"the detail that winks"
Overview
Thirteen, five stanza poems for the city.
Print five photographs, all at a 14.5″ x 18.5″ image size. For each, include a printed white border, to make each total print dimension 16″ x 20″. Mount these on 16″ x 20″ substrates, then drop the mounted prints into a solander box. Include a pair of cloth gloves in the box, to handle the prints. The images will be ready for framing or display, or they can simply sit in the solander box, protected.
Make a series of these five-print sets.
For each set, write five; descriptive, poetic or fictional pieces relating to each individual photograph. If possible, print these “descriptions” on the back of each substrate. If that’s not possible, print them on archival, decal-edged paper and include in each box of prints.
Each box would contain five mounted images with five corresponding “descriptions”
Gallery 1. (above)
Photograph 1 – Parking Barrier with Pylon, Blocks and Bricks
On an average west end corner of the city, beside a modest yet still unaffordable house, this assemblage prevents cars from parking on the sidewalk. It looks surprisingly like found art or a sculpture. It’s confident, despite being accidental. It looks contrived but also a bit funny.
Most of this city has gentrified, like countless others around the country. There are little pockets though, that never seem to change. Neighbourhoods, that for decades have looked the same. They’re unremarkable places. Never too clean or too dirty, they’re undaunted by progress and nothing about them immediately stands out. In any city, in any country, these areas exist as silent markers of time.
These spots are like time capsules and if you revisit them over and over again, they can become familiar and almost mystical. Repetitive visiting can be instrumental for discovering things. If you know some place well, even the slightest change can feel remarkable or obvious. Parking Barrier with Pylon, Blocks and Bricks, is a good illustration of this. It marked a tiny change to this familiar corner, but it stood out dramatically. This awareness of a place allows you to re-evaluate what may have always been there and spot the most subtle change. You can find a new detail with every visit and the less obvious things, are often the most bizarre or pulse quickening. It’s not uncommon to visit a location over days, weeks, months, and years before you might see something that imprints on your imagination.
The unspectacular nature of the everyday feels important. These things are worth looking at, remembering and documenting. They will be easily forgotten, and because of that, they’ll become the difficult things of the world to describe to future generations. The humbleness of the mundane. The quiet contemplative solitude of the passed over.
Parking Barrier with Pylon, Blocks and Bricks is also unintentionally funny. It’s a accidental visual gag. It has the same sort of wittiness you might find in the art of Marcel Duchamp, Sarah Lucas, John Sasaki or countless others.
This spot has been visited over a dozen times since this photograph was taken. On the last visit, this assemblage had be re-arranged. Now there are plants, and cage like structure to hold those plants and the pylon is gone. The parking block is still a central element to the structure, but the whole thing looks markedly different and now seems purpose built, rather than mistakenly sculptural.
It’s as if the builder caught wind that someone was interested in their work, and intentionally broke it down to avoid the attention.
Photograph 2 – Grimm Bird House
I studied Art History for two years and during that time, learned a small amount about the Medieval, Renaissance, Gothic, Roman, and Contemporary periods. These were all survey courses. All were taught by middle-aged, white, men and all focused on predominantly male, white artists. The professors who taught the Contemporary course—and this was over 35 years ago—was good enough to acknowledge this shortcoming in art history. In his defence, the curriculum for that course included women.
This bird house, outside a church on a busy west end street, caught my eye immediately. It reminded me of a Renaissance Art History course I took, and all the crucifixion painting I had to stare at during it. I’m an atheist, but I do love a good crucifixion painting. I’m not being facetious.
Matthias Grünewald was a favourite. His brutal depiction of the inhumanity of crucifixion always fascinated me. The tree that’s been trimmed around this birdhouse made me think of his way of painting of Christ’s crown of thorns. It’s a bit strange, because the tree structure around the birdhouse isn’t really thorny, but it reminded me of thorns. There’s another Grünewald painting about the temptation of St Anthony that features a host of hellish creatures too…and one of those is a demonic bird with human arms brandishing a club like stick over its head. The stuff of nightmares.
The brothers Grimm lived and worked 300 years after the Renaissance and Grünewald, but the folk stories they anthologised seem to echo some of that inhumanity and torture depicted in his paintings. Grimm Bird House, rolls of the tongue a bit better than Grünewald Bird House. It also feels slightly less pretentious.
