Still Lifes: Deck Garden

Italian eggplants, Macdonell Ave. Toronto, 2000

IN 1999 I MOVED OUT OF THE PARKDALE LOFT I'D LIVED IN FOR MORE THAN A DECADE. I lost the darkroom and studio I'd relied on for so much work, but the consolation prize was that my girlfriend (now wife) and I had a rooftop deck - outside space I hadn't had anywhere I'd lived since moving out of my mother's house. Our container garden on the deck was pretty modest for the first year (see photo below) but by the second year we were getting ambitious, growing tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, lettuce and tomatillos in addition to herbs and flowers.

Deck garden, Macdonell Ave., spring 1999

At around the same time, a monograph was published in the UK - Plant Kingdoms: The Photographs of Charles Jones - that inspired me to do a new round of still life work, mostly using subjects we were growing in our container garden on the deck. Jones' story was a preview of what would happen a few years later with Vivian Maier - an unknown amateur photographer (born in Wolverhampton in 1866; died in Lincolnshire in 1959) whose life work was discovered by a photograph collector in a flea market in Bermondsey in 1981. Jones had spent his life working as a professional gardener on private estates, photographing the products of his labours and, possibly, offering his services to document the work of other gardeners.

Charles Jones, Beet Globe, 1895-1910

The trunk of prints was all that was left of Jones' work; later, a granddaughter would recall him using his glass plate negatives to make cloches for young plants. I was already a big fan of the still life work of photographers like Karl Blossfeldt, Josef Sudek and (naturally) Irving Penn, but discovering the Jones monograph gave me a whole new wave of inspiration at a time when my main business - editorial photography - was contracting, and I needed a reason to take out my cameras and shoot.

Poppy bud, Macdonell Ave., Toronto, 2000

Chinese eggplant, Macdonell Ave., Toronto, 2000

Pickling cucumber, Macdonell Ave., Toronto, 2000

With no more access to a studio, I mostly shot on the deck, or by a small window in the kitchen of our flat in the Victorian house around the corner from my old loft. I occasionally pulled out my strobes, but mostly I shot with available light and a bunch of home made light modifiers, using a collection of backdrops - handmade Japanese paper, a tabletop I'd made from old weathered barn boards - I'd built up over the years in my old studio.

I did almost all the work on a Rolleiflex with a close-up filter and a tripod, carefully racking back and forth the focus knob to find the sweet spot in the very narrow depth of field this set-up involved. I might have hoped that I could turn all of this into portfolio work - I've written before that I was trying to break into the food and lifestyle market, the only one that seemed to be thriving at the time - but I'm pretty certain almost nobody has seen any of this work until now.

Long peppers, Macdonell Ave., Toronto, 2000

Chinese round mauve eggplant, Macdonell Ave., Toronto, 2000

Italian eggplant, Macdonell Ave., Toronto, 2000

French breakfast radishes, Macdonell Ave., Toronto, 2000

I spent most of 2000 shooting still lifes out on the deck, using what we were growing almost all of the time, occasionally drafting in something we'd bought in the market around the corner when there was nothing to harvest. My fiancee grew up in the country and had tended little garden plots when her rental had a backyard, but I hadn't grown anything in dirt since I was a boy. Taking these photos was exciting, but so was growing our own food out on the deck - a hobby we'd abandon briefly when our next flat came without any outside space, but returned to enthusiastically when we bought a house with a backyard from an Italian widow who gardened seriously.

I remember carefully watching as things grew, planning the shots I'd take as things ripened and started to bloom. I have a very strong memory of these French breakfast radishes, harvested in late spring and photographed with the potting soil still on them. We'd slice them up for a salad a few minutes later; I hope we used the tops as well - they're peppery and a little bitter, and give some depth to a bowl of greens when you don't have any dandelion or chicory to mix in with the romaine.

