An Easter rebirth

March 31, 2024

This has been posted here before, but several years ago I started a project about faith rituals - I was just interested in how across all different kinds of cultures, religions, time periods and geographic areas people somehow felt the need to perform various rituals and actions as an expression of faith.
I photographed more variety than I thought possible in a mid-sized Canadian city, but the past year or so it’s been dormant.

Fittingly, in the season of Easter a rebirth of sorts occurred with 2 events connected to the Christian holiday. The festival of Salubong, a procession of religious statues held by the local Filipino community, was held on Easter Sunday morning and the 35th annual Way of the Cross procession was held by the local Catholic archdiocese on the morning of Good Friday.
Salubong was especially gratifying to photograph, as it was the first ritual I photographed in 2018 when I first conceived of this project.

From now, I hope to continue where I left off with this project and pursue other rituals in a variety of faiths. I’m as interested in the regular commonly held ritual - aspects of the everyday like a Christian baptism or candles in a Hindu puja or prayers in a Jewish or Muslim service - as I am in special events or rarer holidays.
If you have a suggestion for this project, please use the Contact form on my website to send me an email, or message me via my Instagram account if you prefer.

A congregant at St. Edwards the Confessor Catholic Church takes part in a procession early Sunday morning as part of the church’s Salubong event.

The sunrise shines over the cross marched on a procession in the 35th annual Way of the Cross Event, Friday morning at the University of Manitoba campus.

Hundreds of people walk quietly in the Way of the Cross event, on Good Friday morning, the only sound moving over the crowd a repeated prayer chant.

The cool twilight of the early Easter morning is punctuated by the warmth of a candle held by an adult chaperoning a children's choir in the city’s North End during the Salubong event.

Canada geese waddle away from a procession of hundreds quietly marching behind a wooden cross on Good Friday.

One of the stations of the cross marks a pause in the 35th annual Way of the Cross, Good Friday morning.

A children’s choir ascends the steps of St. Edwards the Confessor church on Easter Sunday morning.

Salubong procession, Easter Sunday morning.

A Walk With A Camera

December 04, 2022

One of the most enduring types of photography that’s been part of my life has been street photography. I prefer to think of it as ‘everyday life photography’, but ‘street’ is the most commonly known term for it.
I sometimes (only half-jokingly) call it ‘the least possible lucrative form of photography’ but maybe that’s part of the appeal - it doesn’t have to be bent or altered to do anything but what I feel about what I see, as I see it.

For me, it’s just pure reaction, in the moment, without any preconception. It draws on everything that’s happened in the past, but is also completely in the present moment. Going for a walk is always a great way to relax, but combine it with the keen observation that happens when you have a camera, and now you’re a flaneur. Finally, at the risk of reading too much into a simple walk with a camera, it’s a way for me to build empathy and understanding of others — I do think it’s only by being face-to-face and interacting with others (and no, via a phone does NOT count) that can hope to start appreciating them.

It’s with this background that I offer up a collection of street/everyday life photos from my own neighbourhood, a small selection from years of walking with a camera close to home. Wolseley is one of many interesting areas of this city, and of all the things many people will say about it, one undeniable fact is it’s one of the most walkable and varied neighbourhoods of them all. In other words, perfect for any street photographer.

I would be remiss if I didn’t say here that one of my main influences in everyday life photography, living one’s life with a camera and finding a sense of place through photography is a well-known figure in photography in this city and this country, John Paskievich. From almost inventing multimedia back in 1982 with his landmark short film “Ted Baryluk’s Grocery” to his excellent photobooks “The North End” and “The North End Revisited”, John has been an inspiration to a lot of photographers. I highly recommend either of his photobooks, by University of Manitoba Press.

For the camera nerds, all images were taken with a Leica M6, 35mm Leitz lens and mainly Kodak TMax 400 film.

Shining a light

December 05, 2021

For the past several years (a global pandemic, notwithstanding) I’ve been pursuing a personal project on “faith and rituals”.
I’m not entirely certain what form this project will take in future, and I’m not sure how I’ll make it more focused and specific (I know I need to do that), but a photographer friend once told me with photo essays it’s often best to just start out making pictures you like and let the direction come after some work has been done.

