing about that picture that you'll appreciate - a lot of people were criticizing and commenting on the picture, because some people were criticizing me, and others were defending me by saying that I didn't choose the picture, the magazine did. But of course you look at it and say "That's a Chris Buck picture." And the funny thing is that I've handed in a lot of pictures like that over the years - they just don't run!

Nick Offerman by Chris Buck, 2013

ME: Back when we were starting out we used to make fun of the high concept shoots that were done by people like Annie Liebovitz, but I noticed that after you moved to New York your own work started to take on a conceptual edge that I guess it didn't have when we were both poor and inexperienced and just trying to get a good shot. How did that happen?

CHRIS: You're right. There are certain pictures of mine that make me think 'this looks like Annie Liebovitz.' And I think it goes back to our criticism of Liebovitz, which was a kind of literalism. My conceptual pictures, when they were effective, do not have that. They're hinting at something, or they're creating a mood, or there's a prop that's suggesting something contextually. It's not this thing where Bette Midler is lying in a bed of roses, or the Blues Brothers with blue paint on their faces. I think her stuff got better later on, but there is an aspect of a literal narrative, and the complete story is there. I try not to do that. I try to have it more open ended or suggestive. Ideally I like to have some aspect of ambiguity or mystery to it. 

But part of that is the marketplace. I remember doing a meeting at Esquire, and the art director saying to me "We want our own David LaChappelle and maybe you're it. Do you think you can be that guy?" And I don't know what I said, maybe I tried to change the subject, but I didn't say no. I wanted an opportunity, but I wasn't going to embrace something I didn't want to be. LaChappelle to me was the wrong direction for portraiture, all about the show, very garish, bright colours. 

I think that having photo editors wanting to go in that direction - there was something we discussed at the time, but in terms of how I would shoot and edit, and how my editors would choose different images than me, had to do with, we were thinking about what would look good in a photo book, what would look good on your wall. Versus their "what will look good after you turn the page in your magazine." And I think that the LaChappelle images jump off the page. They're dynamic, and people get them. There's a lot of people who are obsessed with platforms like Instagram eroding the value of our profession as photographers, but people like LaChappelle show that that really can't happen

Yes, some Instagram photographers will become more serious photographers because that will be their entryway, but most won't, because they won't set up scenarios, they won't learn lighting. Lighting takes time even if you have a knack for it. I prefer the more simple portraits, even the kind of portraits that I don't do particularly well, like Wolfgang Tillmans' portraits, or Catherine Opie's portraits, that are often just a simple shot of a person in a space by a wall where there's nothing happening, but you know as a photographer that they shot a ton to get to that photo; it feels psychological but there's nothing you can pinpoint that's actually happening. I've done those pictures, but they're very difficult to do.

Robert De Niro, from the Presence series, by Chris Buck

ME: Your Presence series, which you collected in a book, was really important to me because it seemed like a reaction to the way we once used to obsess about getting access to celebrity subjects, and how frustrating it was to deal with managers and handlers and publicists. You were getting that access and then taking pictures where the celebrity was in the shot, but not visible.

CHRIS: It's saying, right, you know what? Fuck you! You're not going to be visible. But it's also, and that's where the title comes from, you've got Robert DeNiro. All you need is the name. You don't need to show him. That picture is instilled with Robert DeNironess, because his name is next to it and there's proof he's there. Their essence makes the picture cool, and that is celebrity portraiture, right? This is a picture of David Lynch. Cool. A lot of my friends who knew my work were like, "this is the ultimate Chris Buck portrait." It's dry, it's witty, it's a celebrity, but you've filtered out the noise; their face is not necessary. Their name and your name is enough.

I'm not a conceptual fine artist. I find work like that, when it's funny and it's inviting, I like conceptual work that is high concept like that. In the way that John Cage's work is - there's a playfulness to what he does.

ME: It's sort of like that book was your 4'33".

CHRIS: Exactly. But I needed to put them in the picture to ground it, which I know is strange. Putting them in there and then showing proof was a way of saying this isn't just a concept, this is actually a thing. This is real.

Billy Joel by Chris Buck, 2001

ME: What's the default you go to when you get a portrait assignment? What would you do, knowing that you'd deliver something, no matter what? What's the common thread linking all your photos?

CHRIS: Usually there's some kind of prop, there's some vague sense of awkwardness and an off moment. I wouldn't say it's an in-between moment. It's a real moment, but it's a kind of awkward moment - that's where I go. And it usually involves interacting with a physical space or an object. I use that to get people to come along on this ride with me, to get into the role. It gives them something to bounce off. It helps them move from "Oh, I'm having my picture taken."

