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.

Ken Watanabe

Ken Watanabe, Nov. 18, 2005

KEN WATANABE WAS MY LAST BIG PORTRAIT SHOOT OF 2005, which in retrospect looks like a big year for what I've come to call my second act as a working photographer. I wouldn't have used those words to describe myself, though - I was a "journalist with a camera" as I'd put it, which seemed obvious enough as, according to my files, I submitted 163 features, interviews or reviews to the free daily that year, in addition to the TV column I wrote five times a week - over four hundred stories, approximately.

I had completely forgotten that I did my shoot - and interview - with Watanabe at a press junket for Memoirs of a Geisha in New York City, and if my (obviously) faulty memory serves me correctly, I might have done this shoot at the legendary Waldorf Astoria Hotel. I wish my story about the press junket was still online - the free daily's website has been randomly pruned of content over the years - but it was a pretty good little playlet where I described how the journalists in the junket room were desperate to get the trio of Chinese actresses cast as Japanese geishas for the film to address the "controversy" of their casting.

Ken Watanabe, Nov. 18, 2005

The best part of the story involved Michelle Yeoh, Hong Kong action star and Bond girl, disarming the media by shaking their hands and saying hello to each of them as she entered the room, then sitting down and breaking it to them gently that she wasn't going to provide them with an easy quote about either the casting or the plot point of child slavery that opens the story (and which they'd latched onto as a potential consolation prize of controversy.) In the end, the journalists are reduced to asking her about her "secret for looking so great." I wasn't normally so meta with my stories for the free daily, but every now and then I liked to let readers see just how the sausage got made.

As for Watanabe - a major star in Japan with a parallel career in Hollywood in films like Inception and the recent Godzilla reboot - he seemed perfectly happy with the casting choices made in international productions like Memoirs of a Geisha. As far as he was concerned, work was work - a wise attitude for an actor - and was intent on resisting the pigeonholing prerogatives of what we've come to call "cultural appropriation."

“If a Hollywood studio wants to make a film set in Japan,” he told me, “they have to do their research and pick the best actors they can get. If I get offered a Chinese history movie, am I gonna do that? Yes, I'll do that. Yes, I'll have to do a lot of research on Chinese history and background, and of course I have to learn the Chinese language.”

This was the only time I ever shot at the Waldorf Astoria, and I'm glad I caught at least a glimpse of one of the rooms in my portrait of Watanabe. The light wasn't spectacular, so I decided to rely on an old trick and photograph the actor like he was in a still from a movie - probably a thriller, set in a grand old New York City hotel. 

Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie, Toronto, Sept. 29, 2005

SALMAN RUSHDIE'S STORY IS ONE THAT I'VE FOLLOWED NEARLY THE WHOLE OF MY ADULT LIFE, and it is one that contains nearly every issue I consider important to the time in which we live. Which means that I considered both my assignments to photograph and interview Rushdie to be of immense importance, and worth worrying about beforehand.

My first encounter with Rushdie was in the offices of his Canadian publisher, where he shared a room with a board table covered with enormous piles of his latest book, which he was tasked to sign. Sixteen years after the fatwa that changed his life, I don't recall him being under any of the security measures that were normally reserved for unpopular politicians or witnesses in mafia trials.

Salman Rushdie, Toronto, Sept. 29, 2005

We talked about his latest book, and about the recent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and how Rushdie's support for both - wholehearted for the former, conditional for the latter - had put him in conflict with fellow writers and friends on the left. (Two groups whose overlap is nearly total, to be honest.)

"In terms of responses to current events, there have been great mistakes on both sides," Rushdie told me, "and I think the mistakes of the left have to do with undervaluing the benefit of ridding the world of people like Saddam Hussein. I think if the left is not about overthrowing tyranny, what the hell is it about? And having said that I have been a very strong critic of the manner in which it was done. But I can't be a critic of the fact that it was done."

I did a very conventional author's-photo-taken-for-a-newspaper portrait of Rushdie at that first meeting. It wasn't terribly different from anything another newspaper photographer would have taken in a similar situation, and I'm glad I got it out of the way for my next assignment to photograph the writer, three years later.

Salman Rushdie, Toronto, June 10, 2008

I don't know if I interviewed Rushdie in addition to the portrait shoot - there's no story in my files for 2008 - but I definitely took more care with my photos the second time, which also might have had something to do with being back at work shooting portraits for four years by then, and tentatively grasping my way back to something like a personal style.

