USER: Men

I’ve posted a (probably not the) final edit from the shooting I did this
year at the corner of Cumberland and Murray Streets. Year three of
USER. You can see it here. Don’t forget to press “fullscreen” (there
at the bottom of my site) for big-picture-goodness.

And, here are two frames that didn’t make the final cut….

James

John

COMMERCIAL

A month or so ago shot a whole whack of pix for Les Promenades
de L’Outaoais, a big mall just across the river, in Quebec.

The plan was to showcase a spate of local celebrities. Each celeb
was dressed in 5 or 6 or 7 articles of clothing. Clothing that’s
available (of course) in shops in the mall.

The photos had to pretty clearly show all the bits of clothing each
person was wearing. As well, for the web splash page, we needed
to shoot tighter shots of the subject’s heads.

So, over the course of a day and a half we shot 14 folks. They
ranged from Junior hockey stars to TV personalities to musicians
to soccer players and, well, you get the idea.

The photos were rolled out this past week on their web site, as
mall signage and on transit shelters.

I worked with Jean Brunet, from Innovacom, on this project. Not
the first shoot I’ve done with him. And, let me tell you, it’s always
a pleasure. Jean brings cool and passion (if those two things go
together) to every project we’ve done together.

Here’s a few pix from, as the mall web site puts it: “Le making of….”

SOME THOUGHTS ON TYPOLOGIES

Okay, to recap…some photographers shoot a whole bunch
of photos of the same type of thing, put them in grids and
the viewer is invited to look at and study the nuance of these
structures. To see how the different types of the same basic
thing compare. Typologies.

© Bernd and Hilla Becher

One of the earliest practitioners of this way of working were
Bernd and Hilla Becher. They shot coal tipples, cooling towers,
mine heads and so on. The Bechers also taught at The Dussel-
dorf Art Academy and influenced a whole bunch of German photo-
graphers. This influence, in turn, seeped out into the whole world
and a kind of approach to photographing was, if not born, at least
made popular.

Now, I love the work the Becher’s did. It’s rigorous, very extensive
and stylistically and conceptually sound.

© Bernd and Hilla Becher

But as a way of working, as a strategy, almost all subsequent
examples of typologies leave me cold. Totally cold.

I was wondering why this was. After all, I’m half German, love
a certain amount of order and am attracted to rigor.

Then it struck me…..no soul. Typologies, almost all of them,
have no soul. Sure, some typologies are interesting but none
are moving. And I’m a guy who likes my photos to be “wet”. I
want to see the guts and heart of the photographer in the print,
not just their brain.

Anyway, to each their own. But in the end, for me, it all comes down
to the soul. It’s what I look for and it’s what typologies lack.