I’ve always had a fascination with libraries (and bookstores as the good lady wife will attest to). When I had the chance, through the Coffee and Cameras program put on by The Camera Store, to explore the New Calgary Public Library without any of the general public around I leapt at it.
Along with about 25 other folks I was able to spend 3 hours wandering the library unrestricted. Some brought tripods and flashes. I shot hand held for three glorious hours and, even better, I got into the zone a few times.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’ve been approaching how I shoot. If you’ve been following the “whole rotten saga” of my existential angst about making images you’ll see what I mean. Oddly enough, as if to prove the old saying “the teacher will come when the student is ready”, I got an an e-mail from Dave Duchemin announcing the 10th anniversary edition of “Within The Frame.” I have the original version but I like to support Dave so I bought it along with his other book “The Soul of The Camera.” I’d also been reading “The Practice of Contemplative Photography” and these two books gave me the figurative “slap upside the haid” that I needed.
At the New CPL I approached the library with no preconceived notions of what I was what images I was going to make. I even gave myself permission to make no images.
Wait, what? Make no images? Are you on glue? What’s the point of getting up early on a Sunday morning then? What’s the point of paying for 3 hours of access to the most innovative building in Calgary? Simple: letting go of the pressure to create, to produce. You can then silence that always chattering, problem solving part of the brain and open your senses to the potential images that may be created.
By silencing the old chatterbox I was able to be patient and wait until I could truly see the building. By silencing the old chatterbox I could be mindful and reflect on the essence of the building and use that as a starting point and literally dance with the building: listening to what it has to tell you. When you reach this sort of melding with a subject you begin to transcribe its essence (and yours) into a collaborative work that combines the essence of the subject and your state of consciousness into something, one hopes, creative and meaningful.
I did something else as well, something I used to do all the time but some how got away from doing: limbering up. Musicians do it, athletes do it, maybe even educated fleas do it. I parked the truck a few blocks east of the library and pulled out the camera. Getting the first shot out of the way really helps. You start to sketch, you tickle the ivory, do the sound check and after a bit it starts to come. First the National Music Centre
National Music Centre
Then the refurbished King Eddy (a gentrified shadow of its former self, I like the Blues Can better).
By now, even though my fingers were freezing, my heel blister shrieking to “Shtaaaap!” everything was popping.
Waiting for Luke’s to open I wandered around some more
Photographer
Cross
And then inside. I didn’t set out to photograph any specific aspect of the building, I just responded to what caught my eye; often out of the corner of my eye. When, several days later I looked at what I had, I noticed an overall theme had evolved: abstraction and pattern.
My oh my! It’s so nice to feel that groove coming back. Oh what a feeling, Oh what a rush.
Special Shout Out
Many thanks to the staff of The Camera Store for organizing these expeditions. It's a lot of work pulling these events together and then herding the cats. Peter needs to give you raises. Thank you!
There was no clapping of a perky tour director’s hands or cheery exhortations for us to line up. Just a nod between everybody and a quiet “Well, let's get at it.” Beers finished, tabs settled and like a platoon going on patrol we prepare our cameras, hoisting bags of equipment onto our shoulders and form up outside.
We spread out into the night, photonic warriors hunting for images. Point, flank and drag: we patrol the streets – cameras nosing back and forth, looking, sniffing. An image? Perhaps. Work it. Shutters snicking like automatic fire and then silence. Further into the night, through the deserted streets we wander. Suddenly a flash illuminates the dark. More images found and captured.
Then, as quickly as we formed up, we are at the next encampment. Bags are unslung, field jackets are removed and beer is ordered. The conversation drifts to the images captured, what gear crapped out, what worked, what didn’t. Shots not taken as important as those that were. We share our photonic prisoners held captive on our memory cards.
Another The Camera Store “Beer & Cameras” is over until the next time. Luckily, it was relatively warm that night considering the next day the overnight temperatures went to -20 or so and stayed there until mid-March. I was glad of the chance to make some images before having to hibernate, yet again.
With the exception of “Street Corner” all of these are all straight OOC with only minor lens adjustments and crops to my two preferred formats, 8x10 and 1x1. “Street Corner” was processed in NIK dFine and NIK Silver Efex.
When I made the “Blessed Snow Pile” and “Calgary Tower, Circle K” images I wasn't expecting to see any lens flare at all; both were made with my Leica so I didn't see anything in the viewfinder. I'm glad it's there as the flare has added some interest to what are perhaps bland images.
Street Corner
Calgary Tower, Circle K
Making Sandwiches BW
Making Sandwiches
A splendid evening. And, in keeping with the night, two videos about the night
Back in the day when I was a code slinger on DEC Vaxen and later on PCs with Borland product I always enjoyed the local user groups (LUGs). We’d invade a bar, order copious amounts of beer and if there were free snacks we’d devour those like a plague of locusts. We’d then compalin about DEC, complain about Borland (or its later incarnations, usually as Borprise). We’d swap hard won knowledge into the acrana of VMS and Delphi’s Object Pascal. Backup tapes (for VAXen) and floppies filled with code would change hands spreading “the knowledge”. The lucky ones with an ARPAnet connection would share print-outs of the latest episode of the “Bastard Operator From Hell”.