Honestly I’m not sure if birds actually live or have ever lived in this house, or even if the the tree is alive or dead. The more I look at this photograph the more it feels otherworldy and frightening. I can’t imagine a less hospitable looking tree or birdhouse. The whole weird thing is growing ou out of the pavement, surrounded on three sides by building and on the last by the sidewalk and roadway.
Photograph 3 – The False Forest
When you walk a lot in the city, you retrace your steps quite a bit. This photograph was taken on a regular route, and every time I pass it makes me laugh. I’ve passed it a lot over the last few years. It changes subtly depending on what time of day, and what sort of day it is. It has also degraded quite a bit over the last few months.
What you’re looking at is not an actual forest. The scene depicted is an illusion created with plywood construction hoarding that has been sheathed in acrylic panels that have a composite photograph of a birch tree forest printed on then. The greenery at the base of trees is real plant life, growing in front of the fake forest panels. Weeds, that are naturally reclaiming their place because of neglect. This is not a high traffic area. I’ve never seen anyone walking on this street, or even loitering. The vacant lot the hoarding surrounds, has been fallow for the entire twenty years that we’ve lived beside this “stockyards” neighbourhood in the west end of the city. The rest of the surrounding area is a mixture of ramshackle businesses, including a metal wire works, a really grungy garage, and a tremendously sketchy daycare establishment. There was once a self-serve drive-in car wash close by, but that was raised and is now an empty gravel lot protected by grey frost fencing.
This is a favourite place, just because there’s never anyone around. It’s a forgotten, neglected area.
I noticed something else about the birch image today. I think the photograph of the forest has been manipulated, because I’ve never seen a stand of birch trees that actually looks like this. Everything is way too close together for it all to be in focus.
I’m a marketer for my day job. I think of marketing as the devil’s work, even if I don’t believe in the devil. Really, what does a birch tree forest have to do with a downtown Toronto condo development project, that’s located right beside one of the busiest train lines in the country, in a neighbourhood that is predominantly populated by abattoirs?
Photograph 4 – Bin, Door, Muffler
Every image I take usually goes through a predictable lifecycle.
There’s the moment I see something and it makes me pause. This is what I’ve been reffering to lately as the “detail that winks”. An expression borrowed from the author Gerald Murnane. Then there’s the moment I begin to imagine how to frame the subject. More often or not I do this through the camera itself. It’s at this particular time that I decide to either take a photograph or not to. The next step for me is living with the image. I don’t delete too many things. I don’t shoot a million different shots of the same thing, then decide which one to use. I typically shoot one or two different orientations and leave it at that.
This particular image was very close to being deleted.
Bin, Door, Muffler is one of those photographs that slowly crept up on me and that I’ve become very attached too. My warming to this particular photograph began with a niggling sense of pleasure, derived from the colours in this shot. I then figured out that everything pictured was new. The recycling bin, the car door, the muffler and the concrete wall. These are all “young” objects. Then the sense of order and organization held me enthralled. These items were not just thrown into this little cubby hole, in the side of a building, surrounded by auto repair shops. Everything here had been meticulously placed. It was arranged, and fit together like a puzzle. It was done so in a way that is very pleasing to the eye.
Photograph 5 – The Golden Bough
A wilting yellow-brown tree branch is partially submerged in the early morning lake. Floating, half-in and half-out of the water. The remaining leaves, still above the surface, glow golden in the warm, direct, summer sunlight.
I picked the title for this piece very quickly. The expression, The Golden Bough jumped up from my memory. I knew I hadn’t simply conjured the expression from thin air, but I also had no idea why I remembered these particular words and why they came to mind so readily.
There’s something magical about this image. The contrast of the bough above and below water, and the deep mysterious darkness of that water itself, all contribute to the otherworldliness. Despite simply being a dying branch in the water of Lake Ontario, this scene reminded me of the tragic drowning of Ophelia from Hamlet, or The Lady of Shallot, another tragic female figure who died on the water from another epic poem.
The Golden Bough, is an episodic tale in The Aeneid by Virgil. In Virgil’s poem, a magical bough is taken from a sacred tree and used to gain admission to Hades.
