keep in touch

Enter your email to receive notification of significant posts. Don't worry, I won't clog up your inbox or sell your data

Month: July 2024

right here

Posted on July 31, 2024 by j.g.lewisLeave a comment

Summer’s shifting shade does little to shield us

from the obvious. Heat, humidity, a melting pot

of humanity. Deep in the city.

Our landscapes deteriorate, neighbourhoods in

decline, as we strive to cope with this evolution.

Distended discomfort, rarely placated by fashion,

or politics, or the indifference of it all. Signs and

symbols cannot be ignored.

Boundaries erode between what we know and all

we have still to learn. Ignorance takes its place.

Respect the culture. Significance has its way of

seeping into common view, shrouding every day

with language we speak.

Unknowingly at first, style and substance reach

beyond all we are capable of understanding. Or try.

Routinely we attempt to quench our deep thirst for

something more. Once exotic, even erotic, now

commonplace. Right here.

The sense of self hungers for a piece of it all, but

we fear what we do not know, say, or hear.

History, yes, but is the old lost on vagabonds or

restless teenagers caught up in the seismic shift

of popular culture? Questions.

Answers may not be found in bastardized language

we have come to speak, by destiny more than design.

No longer defined by geography, topography or

empathy, our interpretation of cities, as we age,

disrupts our views of ourselves.

Will others see what so very few of us will realize?

Individually, as a community, we all must change.

the essence of the neighbourhood

Posted on July 30, 2024 by j.g.lewisLeave a comment

I took my camera out for a walk yesterday, I felt it was time.

For the past couple of months, I have been focused (excuse the pun) on other aspects of art, refamiliarizing myself with my paintbox and attempting to capture my world in a different sort of way. I’ve been enjoying, even benefitting, from the change.

Creating any form of art is not only how you fill your time, but also how you fill your mind.

The camera has been a constant companion of mine for a good five decades, both personally and professionally. Photography, always, has been my preferred art form. Photojournalism has long been a passion more than a profession.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been attempting to make photographs that do not look like they were taken for me. I might be the only one who recognizes it, but after a lengthy tenure in the newspaper world you find yourself relying — perhaps subconsciously or by habit — on certain angles, lenses and depths of field that become overly familiar when you see what’s going on through the viewfinder. A camera lens can actually limit your perspective.

Yesterday I set out to make a serious attempt to capture what summer can be like in the concrete confines of Toronto for no other reason than it is summer, I am in the city, and I had my camera with me. How serious is that?

My journal entry earlier in the day explained my intentions: I’ve not spent a lot of time looking through the lens lately, and today just seems like it would be, or could be, a beneficial way for doing exactly that.

Ending up on Spadina Ave., caught up in the congestion that has become downtown Toronto, I continued along the path to Chinatown and its vibrant street-front retail scene where you can buy pretty much anything off or along the sidewalk: produce, gemstones, trinkets, shoes, socks, and sundries.

For no other reason than being there, other than wanting or needing to spend time with my camera, I set out to study the essence of the neighbourhood a little closer.

What I see through my lens is only a small portion of the world around me, but yesterday that was enough.