Still Life

Still life, Parkdale, 1998

A FEW MONTHS BEFORE WE HAD TO MOVE OUT OF MY PARKDALE STUDIO, my then-girlfriend (now wife) and I set up my strobe lights to do a series of still lifes. My reasoning - or excuse - was that I wanted to try to get work shooting for the food and lifestyle magazines that seemed to be beating the trends and thriving in an otherwise struggling publishing market. (Food and lifestyle still manages to hold on to this day, for reasons I've never understood.)

I'd been collecting handmade papers and other bits and pieces for a while, finding the best stuff in the markets and herbal medicine stores in Chinatown. With Kay acting as my prop stylist, pulling things from her own wardrobe and the stamp collection she'd begun as a kid, we worked for a couple of days shooting the sort of tabletop work that I would have loved to have been assigned.

Still life, Parkdale, 1998

I obviously had a thing for dried fish. I loved the look of them on their own, but it was Kay's idea to have them pouring out of her old pearl-covered clutch purse, and to add the '30s vintage Canadian royal family stamps (that's Lilibet and Margaret and their dad, for fans of The Crown) that makes those shots look like some sort of strange letter. The shot with my grandfather's old hammer and the cloves just suggested itself as we were standing around looking for one more setup.

I had more fun doing this work than almost anything I can remember shooting in the studio. I would have happily spent the rest of my career doing weird still lifes for cooking magazines, but the fact that these twenty year old photos remain an isolated creative moment in my career is evidence how that didn't ever happen. One day, perhaps, when my knees have gone and my mobility is shot, I'll find a space to do work like this until my eyes give out.

Still life, Parkdale, 1998

Pyrex

My mother's Pyrex bowls, Parkdale, 1998

THESE PYREX BOWLS BELONGED TO MY MOTHER. They usually sit in a glass-fronted cupboard in our kitchen. We don't use them much, mostly because I'm afraid they might get damaged or broken.

I don't have many of my mother's things. There wasn't much, in the end, once we'd sold the house. There are a bunch of photos and negatives, some letters my dad wrote to her during the war, a few envelopes of paperwork, these bowls and a wooden spoon.

My mother's wooden spoon, Parkdale, 1994

It's the bowls and the spoon that remind me most of her. She wasn't the world's greatest cook, though my sister says that she was much better when she was healthier, before I was born. I mostly remember her using these for baking - the odd cake and a lot of pies, apple mostly, and rhubarb. I remember the ringing sound of her electric mixer grinding against the bottom of the bowls while she made batter.

She'd been gone for a decade when I took these out from under the sink in my Parkdale studio to photograph them as part of a still life project I did, in the final months we lived in the place. Pyrex had become fashionable and collectible, thanks mostly to Martha Stewart, and I had a simple and pleasing composition in mind, perhaps something I could put in my portfolio to scare up work at the lifestyle magazines.

My mother's Pyrex bowls, Parkdale, 1998

I shot them in clean, bright high key light, sitting on my favorite tabletop setting - three barn board planks I'd bought from an antique shop down the street and screwed together. I'd shot the spoon four years earlier on the same weathered wood; I still have it today, leaning against the basement wall, gathering dust behind the furnace.

Working with my girlfriend (now wife,) we set-dressed them simply with a big ripe lemon and some blood oranges in their wax paper wrapping. I love the way the light makes the Pyrex glass glow from within. I'll probably leave them to one of my daughters one day, but I'll probably put off deciding who gets them for as long as possible. I'd hate it if they got split up after all this time.

My mother's Pyrex bowls, Parkdale, 1998

Auto Show

Ford unveiling, Media Day, Canadian International Auto Show, Toronto, Feb. 2018

SOME PEOPLE MEDITATE, TAKE LONG HIKES INTO THE WILDERNESS OR PRAY. I take pictures of cars. We all have our different ways of relaxing and finding our emotional and spiritual equilibrium. Which means, I suppose, that a car show is my idea of a pilgrimage.

I thought that last year would be my last one with accreditation for media day at the big auto show here in Toronto. I was resigned to having to take in the cars in the crush of regular ticket buyers later in the week, but I took a chance and applied for accreditation as myself, author of my social media and proprietor of this blog. To my great shock my request wasn't denied.