When I saw The Camera Store was starting a thing called “Beer and Cameras” I said to myself: “Ah-ha! These are two of my favourite things! This could be just like the LUGs of old!” The way it works is you meet at a venue (brewery or coffee house) have a beer or coffee and then have a photo walk to the next venue. What could possibly go wrong?
Here’s the thing: I don’t do camera clubs. I don’t know why. I’ve been to the odd meeting or two but they never did anything for me and I really don’t like competitive aspects. I wrestle with their philosophy and aesthetics of photography. Submission requirements that require sharpness and focus and minimal cropping and post processing just don’t do it for me. When I make an image in the field I have already visualized how that image will look in print. The raw image is a base canvas for me: a starting off point if you will. Once in the digital darkroom I take that canvas and realize my vision.
I didn’t go for a long time due to scheduling issues (work, family, yada yada yada) but last month the planets aligned and I was able to go for the very first time. Hot Damn! Just like a LUG! And the best thing? Young Photographers with their energy, their ideas, their aesthetic, their fresh way of looking at the world!
So what is the big difference between ‘Cameras & Beer|Coffee” and a “camera club”? No competition, minimal structure and the enthusiasm of The Camera Store event coordinators. The venues make all the difference too. Good beer, decent eats, and for the Coffee and Cameras sessions good coffee. Can’t ask for anything more than that.
Kudos to The Camera Store and the staff; they make this work. If you’re in Calgary when they’re hosting one, make a point of signing up and showing up.
Huzzah! A chance for a road trip with my cameras. Yay! The light as I left Calgary heading east looked promising. It wasn’t too cold. It was early: the chinook arch was behind me, the sandwiches were packed, and thermos full. Yippee!
I should have stayed in bed and pulled the blankets over my head. Well, not really; something did come out of it as we shall see.
After some desultory phaffing about at the (ironically named) Ralph Klein Nature Preserve and the power plant at Shepard on the east side of town, I got on a secondary highway and went east: east to Gleichen, east to Bassano, east to Patricia — places where my father-in-law was born, places where he grew up. I don’t know what I was expecting to find. Echoes of the past, of a now forgotten time?
Sunrise, Ralph Klein Park
Cooling Towers
Tower of Power
East past farms asleep waiting for spring to come, east past the feedlots where the steam rises from the backs of the cattle into the arctic air, east into the Siksika Nation. Past relics, both white and First Nations: Roman Catholic chapels and graveyards, tee-pee rings and memories of Crowfoot.
For whatever reason I find it hard to photograph on First Nations’ land. I feel the land grumbling under my tires. I feel unwelcome. I don’t want to be like some anthropologist of old visiting a South Sea archipelago and making images that match my preconceived notions of what is there.
Perhaps, over time, if I can find a way to build a bridge and get permission to photograph – not that it’s required but given the current state of First Nations’ relations with Canada it would probably be the decent thing to do.
George Webber made so many potent images at Standoff in Southern Alberta: it took him years to build the trust and be able to gain that level of access.
Questions swirl in my head. Why are the Catholic Schools and the residential school still standing? Why after all those decades of abuse at the hands of the clergy are they still there? Is it like the gates at Auschwitz so the attempt a cultural assimilation is never forgotten? Or, in the case of the residential school, putting an existing building to good use as it serves as the High School? Or is it more complicated, beyond the understanding of a white man?
North on SR547, into Gleichen with the CPR right of way resembling a frontier zone between two nations: south and north, red and white, Siksika and Canada. Crossing over the CPR mainline you cross into another world: a world in decay, a world not even able to cling to its past, a world that appears to have given up. No, I’m not talking about the Siksika Nation.
My father-in-law was born in Gleichen. His father, a proud, hardworking Ukrainian immigrant worked for the CPR on a section gang. Archival photos I’ve found show a proud, prosperous and tidy town. I’ve tried to photograph in Gleichen before, each time coming up short; often not even pulling the cameras out. This time, a solitary hard man stood in the entrance of a now boarded and bricked up building. In another time it may have been a store, a bank or judging from the windows a tavern; I don’t know. As I pulled to the side of Railway Avenue, he glared. I sat and made as if to check my phone. Some young people that I’d seen walking along the road from the south side of the tracks walked up. Money and small packets changed hands. I upped stakes and left. Maybe another day.
On to the Trans-Canada Highway now and east to Bassano: “The Best Town by a Dam Site!” I have two tenuous connections to Bassano: my wife’s grandparents lived there, and I worked, for a while, for the company that owned the feed mill and feedlot: XL Foods.
