Catching Up.
It’s been a minute - let’s catch up over some photos.
8th Street Station. All images in this blog entry (unless otherwise stated): © Tyler A.W. Burke. 2024.
Firstly, a change: I’ve been shooting street less as a daily exercise and more as a treat when I’m able. It’s certainly a deviation from 2020-2022 when I was going out nearly every day, but it hasn’t all been bad. I feel like shooting in concentrated bursts has allowed some beginner’s mind to seep back into my process and has left the door open to experimentation. For example: I’ve been trying my hand at more layered and busy ideas. A photo like 8th Street Station (above) would have been 2 or 3 separate photographs a year ago (e.g. this photo and this photo); this time I set up wider and waited longer for more elements to come together in-frame. I enjoy the architectural elements, cut up as they are by the strongly contrasting light and shadow, I enjoy the implied forlornness of the silhouetted figures and the slightly melancholic demeanour of the spotlit passerby, and I love that all of this subtle drama is unfolding in such a banal location as the 8th Street C-Train station. There’s an unexpected coldness to this photo that betrays all the apparent sunlight; a commentary, in my mind, to how city life can feel.
A Return to Inglewood Food Mart, December 2023. © Tyler A.W. Burke. 2023.
Despite experimenting with different compositions, I feel like my subject hasn’t altered that much: I still am exploring life in a city that has traded character for commerciality. At my first two art markets, a lot of people expressed their appreciation of the hold-out, character communities, buildings, and businesses represented in several of the prints I was selling. People care about these spaces. I like to think it’s because there’s something beautiful coextensive with character that is lacking when efficiency, profit, and other “rational” measures are overvalued and therein embodied in a city’s architecture and infrastructure. Some people found a representation of themselves and their journey in my moodier downtown commuter photographs, but more people had an emotional reaction to the prints of The Blue Store and often shared warm stories of their time living in Inglewood.
4th and the +15. All images in this blog entry: © Tyler A.W. Burke. 2023.
The energy at my first market (Market Collective Holiday Market 2023) was inspiring. I especially have to thank my partner for all of her support - we poured a lot of time and effort into designing and building the displays, selecting and packaging inventory, and so on. Belayed by the support my work was receiving after the first weekend of the market, I carved out some time to get out and shoot some new photos during the week. I wound up using my X100V a lot on those mid-December walks as I explored wider compositions in places I had previously created tighter images - both A Return to Inglewood Foot Mart and 4th and the +15 above are products of that effort. Creatively I was feeling good, and after the holidays, in early January, I made it back out for a few more walks and made the following photos:
February marked my second Market Collective, and once again discussing my photography and the city with market patrons led to a surge in creative energy. Given the location, I was even able to fit in a couple of quick photo walks. Below is a photo directly across the street from the venue:
Calgary Central Library. © Tyler A.W. Burke. 2024.
Immediately afterwards, I made it out for another series of rewarding walks:
March was exceptionally busy and I didn’t make it out very often. Walking to a Flames game, I noticed an interesting composition in the early evening, and made a mental note to return with my camera soon. The next day, I got out and made Superior on 17th (below) - again with the X100V. It’s busier than my typical composition, but there’s a competition in the photo between timelessness and contemporariness that I find interesting: the old-fashioned sign contrasts with the billboards in the same way the low-lying auto body shop contrasts with the apartment high-rises, and despite all this a passerby merely continues on about their evening.
Superior on 17th. © Tyler A.W. Burke. 2024.
April through June was a blur, and I did almost no street photography except for a couple of walks to try my hand at documenting the soon-to-be-redeveloped Condon Block building. Condon Block, For Now is my favourite of the set and is an experiment with depth that I’m still trying out:
Condon Block, For Now. © Tyler A.W. Burke. 2024.
This July, I made an effort to get out on the streets during the Stampede. During the parade I tried my hand at creating a set showing various downtown Calgary locations adjacent to the route without focusing on the parade itself. Below are some exemplars from that effort:
And that just about brings us up to now.
A couple of exhibition notices: I am currently part of an online Shutter Hub exhibition TEN, celebrating the organization’s tenth anniversary; my submission for TEN focused on photos I had taken on or just off of tenth street. I also have work included in the Shutter Hub Yearbook Awards 2024 exhibition, which opened on August 8. A lot of the time I’ve had for my fine art practice these past few weeks has been spent on various applications and updating my portfolios - fingers crossed for some additional hits there. Irrespective of any success, the forward motion has felt rewarding.
Until next time,