In the photograph, you might imagine Aeneas’s Golden Bough, now no longer useful, being tossed aside. We see it floating here, forgotten and mere shadow of its former glorious self, moments before it sinks forever below the water.
The Golden Bough is also an influential book written in 1890 by a Scottish Social Anthropologist and Folklorist. It’s a study of ancient cults, rites, and myths. This book was inspired in part by a Romantic era painting of the same name by Turner, which depicts the original episodic narrative from the Aeneid.
I researched all this to write the information above. I had a vague idea about the Aeneid and The Lady of Shallot, but I wasn’t aware of the anthropology book, or the Turner painting.
Gallery 2 (above)
Photograph 1 – Bridal Window Display
There are no people in my photographs. That seems to interests people.
It’s not about a dislike of people, it’s more of an facination with how people, or humans in general continually resonates. It’s about ghosts.
In most of the images there’s either a multitude of things that were made by people, or there’s a subtle reminder that people will be, or have just been, present. It’s the suggestion of humanity.
In conjunction with this relationship to the human, there is an effort to keep the images generic. To avoid texts and logos, simplifying and homogenising the scene makes these images more about an idea of place than a specific place in itself.
This photograph, taken through a bridal shop window is part of an ongoing series. For over fifteen years I’ve taken pictures through glass doors and windows, after retail hours or of failed or empty storefronts. This particular shot is focused on the detail of a window display. On either side of the frame, wedding dresses are diplayed. More often or not these photographs end up being of empty rooms, or constructions sites, or even dusty abandoned shops.
Despite looking empty and void of humanity, there is always a person in these scenes. The photographer. As a viewer, they are always present. The invisible spectator.
This introduces an idea for a new series, where this presence is not in play. A serties where the photographer is not present. It wouldn’t be that difficult to manage. The camera could be set up on a tripod and the camera’s intervalometer set to take a photograph ten minutes later. Enough time for the photographer to leave the vicinity and top be NOT present. This would be easier and perhaps more poignant in the natural landscape images. It was also reduce the possibility that some passerby might interfere with the equipment.
By leaving the scene of the photograph, the camera would become the real and only observer. It brings to mind the existential cliché, “If a tree falls in the forest”. In this case, if there’s nobody there to see the image through the viewfinder, or to look at the image on the film or sensor, does it really exist, or is it our perception of the image alone that makes the image.
Photograph 2 – Lake Ontario Pre-Storm Waves
I visit the great lake in the city a lot. I’m drawn to any lake, ocean, stream, river, pond, or even puddle, but the lake in the city seems special.
To get to Lake Ontario it’s a forty-five minute walk, or a fifteen minute bike ride from home.
When I first began looking at what might be considered fine art photographers, one of the first was Hiroshi Sugimoto, and his photographs of the ocean, in black & white really struck me and stuck with me. every-time I shoot the lake I think of Sugimoto, and how I can make my work different from his work despite the fact they feel like they are carved on the inside of y eyelids.
I think his work came from a different place and he had different sensibilities. For me the lake is a strange extension of where I live. I’ve lived beside Lake Ontario my entire life.
It’s such a wild and dangerous place. It’s even more wild and dangerous in the dead of winter when its snowing and forty degrees below zero. The more inclement the weather the more I’m drawn to the water. On this particular day it was cold and overcast and the waves were a meter or more in height. It has such a deep green, dark depth to it which added to the sense of extreme danger I always feel. The power of water is phenomenal.
The lake now makes me think of poetry when I see it.
Photograph 3 – The Scream
Humour is a tricky business. I think I was funnier when I was younger. Now I worry that which I find funny, could likely offend someone else. Often I think that witty or funny is simply a way to get attention, and I’m very conscious of that performative aspect of today’s world, because it seems to have crept into everyone’s lives, myself included.
The Western Wall, or as North American’s know it, The Wailing Wall, is a sacred site to Muslims, Jews and Christians. It was called the Wailing Wall in relation to the Jewish practice of mourning the destruction of the First Temple built by King Solomon and the loss of national freedom that this loss represented. I had originally called this image The Wailing Wall, but because of the previous information I decided to simply call it The Scream. I know that title is also officially taken, but that puts me back in witty or humorous, without the danger of causing offence.
