David

David Cronenberg, Toronto, May 1990

THIS PHOTO IS FROM THE FIRST SHOOT I did with David Cronenberg, back in 1990 when the onetime director of cheapie horror flicks like Rabid and The Brood had graduated to big budget sci-fi creep-outs like The Fly and from there to disturbing art house hits like Dead Ringers. He was between pictures, so Country Estate magazine had loaned him a Corvette convertible to drive around and write about, and assigned me to take the pictures for the story.

Until last week, I was sure this shoot had been lost - never returned to me and tossed in a dumpster when Country Estate went under along with half of my clients during the recession at the turn of the '90s. I found it again, tucked in an envelope in a box full of other missing shoots, and for a moment I was overcome with pure elation - until I remembered all the other negs and slides I've been hunting for all summer. Well, at least I know where they aren't.

It looks very period to me; there's the car, of course, and Cronenberg's glasses and blousey leather jacket, but also the quality of the light - especially the warming filter (an 81A, I'm sure) that made its way into every photographer's kit and was considered essential to getting an appropriately burnished, luxurious tone. Nothing original, really, but I'm sure at this stage in my career I was happy to produce something that at least met the industry standard.

Shooting David Cronenberg and C4 Corvette, May 1990.

Here's a rare shot of me working, taken by whoever assisted me that day. I thought it was Chris Buck, but he says he doesn't remember a Cronenberg shoot; I couldn't afford paid assistants back then, so it was probably another photographer friend - possibly Michael Ventruscolo. (More about him later.) In any case, Chris would get his chance to shoot Cronenberg a few years later.

Not that there was a lot to assist with, as you can see: the 'Vette is parked on the beach at Sunnyside, near my Parkdale studio, and I'm shooting with my Bronica SQa with a rented wide angle lens, using a Metz potato masher and a Speedotron battery pack to bring down the background just enough to make the low clouds behind Cronenberg more ominous.

All my assistant had to do was load my film backs and hand them to me. (And take this photo, of course. Thanks again, man - whoever you were.)

David Cronenberg at Naked Lunch press conference, Toronto 1991

I photographed Cronenberg again a year later, on assignment for NOW magazine. He was directing his adaptation of Naked Lunch, and the producers had arranged a press conference on the set with Cronenberg, star Peter Weller and William S. Burroughs, writer of the original book and the principal quarry of my assignment. (More on him later.)

The main sets were on the grounds of the derelict Canadian General Electric factory just south of where I live today. Still unsure if I was getting any time with Burroughs, I shot a couple of rolls of the press conference, and came away with the shot above.

When I started this blog, I made a vow to myself that I'd never include photos from press conferences. I've shot a few, to be sure, but like so much live concert photography, there's almost nothing you'll get at one that a hundred other idiots with a decent lens won't get. I've made an exception here, and probably will again, but I don't think my prejudices are incorrect.

It's an alright photo, but only that. It's a copy print made for publication - probably for Edna Suarez at the Village Voice, who ordered reprints from the shoot according to the big ledger. I sure as hell liked my dense blacks in the darkroom back in the early '90s.

David Cronenberg, Toronto Sept. 9, 2005

It would be almost another decade and a half before I photographed Cronenberg again, on the other side of the analog wall. This was shot for the free national daily on the paper's own Canon EOS Rebel DSLR, with my own faithful standby 35mm/f2 lens, fully open. The metadata helpfully records that it was likely taken on the first day of the Toronto International Film Festival, where Cronenberg was screening his latest film, A History of Violence.

I had long since pared down my working kit to a single camera and a few lenses, but the advent of digital made it possible to wring more out of a decently-exposed image than I'd ever managed before. Excavating my film archives has given me a new appreciation for film photography, but even on a day when my old negatives have offered up some pleasant surprises, I'd still find it hard to deny that digital shots can be worked up to a satisfying result so much more simply.

This was shot in colour, of course, but I made this black and white version for a show that was hung a couple of years later on the walls of the Avenue restaurant in the old Four Seasons hotel. It's Cronenberg as Karloff - a very deliberate nod to the James Whale Universal horror films of the early '30s, and while neither subtle nor even particularly relevant to the director Cronenberg has become, I can't say that I care; I'm still very pleased with this portrait.