The wisdom of this has started to really be clear to me lately, specifically with two recent events from two different faith communities sharing a common theme.
At the beginning of November I made my way to a small North End temple for the Hindu festival of Diwali. Despite feeling very conspicuous with both my cameras and my obvious non-Hindu status, the people were warm and welcoming and I discreetly observed and (occasionally) made an image.
A month later, the city’s Jewish community gave me an equally welcoming reception for the 8-day festival of Hanukkah. Both the Etz Chayim and the Chabad-Lubavitch were kind enough to answer my questions and support my project efforts and, as with all the faith communities I’ve visited for this work, I was reminded how rich and varied our city actually is — there’s a lot going on beyond our habitual day-to-day surroundings and I’m blessed to have photography allow me to witness that first-hand.

I was also struck by the similarities in different religions and how common visual elements keep coming up, as I photograph more and more for this work. In the case of these two festivals, the element is light — both events are festivals of light, as a symbol of transcendence and expressed in literal form.
Happily, photography is all about light and so it felt fitting to show both of these festivals and what they have in common. L’Chaim and Namaste!

Blessings in the time of Covid

May 02, 2021

Several years ago, I started a personal project on rituals — acts of faith unique to a religion or faith community that have a tradition going back centuries or more. It was a rewarding idea and the more I worked on it, the more I was convinced it was a solid pursuit. And beyond that, it was something I got a lot of personal fulfillment out of - I was fortunate to witness moments I couldn’t have predicted or imagined and met a lot of new people.

And then Covid-19 happened.

Almost overnight, most faith centres closed in order to limit the spread of an airborne contagion (something a few people seem to have difficulty understanding) and my idea that slowly but surely began to gain momentum ended abruptly.

But as people begin to find their way through this uncertain time, some organizations figure out how to exercise their faith in ways to keep everyone as safe as possible. One example of this was the annual ritual in the Ukrainian Orthodox faith of the blessing of the Easter baskets, and how the faithful in the Ukrainian Orthodox Metropolitan Cathedral of Sts. Vladimir and Olga made it happen in 2021.

Taking advantage of a beautiful spring day, they held the service outdoors, kept everyone well distanced and had people cycle through quickly so as not to linger. It was a heartfelt display of faith, and a quietly dignified rebuke to those who’ve used religion as a ruse to ignore the reality of public health measures.

On a personal note, it felt good after over a year to be making photographs for this project again. It very likely will be a long time before this project can be picked up again in any substantive, consistent way. But for one beautiful spring day, new images were being made and the idea lived on.

Father Ihor Shved sprinkles holy water upon the Easter baskets brought by sisters Ruslana and Svetlana Kashyna, during a special Covid-compliant service of the ‘Blessing of the Baskets’, a highly of the Orthodox calendar.

Volunteers helped create a makeshift altar and worship area outside the North End cathedral, including the iconic Easter eggs so closely associated with Ukrainian culture.

Father Ihor Shved tests a webcam set up to bring the service to faithful in their homes. The web savvy is one adaptation many churches are making to the health measures needed to keep their communities healthy.

After the basket ceremony outside, attendees could make a brief visit to the altar to round out their Easter observances.

Road Trip America

January 14, 2021

Recently, I was backing up some hard drives and looking through some old DVD’s I’d copied files to — y’see kids, back in the old timey days we used drink coasters to store data on…it was a more innocent time.
Anyway, looking through digital files isn’t NEARLY as illuminating or serendipitous as actual prints or contact sheets, but there were some thought provoking surprises. Namely, some images from an old Canon point-and-shoot camera (remember kids, this was before we put those into our phones) of a month-long motorcycle trip looping through Montana and Wyoming, among other places.

The pictures that stood out for me were almost-casual, accidental photos, the photographic equivalent to doodling on a notepad while waiting on hold. With the passage of over 15 years (!) these images, which seemed throwaway at the time, take on a lot more resonance now.
Our view of the USA certainly has changed, and I wonder how many of the people I’d met back then would espouse some drastically different quirks, these days.

Apart from sharing some images I found interesting, what I hope to get across is to not take the here-and-now for granted — that the things you’d think someone weird for photographing (or, worse yet, attack them on social media) today mean something…and will only mean more once we’re removed from the distraction of the moment.
So, take a ton of photos. Print them ALL. And don’t lose them. Not on a phone, not on a hard drive or even a drink coaster.