Media Day, Canadian International Auto Show, Toronto, Feb. 2018

The great advantage of media day is that the cars are all clean and new and detailed, free from fingerprints and the wear and tear of public display. And as long as you stay away from the crowd of writers, photographers, bloggers, vloggers, presenters and video crews, they can be framed in the camera viewfinder almost human-free and lit with the best that showroom lighting tech has to offer.

As ever, it's the concept cars and halo models and racetrack thoroughbreds that catch your eye. I remain enthralled by Ford's new GT, despite its demotion from centre stage to the performance division annex. But my real satori are the vintage autos, like the 1967 Mazda Cosmo pulled from some warehouse or private collection to help launch a new car with sporty ambitions, or the sheer madness of GM's Firebird III, plucked from their Motorama show and the '50s vision of the future.

Old cars are full of these gripping details, like the exuberantly overbuilt rear end of a Cadillac Eldorado coupe, or the broad gills on an E-Type or the tidier ones on a Shelby Cobra, set just above a braided set of exhaust pipes. This is high end car porn, and a reminder that I really need to get my license one day.

Media Day, Canadian International Auto Show, Toronto, Feb. 2018

Restaurants

Flowers & vase, Toronto, Oct. 1995

ONE OF THE BIGGEST PARTS OF MY JOB AT NOW MAGAZINE - alongside thankless tasks like shooting local theatre and live music - was illustrating our weekly restaurant reviews. The food section is a staple of any free weekly, and reviews by our resident restaurant critics - first Byron Ayanoglu, then the late Steven Davey - were at the core of the paper, up there with the live music listings and personal classifieds.

As with any regular gig, though, it can get tired fast. Portraits of chefs in their whites can start to look the same after a while, and photographing food in black and white is a brutal challenge that no one wants to take on every week. After a few years of struggling with shooting the restaurant section, I hit on triptychs. I wasn't the first person to shoot triptychs at NOW, but once I started making them I couldn't stop. (Something else I can blame on my Catholic upbringing - altar pieces are usually in triptych form, and don't forget the Holy Trinity.)

Restaurants, Toronto, 1994-1998

I might still try to shoot a portrait of a chef or a server, but that didn't have to carry the weight of illustrating the story, which I could fill in with still lifes of table settings or details of the restaurant interior. I found my best shots in the kitchen, though, among the prepped ingredients and chef's tools. As fancy as a restaurant might be, the kitchen always presented a pleasing contrast - everything spare and utilitarian and well-used.

Restaurants, Toronto, 1994-1998

I had my obsessions as well - chairs and tables and the tanks where live seafood was kept, especially in Chinatown. A lot of money was spent on restaurant interiors - money I knew would barely get recouped if the place managed to survive till the time came to renew the lease. Most of the places I photographed are gone now, victims of the churn and pitiless economics of the business.

Restaurants, Toronto, 1994-1998

I was eternally grateful to Irene Grainger, our photo editor, who made it possible for us to experiment with things like triptychs and - for me especially - restaurant still-lifes that were almost abstract. My food section triptychs became a highlight of my work at NOW, so much so that when they arranged a group show for the paper's photographers to celebrate its fifteenth anniversary, I (perversely) ignored my portraits entirely and set up a display of my triptychs, framed in heavy arts and crafts style wooden frames and hung salon style on the gallery wall.

As with every other gallery show I've ever done, none of them sold, and with the exception of one I traded with my sister for money to cover my rent one tough month, I still have them all.

Selfie at Gold Stone Noodle, Chinatown, 1996

Burke & James 4x5

IT WAS PROBABLY THE RED LEATHER BELLOWS THAT GOT ME. I wasn't in the market for a view camera at the turn of the '90s, but the Burke & James with the gray painted wood, probably built before I was born, was hard to miss among the used equipment at the back of the camera store on Queen Street East. It was an impulse purchase, but the focusing screen was cracked and it was cheap - and it had that fantastic red bellows.