David Cronenberg, Toronto Sept. 9, 2007

I'd photograph Cronenberg again exactly two years later. The free national daily had upgraded the newsroom camera to a Canon 30D, but I was still using my beloved 35mm lens. It was the film festival again, and this time Cronenberg was there promoting Eastern Promises; he is, by this point, a very different director from the one who made Scanners, or even the one who sat on the beach between my camera and a Corvette.

As with the previous portrait, it's a testament to how squarely Cronenberg is willing to address the camera; there's nothing opaque about the expression in his eyes. (Please click on the image to see it full size.) I wasn't trying to make him look like a horror movie icon this time; I'd ticked that box two years before, and this time I just wanted to get a portrait of a man who makes uncomfortable films about uneasy minds and people on the far side of bad decisions.

Cronenberg is having a busy year; he has a new film out, and a novel. I doubt if I'll either see the former or read the latter. I've spent a long time with David Cronenberg and his work, and I know by now that it doesn't put my poor old mind in any kind of happy place.

   
   

Boo

THE PHOTO ABOVE WAS AN ACCIDENT, made when I forgot to flip a switch on my medium format camera when changing from Polaroid to film backs. When I rediscovered this shoot the other day, I remembered how fond I was of this frame - and how I always wished I had somewhere to publish it. Well, almost a quarter century later, I have a place.

It's also a preview of next week's big post, featuring a famous Canadian director who got his start in horror films. In the meantime, have a safe and happy Halloween.

Who are they?

THE MOST PROFOUND THING I EVER HEARD ANOTHER PHOTOGRAPHER SAY was Duane Michals, in the introduction to his collection of portraits: "There is no such thing as a bad celebrity portrait." It was proved to me again and again when I showed my portfolio to photo editors and art directors, who slowed when leafing past the pages featuring someone currently high on the celebrity index; they were usually the only photos I was ever asked to talk about.

By that simple measure I had might as well throw away two-thirds of my negatives and contact sheets. As a working photographer in a provincial city, working for dailies and newsweeklies and music magazines, I shot countless subjects who were either utterly obscure - regular people briefly put in the spotlight of a news cycle - or who worked in a business that gave them a flash of celebrity in at least a local context.

And so I have thousands of photos of actors and activists, theatre directors, chefs, wait staff, restaurant owners, politicians, lawyers, businesspeople, dancers and musicians - more of the last, probably, than anyone else. You have probably never have heard of them; many have since moved on to other, more obscure work. Some are dead.

Some time in the mid-'90s I stopped writing down names or dates on the sheets I used to store negatives in their binders. It might have been laziness, or simply a realization that it didn't matter much, as I rarely returned to most of these rolls of film to print them again after the assignment was handed in and the cheque cashed. The result is that, thanks to my lack of effort then and my lack of memory now, I have no idea who I photographed in at least half of the work behind my analog wall.

At the end of each month I'm going to pull out a shoot and feature a scan of one of these obscurities, provided the photo looks halfway interesting on the contact sheet or squinted at through my desk light. If someone recognizes themselves or someone they know, by all means leave a comment below.

Probably shot either in the fall of 1994 or the spring of 1995. I recognize the sculpture in the background as High Park. It's a band, perhaps one plying the gothic genre this city has always enjoyed. I don't want to be sexist and presume that she's the singer, but it's a fair bet.

The rest of the band were photographed singly or in pairs, with this desolate tree in the background; I was fond of creating diptychs and triptychs around this time - Catholic religious art making its influence known - and thankfully my editor at NOW was always able to carve out space on the page to run them.

There are raindrops on her coat. One of the band members is carrying an umbrella. I have fond memories of High Park as a child; I always enjoy shooting there.

The steel pyramid sculptures in the background aren't there any more; they've been restored by the artist and moved to another part of the city. There's nothing special about this photo.

Holly

Holly Hunter, Toronto, Sept. 1993

HOLLY HUNTER WAS AT THE FILM FESTIVAL promoting The Piano, which arrived with Oscar potential all over it. Today this would mean a cordon of publicists, brief round table interviews, select access for a few journalists, and photography restricted to sessions at the WIREimage suite. But 1993 was a long time ago.

