[PHOTO] Two street-level condo ads

While the building boom might be jerking to a halt, huge street-level condo ads and shops at still open on Queen Street west. Here's two that I photographed earlier this year.

One at Queen and Abell
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

This one, visibly weather-worn at the intersection of Queen and Abell, has been up since at least November 2005.

One at Queen and Gladstone
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

This space, occupying most of a former garage at Queen and Gladstone across from the Gladstone Hotel, has been active only in the past few months.

[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] On photography and veracity

The news that Robert Capa's famous photo of a Spanish Republican soldier caught in the middle of his death



may have been staged has triggered a fierce debate, in Spain and elsewhere, on the circumstances of this particlar photo, its role in the collective memory of the Spanish Civil War, and the nature of photography itself as an honest reporter.

[B]eginning in the 1970s, researchers and historians began to challenge the picture's veracity and raise questions about Capa's reputation: Did the famous photograph capture the militiaman at the moment of his death, or was it staged? Now comes a claim that new and "indisputable" evidence determines once and for all that the photograph is a fake. "We tried to reconstruct the events exactly as they would have to have occurred for Capa's photo to have been taken during a military conflict," says Ernest Alos, the reporter for Cataluna's daily El Periodico who has led the latest inquiry. "And we discovered that the picture does not correspond to any actual event." (See pictures of Capa's work.)

Yet the findings, published by El Periodico on July 17, are about more than that one shot — or the Capa mythology it fuelled. The latest investigation may settle any questions about the actual location of Capa's image, but despite its focus on historical accuracy, it is unlikely to end all debate about the photograph's authenticity. What the study does reveal is Spain's growing interest in the role that visual documents might play in understanding the country's complex — and still unresolved — relationship with its civil war.

With the arrival of the exhibition "This is War! Robert Capa at Work" currently on display in Barcelona's Museu d'Art de Catalunya, Alos notes that local experts were able to observe several additional photographs Capa took of the Spanish Civil War that had never before been exhibited in Spain. "This is important because these photos are part of our history, and here we know our country's geography and history better than those in New York or London," he says. (See a TIME video on Capa's iconic work.)

Alos and his colleagues came to the conclusion that Capa's photo had been staged by following the lead of Jose Manuel Susperregu, photography professor at the University of the Basque Country. Having closely examined the previously unseen photographs, Susperregu sent two of them to the governing councils of towns near Andalusia's Cerro Muriano, where Capa's photo purportedly was taken, and received confirmation that the landscape seen in the picture is actually located roughly 30 miles (50 km) away, near Espejo, a Cordoban town isolated from the war's battle zone. The El Periodico reporters spoke with the people of Espejo and with historians of the Civil War, and learned that no military conflicts had taken place in the area during the days when Capa took the photograph.

Crooked Timber's Chris Bertram discusses the situation himself.

I’m inclined to agree with the thought that the staging in that case also amounts to fakery. Still, I’m far from certain about my reactions here: staging a photograph is not, in itself, sufficient to make the charge stick. I was thinking last night about the US Civil War photographs where we suspect the photographers rearranged the bodies, and that is one of the examples that Philip Gefter discusses in an essay on the problem at the New York Times. Many of Bill Brandt’s photographs of English upper and working-class lives were staged, but that staging doesn’t make them bogus. Rather Brandt was using artifice to get his subjects to enact a role more general than any particular haphazard moment. That also seems true of the Lewis Hine pictures that Gefter discusses.

Gefter's essay, incidentally, is quite worth reading, and not only because it lists some of the most notable examples of supposedly spontaneous events that turn out to be staged. This, though, does not save Capa for Bertram: "We could say that he is an icon standing for the many soldiers who did in fact die for the Republic, but that doesn’t feel right since it would be hard for the image to play that role for us if we knew that the man was simply acting. Brandt’s subjects were (barely) acting, but they were at least playing parts that they also played in life. And for reasons Susan Sontag discussed long ago, the fact of photographic selection means that even where a picture appears to have a definite semantic charge, it would be naive to take that as a veridical report, since the image may well have been chosen for that effect from a sequence of which all the rest conveyed a quite different impression."