On a favourite street in the west end of the city, a building supply store recently expanded. The business purchased two houses beside their drive-in-pick-up lot and expanded. The area where those two houses once sat became a tile and plumbing store. While it was being built, it was surrounded by hoarding. This was the remainder of one of the posters on that hoarding. I can’t remember what the poster was initially for, but that doesn’t really matter. I just went back into Google Streetview history and I can see the hoarding over the period from 2015-2021 but none of the images show the screaming baby poster. It does look like it might have been from a fundraiser for Mount Sinai Hospital, or perhaps an advert for a Toronto radio station, but I can’t be sure and I can’t remember. Regardless, I loved finding this. I visited this wall over a period of months and watched the poster deteriorate. I took photographs of it for a long time.
I also remember this image as a departure for me. A change in my habitual shooting. Up until this time, I had been pre-occupied with a square, or 1:1 ratio for my images. I shot everything to be cropped square. I was drawn to the simplicity and was making a conscious effort to set a series of boundaries or restraints on how I took images to help me focus. I was also enamoured with the idea of old school medium format cameras, in particular the 6×6 Bronica, Hasselblad, Mamiya or Rolleiflex cameras. I love the idea of the Mamiya 6.
I shot everything square for years on my digital 35mm. This image is shot at the standard digital 35mm aspect ratio of 2:3, otherwise known as portrait orientation. I’ve now abandoned the square, and returned to the typical ratio for 35mm, but I’m drawn to this taller skinny aspect ratio of 2:3 rather than the more typical landscape oriented 3:2.
Photograph 4 – Poultry Trailer
Sometimes what I find interesting is awful. The actual thing might not be terrible to look at right away, but they are often, or they frequently personify, terrible things.
My neighbourhood is directly adjacent to, and just a short walk away from the area to the north west known as the Stockyards. To the south west we have Bloordale. West of us is the Junction, and south of us is Parkdale. The area I wake up in everyday is known as the Junction Triangle. Named because of its pie shape and because it’s surrounded on three sides by railway lines.
Despite the big city names and the gentrification that we’ve experienced in the last twenty years, this whole area still has a working class core.
There are several meat processing plants, a chocolate bar factory, self-storage facility, and gelatine processing plant, a rubber manufacturer, concrete processing plant and a host of other industries still employing people and operating. It gives the area its distinctly non-downtown feel. The neighbourhood known as the Junction was alcohol free until just 20 years ago.
This is a photograph, taken in the Stockyards of a parked trailer full of empty poultry cages. It feels joyful because of all the colours, but it really is not a joyful image. We know where all the chickens that were in all these cages are now.
There is a strange sorcery present in certain photographs. The depiction of terrible things in beautiful ways is fascinating. One of my favourite artists, and a big influence on my work and thinking has been Ed Burtynsky. He’s spent a lifetime commenting on man’s disregard for the natural world.
Photograph 5 – The Three Fates
Quite often, I take a small but very fast train from my neighbourhood, to the heart of downtown. It takes seven minutes. On the subway, this trip would take me forty minutes. By car or bike it would be about twenty-five minutes. Taking the train this way allows me to long-walk in a different part of the city. I want to do this more often. I’ve walked every street in a ten kilometre radius from my house so frequently in the last two years, that’s its become a bit too repetitive.
On average I walk thirteen to fifteen kilometres a day, seven days a week. This, adds up to about 10,000 kilometres in the last two years. Reading that last sentence makes me feel like a bit of a freak. Last week I managed to break 120 kilometres in one week. It keeps me sane though. It helps me think. I love the solitude.
I take my camera on all these trips. I use a hand-strap and swings continually beside me. This photograph was taken as I walked out of Union Station on my way to walk up Bay Street and hit the true downtown to the city. An area I do not frequent.
I took Latin in high school. In that one year, I learned all about Roman architecture, including the basics classification of architectural columns. I’m amazed that this information stuck with me. I still know the terms Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. I still know what each look like and I know the details about the fluting, bases and capitals, and a lot about the derivatives of each. Of everything I ever learned, this seems like the thing that effortlessly stuck in my head. Is it any wonder at a point in my life I had aspirations to be an architect?
I never learned about The Three Fates in High School. I discovered them one day when I was looking for an explanation to the phrase “this mortal coil” and although unrelated to that phrase, I became enamoured by the Greek deities and their personification of destiny through the spinning, measuring and cutting of thread.
