Watched: Last Call at The Gladstone

The Gladstone Hotel

By Tom Frog, used with CC licence.

On the weekend I watched "Last Call at the Gladstone" by film-makers Derek Roehmer and Neil Graham. It was an independent documentary that premiered at the HotDocs film festival in 2007. Shot over 5 years, it chronicles the sale of the 1889 Gladstone Hotel located on Queen West in the Parkdale area of Toronto, and it's slow transformation from a run down flop-house style hotel into the upscale arts hub that it is today.

I began watching it by accident while channel surfing mainly because I recalled the Gladstone being one of the larger venues for the Contact photography festival held in Toronto each spring. I thought it would be more of a TLC/Discovery Channel/HGTV style renovation program, but it turned out it wasn't. It was more the human story of the price of gentrification. Or in lay terms, the booting out of the poor and renovation of a building into a more upscale and urbane environment.

The story centred on one particular very old and very sad daily resident of the hotel named Maryanne and some of the staff at the hotel. It followed them from initial sale, through several Effed up ownership changes, squabbles, evictions/relocation of residents - some who had been there for 40 years, and the stop and start transformations of the building. What happened to the building residents I won't completely give away in case you want to see the documentary yourself, but they are no longer there.

I recall taking a couple of courses in urban planning and geography back at university 20 years ago (Yipes!). Invasion and succession or gentrification were discussed at one point. How a neighbourhood is transformed from run down with say a certain working class poor or welfare population, into a more upscale community - I remember that happening in Cabbagetown in Toronto when I lived there. But I don't recall the human element being discussed: how the removal either gradually over time, or by force or eviction, disrupts and destroys the lives of so many. Destroys a sense of community.

The current Gladstone Hotel, is beautiful.  It is, for some, the place to be and to hold arts and cultural events. I would love to have my images hang in a show there one day. But should that happen, I don't think I could wander the place and not think of the history and what had transpired to get the building from where it was to where it is. It had to happen, or risk being demolished, but still.

That hidden human costs of these transformations need to be discussed more.

The Trailer for the film is here:



Mike

Is it art or cheese?

The other day, one of the people I follow on Twitter (I don't remember who) linked to The Guy With a Camera Twitter page. He or she has fun tweeting fake posts such as the following:

Today is world pinhole day, so I am shooting a naked model on the hood of a Corvette using my pinhole camera. SWEET!

Writing a iPhone app that locates a rose in a photo & automatically applies selective color.

Casting call – looking to shoot naked girl pushing lawn mower while wearing fairy wings and football helmet. Very tasteful.

While they are pretty funny posts that make fun of a certain class of amateur photographers  - the GWCs or guys with a camera - who take pics of girls and have no talent (but often don't realize it or care), it got me to think. I have done more than a few 'creative' photo shoots in the past which at the time seemed cool or clever, but could certainly come off as a bit cheesy. OR be seen simply an excuse to get someone naked. One shoot that came to mind when contemplating this point was Halloween a couple years ago when I put Leia nude in the gaping jaws of a real pumpkin, with cold slimy pumpkin guts everywhere.

I like those shots, and other ideas I have tried. And don't regret shooting them. They were creative. And the pumpkin idea was original as far as I knew then. But do you really think they could be art? Fetishy to some? Probably. Nudes? Yes.  Sexy? Could be. But not art. Or is it? That Twitter user is essentially making fun of ideas like that. Or ideas like that, that are executed craptastically and with ulterior motives.

There in lies a quandary for me. I want to be considered serious about what I do photographically. And I know some of my stuff is really good. There: I said it - for those who say I never do. A fair bit is artistic. Pretty solid in post work, well composed, lit, and so on for the most part. And I have come leaps and bounds in a few short few years and keep learning. Be that as it may, I am not a professional photographer. So, perhaps to some of them, my work comes off being cheesy. But is it? Should I care? I do want into that 'pro' club - I suppose, but would that mean I would need to stop doing interesting ideas such as the pumpkin? Probably.