It was an obvious cover, so when NOW gave me the assignment I showed up with my gear, to be confronted by the usual hotel room, only smaller; it could have been any of the festival hotels, but for some reason my intuition and the hint of a close room layout says it was the venerable old one - the Park Plaza (now Park Hyatt.)

I'm pretty sure Hunter had a hair and makeup person on hand, but they didn't do much that didn't involve a lipstick, foundation to dull skin highlights and a hair brush. Her hair looked great. And in case you're wondering, I did retouch the colour shot above, to a standard I couldn't have hoped to achieve in the pre-computer days of 1993.

Holly Hunter, Toronto, Sept. 1993

With the customary 7-10 minutes to work in, I decided to drill down to two set-ups, one of which was the cover, then still shot into NOW's painfully restrictive 2/3 whitespace formula. Using a flash in an umbrella and the sheer drapes drawn over a window, I was able to get my high-key setup in place quickly. A roll of Fuji Provia took care of the skin tones, so all I had to worry about was the more creative of the two set-ups - the black and white shot that would probably run full page facing the interview.

Hunter has never had a glamorous image, and at no point in her career has she ever played the sexpot. It was her resolutely normal appeal - a plausible attainability - that made her role in Broadcast News, and the whole film by extension, work so well. She certainly wasn't trying to seduce anyone in her black turtleneck, jeans and socks, and the photo above was the closest any frame I took that day caught her attempting to seem coquettish.

Holly Hunter, Toronto, Sept. 1993

I was grateful for this, and decided to underline this forthright plainness by taking a hotel armchair and ottoman and shoving it into a corner, then placing my flash and umbrella almost directly behind me. The light was both flat and unflattering - anti-Hurrell lighting. Hunter is tiny, and she tucked herself defensively into the chair, pulling up her legs.

I was nearly thirty when I took this, and getting past the point of agonizing about style - either my own, or my influences. I was shooting in situations that didn't give me a lot of control, with subjects I no longer fooled myself I could get to interact with or reveal themselves to me in a handful of carefully monitored minutes.

With shoots like this, I aimed for a style with no style - a record of people as they presented themselves to me. I was producing work that felt true to my situation, but it certainly wasn't winning me jobs from art directors looking for glamour or high concepts.

I still think Broadcast News is Hunter's best film, and even if its media setting is full of anxiety about lowering standards and disappearing jobs, it looks like a golden age over a quarter century later. But when I have to explain to my kids who the lady in these photos is, I just tell them it's Elastigirl.

     

Rob

Rob Ford, Toronto, Oct. 27, 2014

I TRIED TO GET MY PORTRAIT LAST NIGHT, on assignment at the mayor's brother's election night party. It didn't happen. If you've ever covered an election night you'll understand the barely controlled chaos veneered with predictable ritual - the mannered striving to stop just short of gloating in a victory speech; the careful mixture of gratitude, dignity and defiance in a concession. Let's just say that this had it all.

Rob Ford did not look well. I'm not sure if a man battling cancer should have been out at all, but he arrived before his brother, after he knew that he'd been reelected in his old council seat. He made a speech, broadly hinted that he'd be back, waited for Doug to give his concession, then slowly made his way through the crush of cameras to the door.

I followed him with the last trailing scraps of press and staff, out to the parking lot, where he climbed into his SUV and made his exit. I don't know what Ford's future - political or otherwise - will bring. Right now, this will probably sum up the man, as we all last saw him:

Rob Ford, Toronto, Oct. 27, 2014

Mayor

TORONTO IS GOING TO THE POLLS TODAY, and thanks to our former mayor, municipal politics in this city became global news. If you're from here you know all about Rob Ford and "Crazy Town," but if everything you know about Toronto you learned from Jimmy Kimmel, I'm here to offer a little history of Toronto's recent mayors via a dip through my archives.

David Crombie, Toronto, April 1988

There have been eleven mayors of the city of Toronto in my lifetime, but the earliest one I can recall is David Crombie, the "tiny perfect Mayor" as he's still remembered today. I have a memory of him being mayor forever, but he only held office for six years, from 1972 to 1978, and even people who weren't alive during Crombie's tenure are prone to wishing aloud that we had a mayor like him again.