Gallery 3 (above)
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Gallery 6 (above)
Photograph 4 – Poultry Trailer
My neighbourhood is directly adjecent to, and just a short walk away from the area to the north west known as the Stockyards. To the south west we have Bloordale. West of us is the Junction, and south of us is Parkdale. The area I wake up in everyday is known as the Junction Triangle. Named because of its pie shape and because it’s surrounded on three sides by railway lines.
Despite the big city names and the gentrification that we’ve experienced in the last twenty years, this whole area still has a working class core.
There are several meat processing plants, a chocolate bar factory, self-storage facility, and gelatin processing plant, a rubber manufacturer, concrete processing plant and a host of other industries still employing people and operating. It gives the area its distinctly non-downtown feel. The neighbourhood known as the Junction was alchol free until just 20 years ago.
Gallery 7 (above)
Photograph 2 – Garage Door Triptych
In the summer I find walking in the city is best done early mornings. I suggest starting at sunrise, or even slightly before that if you can manage waking up at 5:00 or 5:30 a.m.
Everyday I venture out for two or three hours. At this time, in the early morning, the streets are empty and the temperature is manageable. On weekends, and in particular, on Sundays, they’re all but deserted just after dawn. If it’s raining or overcast and promising rain, the odds of it being even emptier. I often think how strange it is, that in a city of this size, with literally millions of people, at times it can feel so quiet and empty. It’s like some weird speculative fiction, end of days, or dystopian story unfolding all around.
I don’t dislike people, and I’m not anti-social or frightened of others. I’m simply entertained by my own company and the way my mind works. I can endlessly amuse myself by thinking about all manner of things. The older I get the more I crave this time. Hopefully it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me.
On one of those early morning trips, I walked by an auto shop that I’ve admired over the years and that I’ve often taken pictures of. It had recently closed its doors and the interior was slowly being gutted. I’d often take photographs through the overhead door of the dark interior. The last time I did so, ventilation and wiring hung from the ceiling and made it interesting. On this particular day, the overhead door had been covered up with plywood panels and the sun was shining directly on them. The panels were mismatched. It looked like they had been reused from another location where they had been painted to create murals. In this location, the murals were re-assembled in a haphazard manner.
I remember being shocked at how optimistic these panels in the sunlight made me. The colours were so very vibrant, and lately the city had been feeling very grey and monochromatic. I remember smiling at how energetic the juxtaposed paintings were and how the mismatching almost seemed intentional. I also remember thinking about triptychs and my fondness for the structure that I think of as being born out of early religion. The difference here is that the central panel is actually smaller than those on either side. Because of this, these outer panels could not physically hinged to fold over the central panel. It’s a triptych in name only, because it has three panels. It’s an imperfect alter piece.
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First Text (inspiration)
The person who took these photographs likes them. They make the person happy, and they feel the images are personally valuable. They are also pleasantly surprised that, sometimes, other people like the photographs too, although they never expect that to be the case.
To the photographer, the images capture an idea they’ve been obsessed with for a long time. Additionally, in the last month, they have also discovered an author, and that author writes about this idea. The photographer read the author’s idea in a work of fiction. They have read two books by this person and are currently reading a book of short fiction, and plan to read everything else the author has written over the last fifty years.
The newly discovered author’s ideas, are linked to another famous author, Marcel Proust. The photographer began reading In Search of Lost Time by Proust, but has only managed to make it through, Swan’s Way. Although the photographer hasn’t read the full work by Proust, the way that this author writes, as well as their subjects, are attractive to the photographer. They feel Proust’s writing relates to the photographs they’ve taken for many years in the same manner as the photographer’s newly discovered favourite author.
The photographer thinks their images are like books. This is because they are influenced by writing, in particular what many bookstore people call Plotless Fiction, or Poetry. The photographer likes writing and reading better than looking at other people’s photographs. Sometimes they have discovered fiction and poetry books by reading articles in newspapers and sometimes the books are recommended by a smart and well-read bookstore worker in a good Toronto bookstore that his wife knows and use to work at.
The famous author who has been writing novels for about fifty years often talks about “not” looking directly at something in order to capture certain insights about that certain something. The author also references “the detail that winks” in relation to their way of observing the world. This conversation by the author helped the photographer remember his father who died about ten years ago, and who taught this son about cameras and a method of seeing better in the dark. This trick involved not looking directly at something, but instead, looking with their peripheral vision to see more detail. Their father learned this way of seeing in training for World War II service.