A lot of getting that unusual picture is kind of believing in it and wanting it, and being ready, suspending disbelief for yourself first. Of course, more than half the time they'll say no, but if you try all the time you'll get those pictures.

Chris Buck, Toronto, Sept. 2016

ME: What's next for you? After the book, what are you really excited about doing next?

CHRIS: You always feel like, as much as you're proud of things you've done as you get older - and you forget how you failed - you have to feel like what you could do next is going to be the best thing that you do. What makes me excited about the Gentlemen's Club series (a series of portraits of the husbands and boyfriends of strippers) is that it's such a good idea. When I was first talking about it, people were really confused by it: Stripper's boyfriends? Why stripper's boyfriends. But then I asked them if they wanted to see some of them, and they said yeah - who are these guys? I wanna see! 

There's so many things about them that are interesting, but the more I'm doing it the more I'm seeing the self-portrait aspect, seeing how much I'm connecting to them that I didn't really know initially. And how much I'm liking them. And how much they're self-portraits again. I was thinking the other day - "Fuck! Self portraits again!"

ME: Why is that a problem?

CHRIS: I was curious about someone I don't know that's two steps removed from a world I might be in. I might go to a strip club and watch a girl dance, but I'm not going to be friends or be social with this dancer. I'll have a professional interaction but I'm not going to go past that. Secondly, their romantic partner, I'm not going to have a connection with them. I'm getting close to what I want (with the series) but I'm not there yet. If I can make my best portraits ever with this series, then this could be the most important work I do. They're not celebrities. I realized when I was doing the (Hewlett Packard ad) series, if you can do a strong image that's not a celebrity, it has more power than a great picture of a celebrity.

If you can make a picture that has universal appeal that doesn't rely on that, you're moving into the area of a W. Eugene Smith. Something iconic. This is a photograph for the ages. This is a photograph that will be powerful. And if I can make a picture of this guy and not tell you what the context is, and you say "This is a weird picture. This is cool. Who is this guy?" If I can do that, I've hit the mark.

Chris Buck

Chris Buck, Parkdale, Oct. 1989

IT'S MY FRIEND CHRIS BUCK'S BIRTHDAY TODAY, and in keeping with a tradition at this blog, I'm posting some more photos of him. As I wrote in the first birthday post, Chris was my subject more than anyone else in our early years as photographers, and I have this surplus of photos of him, back when we were under the influence (of Irving Penn.)

The shot at the top was taken in my Parkdale loft not long after we moved in, after I'd bought my first roll of white seamless paper and a set of strobes and started trying to figure out high-key lighting. If it looks like an album cover shoot outtake, that's probably because a lot of the photography I looked at was on record jackets and CD booklets; at this point in my career getting my work on an album sleeve was a cherished ambition.

I suppose you'd call this sort of pose "mock heroic." we tried on a lot of poses while shooting each other for our lighting and film tests; just how heroic or mocking we looked was usually a hit and miss matter.

Chris Buck, Toronto, Sept. 1988

This shot was taken a year earlier, in the hallway of a hotel (I'm guessing the Park Plaza, now the Park Hyatt) while Chris and I waited around to shoot actors and directors at the film festival. A pretty smoldering look, don't you think? It didn't have anything to do with me.

Chris Buck, Parkdale, Oct. 1989

Back in my Parkdale studio again, and another shot from the same session that produced the photo at the top. These were attempts to solve two problems - capturing action, and copying the look of Robert Longo's "Men in the Cities" series. I was a big fan of Longo at the time, and knew that this series of drawings had begun with photos he took on the roof of his New York City apartment, and I wanted to see if I could catch the halfway point - photos that looked more like the drawings.

What can I say - it was the '80s.

Chris Buck, Toronto, Sept. 2015

The final shot is more recent - part of a portrait session we did last year to go with an interview I made with Chris (still unpublished.) He was in town for a job, staying at an Airbnb in the east end, and I sat down with him for an hour-long chat, inspired mostly by a similar interview we did twenty-five years earlier, just before Chris moved to New York City.

After the interview and shoot, Chris and I went for lunch and he showed me his rough edit of photos for Uneasy, the retrospective collection of his portraits that he's publishing later this year. His Kickstarter for the project did very well, and after teasing us with a book of portraits of invisible celebrities, we'll finally get a chance to see the best of Chris' portrait work collected in one place.

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.