Bassano had, back in the day, a lot going for it. It was a divisional point on the CPR mainline between Medicine Hat and Calgary and a junction between the Bassano and Empress Subdivisions. The Empress Subdivision was also known as the “Royal Line” because the towns along the line had royal names: Empress, Princess, Patricia, Duchess, Countess among others. Originally built in the 1910s, to haul grain and coal. After the switch to natural gas and heating fuel traffic dwindled. Passenger service ended in the 1960s and the line was finally abandoned in 1997. Chris Doering & Connie Biggart have done a lot of work wandering around this corner of Alberta
The town’s booster slogan “The Best Town By A Dam Site” comes from a massive irrigation project started by the CPR in 1910. At a cost of five million dollars (that’s more that 132 million today and I doubt that it could even be built for that sum) it involved building a 720 ft spillway across the Bow River and a 7,000 ft long 45 ft high embankment to contain the south side of the reservoir. If you include all the aqueducts and canals that were associated with this, the bill comes in at around 17 million, a cool 450 million in today’s Canadian Pesos.
Why would a famously parsimonious skin flint of company like the CPR pony up that kind of dosh in the middle of what John Palliser in the 1850s called an uninhabitable semi-arid desert? Well, they were saddled with a sizable amount of this land (30 million acres!) that would not be profitable unless something was done. What to do? Making every section pay wasn’t a problem in Manitoba and southeast Saskatchewan and but down here? Uh, no. No immigrant was going to homestead with the sagebrush, rattlesnakes and pronghorn antelope and very little water. What they needed was Moisture, with a capital “M”. It wasn’t going to come from the sky with any regularity, but by gum, the land was flat with just the right gradient and a stonking big river running through the middle. With irrigation you get settlers, with settlers you get crops and with crops you get freight to haul, grain and cattle east, tractors and consumer goods west. Voila! Profit! The Imperial model writ in sagebrush.
I digress. The story is interesting though. We’ve always been into nice big project out this way: Oil sands, pipelines, railways and irrigation projects.
All the railway infrastructure except for the main line is gone now. The hotels, except for the Hunter Hotel, now called the Imperial Hunter and for now only existing as a tavern, have gone. The elevators where knocked down and consolidated with new elevators west of town. Yet the town goes on. Light industry, the feed mill and yes, new houses being built even though the town itself is considering going under the administration of the County of Newel along with other small communities to save costs. Unlike Gleichen, it seems to survive but perhaps not thrive.
I made these images:
Imperial Hunter Hotel
Enjoy Coca-Cola
Hotel Coffee-Shop
Thursday Wing Night
Rumbling to Calgary
Nice, I guess but nothing to write home about.
Across the TCH and follow the “Royal Line”: Duchess, Rosemary and then Patricia. Again, a connection: my wife’s grandparents farmed here. My wife remembers swimming in the irrigation ditch and in a commemorative book I made about my father-in-law I restored some pictures of life on that small holding.
This has always been a land of “Well, we’ll give our best shot and see if we can make a go of it.” At the turn-off to Patricia and onward to Dinosaur Provincial Park, a gas station and convenience store long abandoned: broken glass, a phone booth long since forgotten, an ATM machine long since torn apart, Nestle’s ice cream long since melted. An entrepreneur’s dream that didn’t pan out, hopes and memories written on the chalkboard.
Gas, Diesel, Snacks, Ice
Call me, maybe?
Nestle Drumstick and ATM
Corner Gas, Monochrome
Corner Gas, Colour
Bang a Gong
Road Trip Redux
So, what happened and what did I learn, if anything. I would hope that I didn’t spend a whole day driving around the Eastern Irrigation District making mediocre images and not have learned something from the experience.
Let’s see now:
I was rusty. Making images is like playing piano: you have to do it all the time and I haven’t been.
I tried too hard to make relevant images rather than just letting it flow. Again.
I need to have a little more courage to just watch and wait and make that image – even though I don’t feel welcome.
I need to go through that door and see what was in that Nestle’s freezer.
Too much driving. All told I spent about 5 hours behind the wheel (yes, Alberta is a big place); the longest stint being about an hour and a half. When you get out of the truck your nerves are jangling, your eyes are focused to a point a mile or two in the distance mesmerized by the road, still thinking in 60 mph time not footstep time. Maybe a base of operation near the target area and choose just a few places rather than “If this is Tuesday, it must be Belgium”
However, I did get some ideas for projects and re-starting some dormant ones:
Roadside Attractions – Re-shoot the Dinosaur Country Store and find other similar things and add that to my ongoing project of the same name.
Railway Hotels – Document the railway hotels all along the CPR mainline and branch lines before they vanish, and, if the bars are still open, photograph the barflies that still call them home.
The “Royal Line” – It’s probably been done but photograph the towns along the line (or what’s left of them).
Broken Dreams – All the businesses that died taking a person’s hopes and dreams with it may be learning something from the things that were left behind.
So maybe the trip wasn’t a washout after all. Guess you can’t always get what you want, but, if you try sometimes, you get what you need…
