F is for February
Winter fog, Bloor St.
Fog in winter, rain instead of snow, people falling through ice into lakes that at this time of the year ought to be frozen solid for skating and ice-fishing but aren’t - boy, does this winter seem all mixed up! Just the other day we saw the slim green shoots of our daffodils poking hopefully but foolishly through the mound of dead leaves at the foot of our magnolia - even the plants are confused by this weirdly unseasonal weather.
No climate change happening here folks, no sirree, nothing to see here! It’s all just a dastardly plot dreamed up by leftists and liberals and George Soros and those who would Destroy Our Way Of Life if only we let them. But we won’t let them, we’d rather boil our children in hot oil first, we’ll show them, and if the planet does catch fire, well, that’s what the Good Lord has planned for all of us sinners, anyway, isn’t it?
Flat-earthers, climate-change-deniers, fundamentalists of all stripes including, it seems, half the US Supreme Court, not to mention the unmentionable MAGA out-to-lunchers - these are not exactly models of straight or even honestly muddled thinking, sadly.
So, then, with the world in such a lunatic state, the times so out of joint, I have gone ahead and done what any sane and practical person would do, and submitted a bunch of photographs to my favourite galleries in Glasgow and Minneapolis - my favourites, of course, because they have seen fit to recognise me, and accept my work. No bias here, folks!
Both shows, curiously, have to do with colour - the Minneapolis show, at the Praxis Photo Arts Center, is entitled The Life of Color (I do wish those Americans could spell!) while the Glasgow exhibition, at the Glasgow Gallery of Photography, is entitled, simply, Yellow. I guess it has something to do with the grey (not ‘gray,’ for pete’s sake!) drabness of winter, although the Glasgow event will only take place in summer. Maybe Glasgow is trying to score twice - once, by soliciting ‘Yellow’ in the depths of winter, when sunshine, daffodils and chardonnay on patios seem a lifetime away, and a second time, by showing up, hurrah, when summer is blooming, with a show of bright yellow.
Whereas, once upon a time, all ‘serious’ photography was assumed to be black-and-white, with colour reserved for tourists and advertisers, colo(u)r photography, nowadays, has claimed a place as ‘fine art’, alongside the old B&W masters, with exponents such as William Eggleston, one of the first colour photographers to show at MoMA, New York’s famed Museum of Modern Art, showing us how colour can be used to reveal a psychological state, a mental landscape, a depiction of time and place that is as imaginary as the writer William Faulkner’s Deep South while seeming, on the surface, unstudied, accidental, and apparently real. So the Minneapolis and Glasgow shows are to be taken seriously, it seems.
Especially as, I have just learned, my photograph Harmony, PA has been selected for the international juried photographic exhibition, Life of Colour, by the good people at Praxis.
Harmony, PA
Just to keep busy, I have also submitted images to the Glasgow Gallery’s upcoming Travel exhibition and to Life Framer’s Animal Kingdom competition. Nor is this all. After last year’s modest entree into the world of photo exhibitions and competitions, I am feeling the need to spread my wings a little - try a little harder, be a bit more ambitious, take a tumble if necessary.
Fom my Life Framer entry
To have my work shown in a gallery in London or New York or Berlin would be nice - to shoot for and at least gain acceptance to, one of the more meaningful international competitions, would be nice, too. Nice is what I am aiming for, in 2024. And if you think nice is a bit anodyne, let me remind you that nice is not what you are going to get, from politicians, the news media, the climate and environmental scientists counting us all down to total collapse, not this year, and not for a while yet, so be nice, and give me two cheers, at least, for my modest ambitions.
Oh, and, one more thing. It’s a good idea, if you plan on being a photographer, to actually take photographs (you will notice I no longer weep over split infinitives - is this progress, I wonder, or moral decline?) and this particular photographer has been feeling a little cramped recently, by the weather, the pressures and demands of daily life (who said retirement was a laugh - anyone?) and a recalcitrant hip, all of which has resulted in all too little by way of photographic results (see the three little examples below, of photos taken this January in downtown Toronto - don’t miss the cat, in the image on the right).
Time to stumble outside and take photographs, I think.
Toronto, 2024
The Day Will Come
The day will come, when there are Navalny Squares all over Russia.
There will be no Putin Squares.
Winter, Bailieboro
A visit over the Family Day long weekend to see our friends Chris and Paul on their farm near Bailieboro, in rural Ontario, yielded some rewarding images.
There had been snow a day or two before we drove out - enough, not to carpet the landscape, but to reveal its bones.
Here are a few images, which no doubt will find their way into a portfolio on my website at some point.
About ‘About’
Oh, and, while you are reading, do take a look at the new ‘About’ page on my website, listing the group exhibitions I have appeared in, and the awards and acknowledgements my work has received - ok, just two, in 2023, but hey, 2023 was my first try-out, right?
You might be surprised - I was, to tot up how many exhibitions I have been in.
Now for 2024 - no time to be resting on my laurels, such as they are, now is it?
Sketches of Spain
I have completely revised and refreshed the Spanish portfolios on my website, and consolidated them into one new exhibit, Sketches of Spain, which I hope you will enjoy - so do take a look. Accompanying the portfolio is a new photomagazine, which is available here, in print and PDF, from the Blurb Bookstore.