As I said in an earlier post, film technology was in its mature stage when I started my career, so you could use gear built decades earlier. View cameras were really the first cameras, mostly unchanged for a century. In the decade after Richard Avedon used a Deardorff to shoot his American West series, they were being returned to use by portrait shooters after decades as the landscape photographer's camera of choice.

James Tenney, Parkdale, 1991

Lowest of the Low, Parkdale,1993

I didn't go to school for photography, so I guess I was drawn to the challenge of learning to use a whole new type of camera. I was also a budding Luddite, intent on going into full reverse through the decades for inspiration, so it was probably inevitable that I'd be drawn to this horse and carriage of a camera.

My first shoot with the Burke & James saw me make a classic rookie mistake, failing to compensate for the image circle on my Ilex 165mm/6.3 lens when I'd tilted the lens plane to get the focus shift with my portrait of composer James Tenney. I didn't see the ring of light drop off on the focusing glass at the back of the camera, and wouldn't until the film came back from the developer. A dumb mistake, to be sure, but I didn't really mind it that much then, and have come to like it even more now.

I'd finally figured out lens coverage and tilt shift by the time I shot local band Lowest of the Low in my new, dedicated studio space after my last roommate moved out. Effects like this were precisely why I'd bought the Burke & James, and why I persevered with the technical challenges of shooting with a view camera, prime among which was the mathematical formula required to figure out exposure compensation with the long bellows draw - the distance light had to travel from the lens to the film plane when you shot focused at anything less than infinity. The view camera forced you to work slowly and methodically, taking just a few exposures and planning out compositions carefully beforehand.

Which is why it was such a great camera for still life work. It got used most of all when I shot my fruit and veg series throughout the decade, and this shot of a bundle of leeks was probably the first (and only) photo I ever sold off the wall at a solo photo show - to the chef/owner of the restaurant that hosted the show.

The apple still life was also in that show, and remains a personal favorite. When I saw this bright green Granny Smith glowing and blurred on the ground glass of the camera I froze; racking back and forth, it always looked better out of focus than sharp, an echo - in my mind at least - of the Apple Records LP labels I remembered in my older siblings' record collections. I still have that framed 30" x 40" inch framed print today, hanging in our living room.

Leeks, Parkdale, 1995

Apple, Parkdale, 1995

I never used the Burke & James as much as I would have liked. It never left the studio, and only got used for portrait work on those rare occasions when I had the luxury of time and pre-planning. The ultimate workout for the camera - and test of my technical ability - came when I was assigned to shoot the drummer and conga player of a local band for the cover of one of NOW's music supplements.

I sketched the shot out ahead of time and, while I did use my Bronica to shoot back-ups in case it didn't work out, the real work was done with the Burke & James. The final shot threw in everything - corrected and uncorrected strobe and tungsten light, flash and burn, tilt shift focus and even diffusion, helpfully provided by stage smoke that came in aerosol cans. The only unplanned part of the shot was the detail that really makes it - the oval corona of lens flare that radiates out from the cymbal like a sound wave. I didn't see that until the film came back from the lab.

Percussionists, Parkdale, 1994

I don't think I'd looked inside the camera's case for at least a decade, until I opened it last weekend to shoot it for this post. Everything was just as I left it, including a half-finished box of Polaroids, the film holders, a tape measure for measuring bellows draw, my notebook for exposure calculation and the dark cloth I had sewn up by the tailor across the street from my studio - the same one who made my bespoke trousers.

It's unlikely I'll get rid of the Burke & James - I'm too sentimental - but of all my old cameras, this is the one that still feels like it holds some untapped potential. You can still buy sheet film, and while a digital back would easily slip into the film stage of a view camera, the technical challenges and sheer expense of manufacturing such a thing means that it's unlikely that anyone will ever offer one for sale.

And while you can roughly approximate tilt shift focus in Photoshop, the Burke & James still offers unique creative possibilities impossible with any other digital camera. I can imagine struggling to load those film backs again one day. I might even get the cracked focusing screen fixed.