Elderly woman with white hair and makeup wearing a blue quilted jacket and earrings, sitting in a cafe with blurred background and overhead lights.

Meetings with Strangers

In this ongoing series begun in 2023, I advocate for the power and importance – especially in this fractious virtual age – of truly seeing each other: flesh and blood, in all three dimensions, vulnerable and infinitely complex. Nothing unites these individuals except the strong intuitive hit I got – after passing dozens of others – to ask if I could take a photograph of them, right then and there.

Tim Hortons outlet near a river with parked cars and a sunset sky.

Gathering Place

Gathering Place, 2018 to 2024, examines our need for physical connection with nature as well as with each other at a time of environmental decline and virtual relationships. These photos were taken over a number of years at a local fast-food restaurant on the shores of the Gatineau River, close to Ottawa, Canada. The property is mostly paved, often littered, and denuded of vegetation. The view, however, is of largely unspoiled wilderness, the river pouring pristinely out of the north. In the warmer weather people come and linger and I took pictures: parents with children, friends gathering, couples showing affection, bikers stopping for a coffee and a smoke, employees at the drive-thru window. This series unites my conceptual and environmental interests with my approach to street photography.

Person wearing paintball gear and holding a paintball marker in a wooded area

Theatre of War

My work on this series began when I stumbled upon a paintball field on a day trip with my camera in 2014. Over the next four years (until 2018), at various courses in Ontario, I photographed players as well as the field structures and abandoned vehicles that lend battlefield realism to this popular mock-warfare game. Theatre of War is a reflection on the narratives we nurture, including those buried deep in the psyche and in our past. There are polarities at play: pursuer and pursued, hunter and prey, realism and the imagination; individuals become actors of a sort, soldiers in a make-believe war.

My thanks to the owners of the following paintball fields: Commando Action Centre (Marie Longtin and David Pitts), Ottawa, Ontario; Barrie Paintball (Mike Clark), Barrie, Ontario; PRZ Paintball, Picton, Ontario; and DMZ Paintball, St. Catharines, Ontario.

A man wearing a cowboy hat and casual clothes standing next to a stone wall and metal gate, with shadows cast on the gate, in black and white.

Mexico – Street

All of the images in this series were taken in San Miguel de Allende from 2018 to 2020. There is much for a photographer to connect with in the city, which is warm and sunny and dry most of the year. Architecture, light, colour and life out of doors … lots of life. Families. Children. Friends visiting. Vendedores (street sellers) selling everything you can imagine. The overall effect for someone from Canada — or, at least, this someone — is that of an entire society turned inside out; as if there’s more life lived outside than inside, which can’t be true, but still ...

Black and white photo of a car with a child in the back seat looking out the window, smiling and touching the glass.

Black and white photo of people walking on a city sidewalk at sunset, with tall buildings and a crosswalk in the background.

Framing the Interior

Photographed in 2013 and 2014, each of the subjects in this short series of street photographs is framed twice: once, by the frame of the camera and, second, by the window frame within the composition. Windows are transparent barriers, paradoxically. I felt all the more drawn into these private worlds because of the glass wall of separation.

Street

This is where I got my start, as a street photographer in downtown Toronto seeking to capture people unawares in moments of unselfconscious authenticity.