I take photos partly as recreation, partly as a form of documentation of my environment, always with the intent of transferring something as accurately as I can. I'm so concerned with this that I don't even use Photoshop

And you?

[LINK] "300-years ceremony of Swedish-Russian battle - a political game"

The Stockholm News covers the politicization of the 300th anniversary of the Swedish-Cossack-Russian Battle of Poltava, now being used in independent Ukraine as a critical point in the formation of the Ukrainian nation.

[I]t is interesting how the battle is seen and analysed today by both Swedes and Russians. But it is of course also interesting to see the physical battlefield and to feel the atmosphere.

This was our expectations when we travelled to Poltava, today in Eastern Ukraine, to see the 300 year ceremony of the battle. To wander around the battle field, to feel the atmosphere, to imagine how it must have felt for the soldiers and to meet and discuss the event with other Swedes or Russians. We also expected to witness the re-play of the battle which was promised.

It was not much of these expecations that was fulfilled. Instead the whole event was a lecture in how a new country like Ukraine use this ceremony for strengthening its national identity.

So, how can a battle between Sweden and Russia 300 years ago be used by Ukraine today? To understand this, we must give you a short historical resume.

[. . .]

When the Swedish army moved into Russia in 1708, this was an opportunity for the Cossacks to get independence. Therefore one of their leaders Ivan Mazepa joined the Swedish army. Mazepa contributed with skilled riders but above all with local geographical knowledge.

For Russia and Tsar Peter I, this was of course nothing else than treason, but for today´s Ukrainians this was a part of a long heroic struggle for an independent Ukraine. This is even more important in a young nation which is continously overshadowed by Russia. Considering that a new gas-conflict was evolving during our visit did probably not cool down the national feelings.

This is rather controversial in Russia, where Ukraine's honouring of a man seen in Russian nationalist historiography as a trait is exceptionally unpopular.

[LINK] "Canada's Batman of the Balkans"

The Globe and Mail's Julia Belluz explores how Rob Stewart, star of the early 1990s Canadian television show Tropical Heat, became a huge star in Serbia.

Stewart starred as Nick Slaughter, a pony-tailed, hairy-chested private investigator who worked on an island, amid beautiful women in bikinis. He was embarrassed by his acting on the “cheesy show” – which he describes as “a B-version of Magnum, P.I.” and which lasted for only three seasons – until he logged onto Facebook last December and found a fan group called “Tropical Heat/Nick Slaughter” with some 17,000 (mostly Serbian) followers.

[. . .]

With his neighbour, artist and neophyte filmmaker Marc Vespi, and Vespi's sister, Liza, Stewart went to Serbia last month to film a documentary called Slaughter Nick for President that explores his superstar alter ego.

In Belgrade, they were met with public hysteria. A series of media scrums awaited their arrival, along with groups of fans in tropical shirts (Slaughter's wardrobe staple). Photographers snapped away and then jumped in front of the cameras themselves to get a picture with their national hero.

The anticipation in Serbia had been building since March, when it was leaked to the press that Stewart would perform with a Serbian punk band at its 20th-anniversary concert. “It broke out all over the papers that Nick Slaughter was coming to Serbia,” says Stewart. “It was overwhelming.”

Stewart's Serbian host, prominent political activist Srdja Popovic – whom Stewart had contacted through Facebook – says that after a national newspaper published a photo of him with Stewart, “within 15 minutes, I got 300 calls – everybody asking, ‘Will you introduce me to Nick Slaughter?' and ‘I want a photo with Nick Slaughter.' I couldn't live my normal life.”

It turns out that in the 1990s, Tropical Heat was as popular a television show as any of the South American telenovelas imported at the same time, and as common as any of the nationalist propaganda shows, too. The character even became an icon in the anti-Milosevic opposition movements.

Globalization works in unexpected ways, doesn't it? That's why I like it.