I did away with props and concentrated on finding the single spot of light in the room, and made my subject's face fill nearly the whole frame. I also managed to capture a frame of Rushdie with his eyes closed - something I've done so consistently across my whole career that I can't say it's accidental any more. It's probably my favorite shot; a record of Rushdie's features in what looks like - but definitely isn't - a captured moment of contemplation.

I can thank Salman Rushdie for helping me define for myself my own first principle, which is free speech absolutism, as the cornerstone of any and every civil liberty or truly enlightened society. At the time of the fatwa, I was encouraged by the support that Rushdie received from his peers and from his political cohorts.

I'm no longer certain that he could count on that today, and the retreat from robust support for free speech, not to mention the eager accommodations being made to religious fundamentalism, are reminders that history is not really fueled by the engine of progress - one of those words that we use but no longer share a common definition - but by capricious cycles of entropy and lurching motion whose goal is never predictably a truly better place.

Felicity Huffman

Felicity Huffman, Toronto, Sept. 16, 2005

THE 2005 FILM FESTIVAL ENDED WITH A GUARDED SENSE OF ACCOMPLISHMENT. After around twenty portrait shoots in about a week, I allowed myself to feel a little pride in returning to the sort of work that once defined what I did as a professional photographer, though I doubt if I would have considered using any of it to solicit work outside of the free daily.

My last shoot, as far as I can tell, was with Felicity Huffman, who was in town promoting Transamerica, a film where she starred as a man about to undergo his final transitional surgery into a woman. Considering what fills the headlines today, it seems like a film well ahead of its time, though I doubt if Huffman - a biological woman - could  have been cast in the lead now without attracting protests.

Felicity Huffman, Toronto, Sept. 16, 2005

Huffman had a great reputation as a serious actress, with the added cachet of starring in a sensationally successful TV series. (I will admit to having binge watched the first season of Desperate Housewives on DVD with my wife, before binge watching was a thing.) Along with her husband, William H. Macy, she's part of the sort of thespian power couple rarely seen since Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne or Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.

The photos were taken around noon, and I'm guessing it was in one of the rooms at the back of the Intercontinental on Bloor that don't get a lot of light. I posed Huffman close to the window, where the light is just bright enough to work before it drops off into shadow. I gave her my usual minimal direction and got up close (the 50mm lens on the paper's Canon Rebel digital camera,) assuming that an actor like Huffman would respond with a brief performance, which she did.

Greg Kinnear

Greg Kinnear, Toronto, Sept. 15, 2005

THE ONE THING I'VE LEARNED ABOUT PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY in over thirty years of doing it is that it has nothing to do with cameras and everything to do with people. Which makes it sound like a good portrait is the product of a revelatory experience where the photographer acts like a psychiatrist, or that a good portrait photographer is someone with a real passion for people and the ability to make any portrait session an emotionally amelioratory experience.

Neither of these things are true.

These portraits of actor Greg Kinnear were shot at the end of the film festival, when I had been at work for a week, shooting several times a day. I was feeling a bit punchy and loose, and desperate to try something more than the quiet, efficiently supplicant approach to my subjects in the minute or two I had with them, just to see what would happen. I arrived at the suite where I photographed Greg Kinnear with Chris, the writer from the free daily, feeling a bit loquacious and expansive; I wanted to see what would happen if I brought a brash personality to the room.

Greg Kinnear, Toronto, Sept. 15, 2005

I cracked jokes and acted like I'd just walked into the kitchen at a party and I could tell that I was putting my subject's back up a bit. Between frames, Kinnear would shoot looks at the only other person in the room with us - his agent, his publicist, a handler from the festival? I didn't know - that signaled something along the lines of "Can you believe this fucking guy?"

But here's the thing - Kinnear was a conventionally good-looking man, and he'd built his screen persona on that very normal, regular charm, exploiting or playing against it in films like Auto Focus. I knew I could get a portrait of him looking conventionally handsome - very much like the shot at the top - but I wanted to see how much more I could get, and seeing his reaction to my boisterous manner made me want to push things even more.

Because here's the secret about portrait photography, especially when you only have a minute or two with subjects who are used to having their photo taken: Do anything you can to get a reaction. It can be a good reaction or a bad reaction, but as long as you aren't insulting them or being physically inappropriate you can do anything necessary to get them to react to you and your camera outside of their rehearsed presentation of themselves.