I photographed Crombie long after he was mayor, in the final year of his decade as a member of parliament and cabinet minister. The client was the Metropolitan Toronto Business Journal, a glossy magazine published by the city's board of trade that boasted a bustling newsroom and a reputation that required all photographers to wear a tie when we did a shoot. A few years later, after the 1987 stock market crash decimated my client list, I went back there again to look for work; the newsroom was gone and the Business Journal was a newsletter put together by a retirement-age gentlemen working out of what looked like a storage room.

Crombie's tenure is remembered as a golden era of progressive city policy, when developers were held in check, the demolition of neighbourhoods was stopped, and Jane Jacobs' theories of urbanism had a voice at city hall. Oddly enough, Crombie did all this as a member of the Progressive Conservative party, albeit a member of the "Red Tory" wing - what most American conservatives would call a "goddamned city liberal."

Barbara Hall, Toronto 1997

Barbara Hall was the last mayor of the old City of Toronto, and I photographed her for NOW magazine in the last year of her only term in office. She was presiding over a ceremony at the construction site that would soon be the Air Canada Centre, a purpose-built arena meant to be home to Toronto's NBA team.

Cheerleading for a major league sports franchise was a poor fit for Hall, the ultimate progressive, and her rather dour term in office, coming as it did after June Rowlands' equally dour mayoralty, gave the city an oppressive sense that city hall was a disapproving schoolmarm, intent on improving the citizenry whether they liked it or not. In any case, that Toronto was about to swept away, and Hall would be swept away with it.

She'd end up as the head of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, one of a network of provincial and federal kangaroo courts whose assault on liberty in the guise of a misconceived legal notion of fairness has been an embarrassment to my country. I'm rather taken with how stolid and Soviet she looks in this picture. I did not like Barbara Hall.

Mel Lastman, North York, 1997

Mel Lastman was a millionaire furniture salesman and the first mayor of the amalgamated municipality of Toronto created in 1998. I met Lastman when he was still the mayor of North York, a position he had held since 1972. He was leading the forces fighting the provincial government's planned amalgamation of six independent municipalities into one "megacity" - a battle he would lose, but which would make him that new city's first mayor.

I photographed him for NOW magazine in his offices in North York City Centre, where he was amiable but stiff, and faintly unenthusiastic - my left-leaning employer had not always been a big fan of his, but opposition to the amalgamation had made strange bedfellows. Like a majority of Torontonians, I was opposed to the megacity, and tried to make small talk with Lastman about the campaign.

I mused aloud that if the province wanted to create one big city, why hadn't they looked at other options apart from one big, central city hall - like, say, the borough system in New York City?

"Oh, how does that work in New York?" he asked me, sounding slightly bored.

It occurred to me, with a shock, that the man who'd been mayor of North York since man discovered fire was so incurious that he hadn't a clue how the biggest city in North America was run. We were in trouble.

A public referendum that solidly opposed the megacity was ignored by the province, and Lastman ended up neatly defeating Barbara Hall in the first megacity election later that year, serving two terms in a style that's best described as a fully-loaded clown car doing donuts in a minefield. He's remembered for a promotional stunt that populated the city with gaily-painted fibreglass moose, and for wondering aloud if he'd get eaten during a trip to Kenya to promote a city Olympic bid.

David Miller, Toronto 1996

I have a long history with David Miller, the man who succeeded Lastman as mayor. I met him for the first time in 1996 when he was running in a provincial election as the NDP candidate in the riding where I grew up. I photographed him for NOW in front of a big canvas of sky across Eglinton Avenue by York Memorial Collegiate, the school where my stoner friends went to high school.

He'd end up losing that election, but won a seat as a councillor in the new megacity a year later, where he made his name as an opponent of Mayor Lastman and as a critic of corrupt lobbying practices. I'd left NOW magazine at the end of 1999, and pitched their competition, eye weekly, a story on the outspoken councillor who everyone was sure would make a run for mayor.

David Miller, Toronto 2001

I followed Miller around for a day, from his home in High Park to his office at city hall, in committee meetings and finally on the subway to community events in his riding that night. It was a good piece - the sort of old-fashioned journalism that I'd always wanted to write. And to no one's surprise Miller ran for mayor in 2003.