Perhaps the difference between picture A that a GWC would shoot and a similar picture B that I would shoot is in as much the intention behind it as it is about the quality of the finished product.

I am rambling and I wanted to post about this while it was on my mind, but I will stop now.

I should take to heart something that Stevie Wonder once said: "You can't base your life on other people's expectations." :)

That goes double for any artist.

Mike

photographer humour

Have a good weekend everyone. :)

Mike

my blog could be your blog.

Look at your blog, now back to mine, now back to yours, now back to mine.

Sadly, yours isn't mine.

But if you stopped posting about other things and made this your blog post, yours could be like mine. Look down, back up. Where are you? You're on my blog, reading the blog your blog could be like.

I'm on a computer.

Mike

Jaclyn, Opposite of Dry

Opposite of Dry, #1

Last of the pool shots from Jaclyn (others are here and here). After swimming around, her look had changed enough it only made sense to shoot her on the pool deck before she dried her mermaid like hair and changed out of her white outfit. These definitely have a more intense vibe to them. Hard to believe all these were in the same hour as the others.

This day was certainly up there in terms of sheer number of solid pics we both liked. What we don't have in frequency of shoots, we make up in quality. I hope. :)

Earth's Dry Skin

Curling mud, in detail

Went for a drive and a walk on the July long weekend. Came across this expanse of sometimes dry mud. I had been here before a couple of times in the last year or so, and depending when I had checked it, there was often nothing to see. That day there was. Just had the point n shoot with me as this was just a random find and I wasn't going to be shooting anyone to bother lugging the DSLR. Depth of field control is a bitch with the PnS, but I liked what I saw.

The first shot above reminded me of some paint I shot several years ago on the exterior of an abandoned building.  This particular piece was about 10inches /25cm wide.

The rain the last couple of days will have erased this canvas for a bit.

Kait

Kait, Willow, #1

I met Kait through seeing a photo of her on Facebook at an Elton John concert. Within a couple of moments, I found out she had already been interested in shooting with me.  After not too long, we met up  and shot some quick icebreaker portraits in a park. She had never posed before, but after she got over a bit of nerves at first, I found she was a natural.  Already looking forward to our next shoot when some new awesome ink is healed. I saw a preview that day and it is quite cool.

Jaclyn, Dry

Jaclyn, Dry #7

Shot same day Jaclyn and I did the blue/green in pool photos. Before she swam, she posed in her then dry white skirt and thin white corset on a diving board and a chair by the pool. I don't think I could be classed as a pin up photographer - because I am not, but #7 certainly has a pin up vibe to it.

Leia's new curve

Leia on the Bridge #2, cropped

Leia is expecting a new kidlet in the fall. As she was only at 26 weeks, but already sporting an awesome belly, we thought we had better get on shooting something before it might be too challenging for her to tromp around the countryside with me. We set a day, and this was shot a couple of weeks ago (later on in the day from the A & W Jerrika photos. The day had turned 180 degrees from then though. In the early morning it was sunny, clear and warm. By the time the afternoon had come, there were rolling thunderstorms, super high humidity, heavily overcast, and a miserable amount of mosquitoes. And I had this idea to shoot in a river...  Best laid plans... :)

After looking at the river, the river plan was out: dark brown from rain churned silt and mud, too many reeds and plants to get through and was now too deep for what I had in mind. We shot nearby. But very quickly the weather was getting the better of us. Every time I put camera to eye, my breath would fog up either the eyepiece or my glasses. Sweat was getting in my eyes. The mosquitoes were certainly putting us off our game having to swat them all the time. And apparently they like pregnant blood a lot... But we got some cool photos. I am glad we were able to salvage some of the day. :)

Hanging out with and shooting Leia is always good fun. And as that day proved, always an adventure. :)

After the break (if reading on the blog), images are NSFW and contain nudity.