Memories of Summer

With the Victoria Day long weekend here, it seems a good time to share a few images I came across randomly while (trying) to organize my sheets of negatives and contact sheets from the past decade or two.
The Victoria Day weekend is sort of the unofficial start to summer and after the kind of winters we usually get in this part of the continent it’s one that means a lot to Canadians. When I was living and working in Brandon another hallmark of summer was the annual Summer Fair and especially the carnival midway.

It was a pretty terrific place to be a photographer, as you’d see a wide variety of humanity parading before you, all complete un-self conscious and not terribly concerned with a photographer. In other words, an ideal place to do street photography and (beyond that) the classic ideal of the ‘flaneur’ . I always found it a wonderful place to people-watch in a setting where a lot of the closed guardedness of daily life would fall away and people could just have fun.

The pictures shared here today were taken on medium-format film on a Hasselblad camera - not the most ideal set-up for street photography but one I’d used before in travelling to Nepal - I wanted these pictures, taken around 2014, to stand apart from the usual newspaper coverage or even street photography type of images. I set out to try photograph what it felt like to go to the carnival, in a slightly different way - a detached yet empathetic observer.

I’d love to hear your thoughts! I’ve enabled comments on this post, or head over to my account on Instagram or Foto and share there.

A Walk With A Camera

One of the most enduring types of photography that’s been part of my life has been street photography. I prefer to think of it as ‘everyday life photography’, but ‘street’ is the most commonly known term for it.
I sometimes (only half-jokingly) call it ‘the least possible lucrative form of photography’ but maybe that’s part of the appeal - it doesn’t have to be bent or altered to do anything but what I feel about what I see, as I see it.

For me, it’s just pure reaction, in the moment, without any preconception. It draws on everything that’s happened in the past, but is also completely in the present moment. Going for a walk is always a great way to relax, but combine it with the keen observation that happens when you have a camera, and now you’re a flaneur. Finally, at the risk of reading too much into a simple walk with a camera, it’s a way for me to build empathy and understanding of others — I do think it’s only by being face-to-face and interacting with others (and no, via a phone does NOT count) that can hope to start appreciating them.

It’s with this background that I offer up a collection of street/everyday life photos from my own neighbourhood, a small selection from years of walking with a camera close to home. Wolseley is one of many interesting areas of this city, and of all the things many people will say about it, one undeniable fact is it’s one of the most walkable and varied neighbourhoods of them all. In other words, perfect for any street photographer.

I would be remiss if I didn’t say here that one of my main influences in everyday life photography, living one’s life with a camera and finding a sense of place through photography is a well-known figure in photography in this city and this country, John Paskievich. From almost inventing multimedia back in 1982 with his landmark short film “Ted Baryluk’s Grocery” to his excellent photobooks “The North End” and “The North End Revisited”, John has been an inspiration to a lot of photographers. I highly recommend either of his photobooks, by University of Manitoba Press.

For the camera nerds, all images were taken with a Leica M6, 35mm Leitz lens and mainly Kodak TMax 400 film.