I ran a group blog about the mayoral election, which I regarded as a crucial one, considering the shambolic quality of the Lastman years and the city's burgeoning budget deficit. I ended up endorsing Miller, writing that "the one thing I want to see Miller do - the thing that, if he fails, I'll never forgive him for failing - is clean out City Hall." It sounds so naive now, eleven years later, but I can be like that sometimes.

Miller won handily, beating perpetual loser John Tory by a thin margin and Barbara Hall by a massive one. By the time he ran for a second term I had lost my enthusiasm for Miller, but whoever I voted for instead didn't stand a chance.

David Miller, Toronto 2006

I ended up covering Miller quite a bit for the national free daily, doing the sort of workmanlike journalism that I never imagined I'd be doing a decade earlier. If I sometimes lost enthusiasm for photography at the dawn of the digital era, I'm sure you can understand why.

Miller's second term was even more disappointing than the first, and culminated in a summer-long garbage strike that was close to broken when Miller caved in to union demands. Not long after, he announced that he would not run for re-election.

Back when I wrote my feature on Miller as an up-and-coming councillor, I told my editors that I'd like to do a second part, focusing on a rookie councillor from Etobicoke who I was sure would run for mayor after Miller. When I told them who it was, they laughed and said there was no way - the guy was a buffoon. A joke. It would never happen.

David Miller and Rob Ford, Toronto 2001

I have tried repeatedly to get a portrait session with Mayor Ford. When I started putting together this post I began calling and e-mailing his office again, pleading for a few minutes of his time. After being ignored for a week, I finally got an e-mail saying that the mayor unfortunately had no time in his schedule. A few days later he announced that he had cancer and was dropping out of the race.

God help me but I miss Rob Ford already.

    

Jane

Jane Bunnett promo 8x10, 1988

I WORKED WITH JANE BUNNETT more than any other musician, actor, director, writer or chef, so I'm going to have to parse out my photos of Jane over the next year - it's a lot of work, and turned into quite an adventure. But let's start at the beginning.

Back when the Nerve was still a going concern, I was asked to go out to Parkdale and interview a young flute and sax player who was putting together some kind of all-star concert at the BamBoo involving a whole bunch of big deal musicians from New York - people like Don Pullen and Dewey Redman, who'd played with Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman. "You're into jazz, aren't you?" Dave, the editor, asked me, basically as a dare.

I showed up at the house Jane shared with her husband, trumpet player Larry Cramer, and did an interview based around me trying not to get caught out on my then-woefully rudimentary knowledge of the music. It was a task made more difficult by Larry's habit of popping his head in every now and then and peppering me with jazz trivia questions, like "Who's the sax player on this record? Is he playing tenor or alto? Is this a standard? Name it."

Jane Bunnett, Toronto 1987

They were working on the back of the house, and I had Jane sit by where they'd been stripping away at the brick by the door to their tiny yard - the same one where I'd later shoot John Tchicai. I took at least one roll and headed off to print it in the makeshift darkroom I'd carved out of half a room in my tiny Boystown apartment, between the living room and the bathroom, which required me to cover my desk with garbage bags to protect it when chemicals slopped over the edge of the developing trays.

I'm not sure which photo ran with my Nerve piece, but it must have gone over well enough, because a few months later, when I moved with my girlfriend and her sister into a massive loft space just around the corner from Jane and Larry, they were the first people I called to tell them we were neighbours. They were releasing In Dew Time, the record that came about from their all-star sessions, and needed a promo glossy, so I was asked to print up something.

The shot we picked - up at the top of this post - is a bit somber, and doesn't really do much to capture Jane's personality. I prefer the photo below, which I printed up at some point years later, even though Jane's rather outrageously crimped hair and shoulder pads date it fiercely. Mostly it's the contrast between the textures of her hair, the bricks and the tire tread pattern on her jacket that make it worth a second look.

I asked Jane recently what she remembered about this first shoot:

"I was pretty impressed by your real desire to talk music...your broad range of musical tastes and your sharp cynical wit!! An automatic friend for life at that moment..."

So when Jane and Larry started work on their next record, I had become part of the team, and shooting the cover would take me back to New York City again.