Tourist season

This is where they work

My first assignment

My first assignment for my photography class was to shoot a roll of slide film under different lighting conditions and exposures and then to present it to the class.

I chose Velvia film and quickly went on an expedition.

I have a personal rule where I try as much as possible to exclude people from my compositions. I just don't like them. I'm a misanthrope, in a way, and I find that, if misused, people can be an easy way out of a bad picture. They tend to be full of emotion, expression, variety, and they stray from my objective aesthetic of photography.

However, with this assignment, I failed.

It all happened when I was shooting at a strip mall in NDG. I found myself face to face with the head of a mannequin peering through the window. A phonebooth. Te key lighting from the evening sun. All perfect elements. I snapped one, with nobody in the frame, then lowered my exposure. I snapped another one, but this time, a man walked by.

I knew instantly that this would make 'a picture,' as they say. So I continued.

Next, I shot the mechanic who was trying to sell me an old Chrysler outside his garage in St-Henry.

Perfect. Good shot. A long exposure, coupled with his head movements, made him anonymous and ghostly. He had his arms crossed. He was a tough guy with a strange accent - not quite french, not quite english.

Finally, I shot my friends with their new bikes, and myself on a mechanical horse.

Still, I think my favorite is that of the electrical post. I'm a purist, a minimalist, and I have an addiction to simple compositions and objective documentation of urban planning and human constructions.

I'm satisfied. It's been ages since I've shot film, and returning to the medium was a wooing experience.

A day at the mall

Cavendish boulevard starts at the bottom of NDG, on St Jacques street. It crosses Sherbrooke through the Benny Projects and makes its way north through the suburban landscape of NDG and Hampstead. It's quite nice and there are parts of it lined with oak trees that dim the sun as the light falls on small, post-war bungalows.

However, things start to go wrong when Cavendish crosses Van Fleet. The houses stop and you discover acres of land that were cleared for the construction of tall housing projects - these constructions are immense and are generally made of dark, grey concrete. They cast large shadows on top of other large structures that obscure the horizon. The landscape is grim and punctuated by the occasional lowrise office building or strip mall. This is a habitat for the elderly and wealthy jewish Montrealers who commute like ants between these large and cumbersome structures.

Cavendish exhausts itself within the next four large city blocks (perhaps because there is a giant rail yard that city planners could not bypass) and that's when the blandness climaxes in the form of a large shopping plaza.

Cavendish mall is a giant complex that was built in 1973. Today, a large part of the mall is vacant, and this includes a covered loading dock at the back which now basically serves as one large pigeon coop.

At first glance, the four loading gates appear to be still active - but there are no stores in this portion of the mall, so no deliveries are made. Feathers carpet the asphalt and blow chaotically in the wind. A red dumpster sits askew in the corner and odd piles of wooden debris cluster by its side.

I counted two beheaded pigeons amongst the feathers, only noticeable because of the black crows who plucked at their carcasses. This was my introduction to the Cavendish mall. The lighting was bad so I took no pictures.

The mall is large and dark. The elderly collect here in large but atonal crowds. On that day, I saw a nurse strolling her patient through the boutiques - I'm guessing she worked at a "retirement" home. She was an old lady with a pretty coif but an outfit that suggested she had been dressed hastily by someone else. Her head was tilted to one side as she gazed into nothingness. A dead, blank gaze.

Her feet dragged on the linoleum floor as her legs hung loosely down the front of the stroller. She had no energy, no life, and the nurse seemed to have contempt for her company. Together they paraded through the mall, purely for the sake of movement.

An mechanical horse in the abandoned wing is the sole indicator of regular activity. It has a glossy pink finish with gold highlights and I found it to be beautifully kitsch. Occasionally, someone strolls though the back entrance of the mall and slowly wanders passed the closed and empty storefronts. In one photograph, I captured an old man and his cane inching by the pink machine.

A few palm trees under a skylight were set up, perhaps by the mall's management, to lend character to the vacancy. It fails. Beyond the horse, to the left, a store called GLOBAL GURL remains closed. Only the sign persists.

The mall is tragic and widely known to NDG residents as a pit of despair. I urge you to visit it. You will appreciate your remaining years much more sincerely and openly, I guarantee it.

Here's what Wikipedia says about it.

I have since returned to the mall with my film camera for a class assignment. I will post more pictures of the mall shortly.

The night

I shot these pictures quickly, on the streets of NDG. They all involve a blue cloudy sky and lens flares.

To keep things going...

I've fallen behind on my small commitment of regularly adding content to the Internet. The web hasn't suffered my absence, but if I am not posting things on MOTS, it means that I am also not taking any pictures.

Lately I've been preoccupied with cycling and the general bliss procured by my emancipation from the retail world. In other words, I've quit my job as a stock clerk and everything in my life is better. My breakfasts taste better, the city air is sweeter, even Donald the drunk who pees in our bushes has developed some sort of innocent charm. My days are mostly spent sitting in parks, repairing bicycles, reading books, and drinking cold brews whose dewy exteriors drip down your fingers in relief of the hot summer air. I'm currently working as a bicycle courier until school starts, upon when I will deliver part time or find a job at a local bike shop.

When I start my photography classes at Concordia, expect to see a few more posts.

Cheers.

Here, for now, are some "b-side" shots of city life, if you permit the expression.



1) Rebuilding a road bike from scratch. 2) A man is arrested on my street after a high speed pursuit on the highway. 3) Hervé enjoys a cigarette as we look for shooting stars. 4) Alex and Kelly on the rooftop of their old Ottawa apartment. 5) My newly assembled track bicycle. No breaks, no gears.

Around the city 06/08/09

It was after the storm, and the streets were still drying. I didn't really know what I wanted to shoot, so i headed for Cote-Saint-Luc where the massive, bland apartment buildings meet the rail yards. This is a particularly uninteresting corner of the city and I was originally disappointed because there was nothing to shoot.

It was only when I took a wrong turn through the parking lots of clustered low rise apartments that my little trip was beginning to produce. The scene was dead except for the loud clamor pouring out of the open windows. Piles of wet trash awaited pick up between buildings in dark alleys.

I also found an old shopping plaza on Cote-Saint-Luc past Cavendish and a cool housing project next to an empty junk field.

The setting sun made from some interesting light.