“The detail that winks” is a reference the Australian writer makes in relation to how they decide what they will write about in their works of fiction. It also references the process that was used by the French author previously mentioned. This line resonates with the photographer because he enjoys the work of both authors. “The detail that winks” also relates to the photographer’s own process, and it reminds him of his father who was important in how he learned to take photographs.
Extra
Photograph 2 – Coloured Concrete Forms, Stacked
The first time plywood caught my attention was over ten years ago. Sheets of the multi-layered material were inside an old retail store that was being renovated in the east end of the city. A full sheet, and a number of smaller sized pieces, were leaning against a wall. There was something restrained and elegant about their placement. Casually angled against a brick wall that had been painted or whitewashed. The floor of the partially renovated space was covered in a fine layer of dust. The front door was angled to the interior, so when the camera lens was rested against it—the window allowed me to stabilize the camera and use a slow shutter speed and small aperture—the interior could be shot clearly, on a wonderful angle.
Writing the above I realise that plywood is one of my fixations. It’s usually about the arrangement. I like the line, angle and unintentional composition of randomly stacked or piled things. At one point I thought about plywood so much that I began to make scale models using basswood arrangements. I would mimic the image described in the previous paragraph, and later, more original and premeditated arrangements. Again I would photograph those models. The fixation continued and I graduated to full 4 x 8 foot sheets and started making life-size models and photographing those. I still dream of making more elaborate full size sculptures out of plywood.
A good artist-friend—like many artists, and myself—has worked in non-art type jobs throughout their life. They worked as a bus driver out west in the mountains. At another point, they worked making plywood. It sounded like a dangerous job and one that took a certain type of skill and care I love his stories about how plywood was made, and how he became proficient at making it.
This reminded me we have two large bookshelves in our house that hold the bulk of our library. I designed and made them from plywood. We’ve had these functional shelves for twenty years and every time I look at them stacked with books, they make me happy. These plywood bookshelves rest on concrete cinder block. Cinder block is another one of my fascinations. But that’s a longer story.
Urban landscapes are about line and angle with the rare organic accent. They’re about the neutral colours of materials. The grey of concrete, beige of wood and brown of dust and dirt. Sometimes however, colours jump from the restrained canvas of the urban.
Plywood is a city staple Populating every block in one form or another. Rarely has a common pile of the humble building material presented itself with colours that rival the intensity and surprise of a rainbow.
More Extra
Pre-Amble
The photographs will be the starting point of a writing exercise. The goal is to create poetry or prose that reflect who I am, how I think, and what the images themselves mean to me.
I’ve bee an avid reader since childhood—despite a slowdown during the global pandemic—and I’ve realized that reading influences what I do and think, more than any other process. The impact of reading on me, is greater than visual art, film, music or any other medium.
In recent years, my reading has focused on poetry and fiction. One particular book that lately reverberated deeply was, Interior: A Novel by Thomas Clerc. This book is often classified as Plotless Fiction. Interior: A Novel hasn’t directly informed my work, but it echoes a sensibility that I’m drawn to. The novel by Clerc could be described as a detailed description of the author’s apartment and where that description takes the author’s thoughts.
While researching the paragraph above, I came across another story by Thomas Clerc entitled Nouit, that was written using a Jeff Wall photograph titled No from 1983, as its inspiration. This discovery reminded me that I saw a Jeff Wall exhibition in the 80s, at a space called Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation in Toronto. That show was a series of large light boxes. I was introduced to the gallery by a former fine art professor from Waterloo University, on a trip that they organized.
I then began to think about the professor. I’m not entirely sure who it was, but the visit is a cherished memory. It changed how I saw art. The thought that a professional artist was interested in showing his students important things, is so wonderful. The genius of that teacher, to show art students an exhibition in what has become one of the most influential art galleries and collections in Canada.
The professor’s names that I do remember—from my one year of study at Waterloo—were Rick Pottruff, Art Green, Virgil Burnett, and Tony Urquhart. I have an idea that Tony Urquhart arranged the trip to the Toronto galleries. If I’m remembering correctly, at that time, I had already quit school.
