Stories behind the portraits
My body of work involves architecture and urban landscapes. I haven’t done a lot of portraiture because I believe I’m not good at it. So, I have been digging through my archives and plucked out some of my favourite portraits that I’ve taken over the years. There are not many but we can, together, walk through my mental space at the time and, perhaps, be inspired to practice again and seriously challenge that self-limiting belief. I refuse to fully believe that I’m bad at something until I’ve given it more than a fair shake.
Louie is my very first “client” and he is also my youngest brother. I wouldn’t be the first to say that their family is their first portrait sitter. Making photos with Louie, however, is all about capturing speed and energy. This was his first performance at Woody’s as Onika Lust. This set is very different from my quiet landscape photos. But, this was definitely a lesson on trusting your intuition. Once you feel the beat, you don’t question it.
Photography can be an introvert’s dream because, most of the time, we do it solo. But, Toronto is wonderful because there’s a huge community of analog photographers. And, this is even more wonderful for introverts like myself because photographers can be the most willing sitters. They’re already there, you might as well. And, if you are genuinely curious about people, these are some of the most generous with their technical knowledge and time. The coloured set is from a photowalk organized by Jorge Rangel for Toronto Analog Friends at Evergreen Brick Works. The black-and-white set is of Matthias, a photographer I met in one of these photowalks, who later became my gardening partner at Scadding Court Community Centre.
Strangers. This is a 2-parter. We’ll start with a self-imposed challenge. This feeling of “not being good with portraits” was more intense a few years ago. I saw a video of one of my good friends doing some street portraits. I admired his fearlessness. He looked immune to rejection. One of the things he said in that video was that it’s easy to recover from rejection by a stranger because, chances are, you will never see them again. So, I gave myself a maximum of 10 asks because that was the maximum amount of rejections I can handle in one day. This set here didn’t happen in one day. The first 2 were from the same day and I managed to get 5 people to agree to have their photos taken. The second 2 were luck. The younger man approached me as I was photographing this neighbourhood for the houses and its front yards. His friend, the older gentleman here, happened to be there too. I started warming up to the idea that I can do this.
Strangers Part 2. This is Brandon. There’s a group of BMX riders who regularly practice at Dunbat (Dundas-Bathurst intersection). I sat on the bleachers, quietly observing. Brandon approached me and we started talking about the state of the city. This happened shortly before the city council elections. Then, I asked if I could take some photos while he practiced.
This is still one of my favourite sets because, first of all, Brandon is an amazing person. This whole interaction also made me feel the responsibility that comes with being entrusted somebody’s stories, and the tension between the way I see my sitter, the way the sitter sees their self and they way I think they’d like to be seen by other people. This must be the hardest part of portraiture for me but Brandon made it easy and natural, because those 3 ways were congruent with him. Essentially, what you see is what you get.
So, now, we’re onto my friends. Because they mean so much to me, I want the tenderness that I feel for them to be shown in the portraits I make of them. My friends are sources of magic for me. This is very true in the case of Guillaume and the injured crow that we named La Petite Fille. Guillaume and I met online then met in-person at the Toronto leg of the worldwide tour of his book, Murder. His book was an homage to Masahisa Fukase’s Ravens. Months later, when I visited Montreal (where he’s based), he spotted a group of school kids following this injured crow at Parc Outremont. The kids gave us their face masks so Guillaume could hold this crow safely. On our way back to the nearest train station, Guillaume and I looked at each other, then he remarked, “I don’t have to explain this to you.” We both laughed. Included in this set are my friend Nicole with her partner Doga and their dog Nutmeg on a lovely day at the beach in Cobourg, and my former roommate Andjela in our apartment.
In retrospect, portraiture was perhaps hard because I wasn’t as generous with my presence to other people as they were with me. You get what you give. Perhaps, it’s time to try again. My work as a travel nurse in the past 2 years has made me more outgoing. When you have a new workplace every 2 months, you have to get over yourself. I think I can do more than 10 rejections a day now.
So, who wants to give this girl a chance?