I am not a people person. I used to worry that this would be a problem for a portrait photographer, but I've learned that, while it might be a hindrance dealing with clients or publicists or subjects in the moments before or after the shoot, it isn't an issue at all when the camera is in your hand. I've often wished I had a blandly diplomatic flack who could stand in for me up until the moment I started shooting, and while that was never going to be an option, I've gradually made my peace with being a misanthropic portrait photographer.

Greg Kinnear, Toronto, Sept. 15, 2005

Forest Whitaker

Forest Whitaker, Toronto, Sept. 14, 2005

THE 2005 FILM FESTIVAL WAS A BIT OF A MILESTONE FOR ME. It proved that the previous year and its festival shooting wasn't a fluke, and that I'd resumed taking photos seriously. I still wasn't able to call myself a professional photographer again, but I hesitantly allowed myself the luxury of comparing what I was doing then with the best work I'd done a decade previous, when I made my living from photos.

My shoot with Forest Whitaker was, at the time, the one that allowed me to imagine that I could still take an interesting portrait. He was, alongside Anthony Hopkins, the most interesting actor I shot that year, a performer with an unusual intensity that often seems introspective onscreen; he gives a remarkable impression of internal life in almost everything he does.

He's been interesting in everything he's played, beginning (for me) with his portrayal of jazz legend Charlie Parker in Clint Eastwood's unfortunately unsatisfying biopic Bird. (This is no fault of Whitaker, or Eastwood, probably, but just another example of the fact that, on evidence, it's probably impossible to make a good movie about jazz.)

Forest Whitaker, Toronto, Sept. 14, 2005

This was all in my mind when I sat him down in a chair by the wall in a suite at the Intercontinental on Bloor. I had one picture I wanted to take, and when I was lucky enough to find the right light, saw my luck hold out when he took my minimal direction happily and struck the pose I wanted, with the window light behind his shoulder and just enough light bouncing back from the walls to fill in the shadows on his face. He even gave me a look that didn't disguise, but even featured, the ptosis in his left eye that makes him distinctive as an actor.

These were never easy shots to process for print, and I've only recently been able to give them the depth of tone that I saw in that hotel room over a decade ago. The frame below is a particular success; I've insisted for years to other photographers that a really genre-pushing example of portrait photography is one where the subject's face is obscured or invisible but still conveys something essential and recognizable. This shot is as far as I'd pushed that idea until then, and seeing it again made me realize that I was still ambitious about my work, even if it seemed like I was well past the point of having an audience to prove it to any more.

Forest Whitaker, Toronto, Sept. 14, 2005

Gerard Butler

Gerard Butler, Toronto, Sept. 14, 2005

EVERY CELEBRITY BECOMES DEFINED BY THEIR PERSONA, but movie stars live and die by theirs. I couldn't help but think of this when I was editing these pictures of Scottish actor Gerard Butler, shot at the film festival. I remember having a very definite idea of what Butler represented when I sat down with him in a suite at the Intercontinental on Bloor for our customary minute or two, and knowing that I had to capture some sort of machismo and swagger.

What I thought I remembered was doing this because of Butler's performance as Leonidas in 300, all six pack and wild-eyed defiance and spittle-flecked bellowing that "THIS...IS...SPARTA!!!" I was surprised when I did a quick Google search and saw that 300 wouldn't be released for two years, though Butler was at the festival promoting his leading role in the film Beowulf & Grendel. Clearly, long before Leonidas, Butler had defined his persona rather neatly.

Gerard Butler, Toronto, Sept. 14, 2005

Near the end of my second film festival since my return to shooting professionally, I was slowly getting used to the rooms at the Intercontinental. They weren't as bright or neutral as the rooms at the Four Seasons around the corner, and since the colour scheme favoured earth tones, the photos shot there almost inevitably had an added warm colour cast. I found myself shooting closer to the windows, which made the light taper into shadow much faster behind the subject.

For his part, Butler didn't need much direction. I placed a chair sideways by the window and asked him to put one elbow up on the back; he made a fist and provided me with a brooding look without any prompting. Of course it would have been more interesting to have him play against type - posing him amidst the fussy antique decor of a room decorated in chintz - but these one minute shoots were more about essence and convenience in the end, and the first thing the subject brought to it was what usually ended up in the camera.

Gerard Butler, Toronto, Sept. 14, 2005