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In My Back Pocket – Photography

Tag: north saskatchewan river

Jasper Avenue Apartment

January 19th, 2014

Jasper Avenue Apartment – Edmonton, Alberta 1

Jasper Avenue Apartment – Edmonton, Alberta 2

Jasper Avenue Apartment – Edmonton, Alberta 3

An Edmonton apartment overlooks the North Saskatchewan River. It is a building that has been around since the thirties or forties and is architecture of my mother’s time, a time when walking was the way through Edmonton and vehicle use was limited. The apartment is one I associate to Canadian literature as backdrop or setting to scene, a building that could feature in Mordecai Richler’s ‘The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz’ or within Robertson Davies’ ‘Fifth Business.’

The apartment draws me to recall Morley Callaghan’s ‘Such is My Beloved.’ The novel looks at a priest in the Great Depression making sense of God’s Love and the encounter of his reaching out with Christian care to two prostitutes, an encounter in which his efforts are taken advantage of and as I now recall, a situation repeated for real much more recently and narrated more accurately in Nadia Bolz-Weber’s memoir, ‘Pastrix.’ In ‘Such is My Beloved,’ the cocoon of Church, Church-Life and Church politics, all, cloud the words of the great commission being lived out and because they are not current or used readily by the congregation their exploration by Father Dowling is an innocent and naïve endeavor, one done on the sly without others knowing, a first, sustained attempt that’s taken too far with aims of turning recipients’ Lives around.

The story functions as a morality play, unfortunately tragic in structure and is more cautionary about not living out the Great Commission. In actuality, the Great Commission is likely more of ‘do-what-you-can-with-what-you’re-presented-with;’ when lives begin to turn around the Church can mobilize with many resources.

Listening to – The Blind Boys of Alabama and ‘Run On for a Long Time,’ ‘Amazing Grace,’ ‘Soldier’ and ‘Way Down the Hole.’

Quote to Inspire/Consider – “The camera is a kind of passport that annihilates moral boundaries and social inhibitions, freeing the photographer from any responsibility toward the people photographed …. You are not intervening in their lives, only visiting them.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’
Former Edmonton Sights

January 20th, 2013

Edmonton’s Low Level Bridge 1

Edmonton’s Low Level Bridge 2

Edmonton’s Low Level Bridge 3

Former Volkswagen Shop – Edmonton 1

Former Volkswagen Shop – Edmonton 2

Former Volkswagen Shop – Edmonton 3

As a child growing up in Edmonton’s Ottewell community in the sixties and seventies walking and cycling were my chief means of getting around our community. Travel in Dad’s Beaumont or Pontiac Parisienne would take us to the Bonnie Doon Mall each week for groceries, a place we could explore while our parents shopped. Longer excursions would perhaps take us downtown to shop at The Bay or Eatons or Woodwards. And, there were times when a cold or flu bug would direct us towards a visit with the family pediatrician, Dr. Selby, at the Allin Clinic. Needles, minor surgeries, vaccinations and prescriptions were given to my brothers and me by Dr. Selby.

Travel was a longer affair.

There would be traffic lights we’d encounter on 75th Street as we travelled west on 90th Avenue. We’d move past Bonnie Doon High School to the traffic circle taking the second exit towards Connor’s Hill and downtown. Descending Connor’s Hill we’d drive under a ski jump that would hurl out skiers onto the Connor’s Hill ski area; the hill is where the Edmonton Folk Festival now sets up each August. On our right, roughly where the Muttart Conservatory is now situated we’d move past the City of Edmonton incinerator with its tall, tall brick chimney and garbage trucks moving about. We’d cross the North Saskatchewan River on the Low Level Bridge and then climb Grierson Hill under the Chateau Lacombe and the Hotel MacDonald. We’d travel west on Jasper Avenue and make a right on 120th Street finding a parking space on the street or within the clinic parking lot.

Travel was a family affair; much was discussed within the car … questions could be asked and digested and concerns diluted.

The images presented here are current view of Edmonton’s former Volkswagen shop near the James MacDonald Bridge and of the Low Level Bridge from its northwest corner – both were sights to be taken in during our longer family excursions across Edmonton.

Listening to – Led Zeppelin’s ‘When the Levee Breaks, U2’s ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ and ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday,’ The White Stripes’ ‘Icky Thump’ and the Raconteurs’ ‘Steady As She Goes” – all are part of the DVD, ‘It Might Get Loud.’

Quote to Inspire – “I think good dreaming is what leads to good photographs.” – Wayne Miller
28 December 2010 – Look Back Photos (Edmonton’s Low Level Bridge and Skyline)

December 28th, 2011

Low Level Bridge 1

Low Level Bridge 2

Low Level Bridge 3

Low Level Bridge 4

Low Level Bridge 5

Low Level Bridge 6

Low Level Bridge 7

Edmonton Skyline 1

Edmonton Skyline 2

Edmonton Skyline 3

Edmonton Skyline 4

Edmonton Skyline 5

Edmonton Skyline 6

Edmonton Queen 1

One year ago today my intention for photography in coming to Edmonton over Christmas was to capture sense of place. In any visit I had previously made to Edmonton through the years, I spent time on Whyte Avenue looking through Art shops for images of Edmonton – drawings, paintings and photographs. These shops would contain images of the High Level bridge, the train station on 103rd Street, many images of Old Strathcona (Whyte Avenue) and its various happenings, the Hotel MacDonald, the Alberta Legislature and the Edmonton Skyline – all representing a home I’d grown up in, all representing memory and a desire to revisit former times. In late afternoon on December 28, 2010, I parked my vehicle close to the Low Level Bridge and got down onto the ice of the North Saskatchewan River with tripod and Canon 30D and began clicking away using my Sigma 10-20mm lens.

In an hour and a half I had rounded up forty-nine images of my own, new photographic memories of Edmonton – the Low Level Bridge, the Hotel MacDonald, the Edmonton Skyline. I’d also encountered a disciplined martial artist training against trees, the welcoming smile of a female long distance runner and two University students who thought I’d fall through the ice along the river’s edge … go figure.

Listening to – Beggars & Buskers, by Eric Angus Whyte on the Luddite Sons album (thanks to Stocki for this recommendation on his Soul Surmise blog).

Quote to Inspire – “The key to seeing the world’s soul, and in the process wakening one’s own, is to get over the confusion by which we think that fact is real and imagination an illusion. It is the other way around.” ~ Thomas Moore ‘Original Self’

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