Judith Thompson for Toronto Tonight

500 Weeks #29

Playwright Judith Thompson at The Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, 1990.
The background was already at the theatre.

While working at Share newspaper, I got a call from Peter, a friend from school. He had landed a multi bedroom loft style apartment on Queen St West, near Spadina Ave. in downtown Toronto and was looking for roommates. Would I be interested?

At the time of the call I was still living with my parents in the east end, while Queen St. West was the epicentre of the Toronto arts scene. I had been a regular visitor to the area since grade school, spending almost every Saturday going down to the Silver Snail comic book store – I was a long time collector - in the same neighbourhood. I was such a persistent regular; I ended up working in the store during high school.

It didn’t take long for me to accept the offer. I was moving downtown.

While living on my own dime for the first time in my life, I became involved in still photography, and being located downtown was an asset, as most of the assignments were there. Shortly thereafter, I misjudged how much it actually cost to live and survive on your own and got into financial trouble. A not uncommon occurrence, I am sure.

One of the consequences was that I missed a student loan payment – by 24 hours – and even though I called them to say I would be good to pay the day after, which was payday, the bank contacted the federal government and declared that I had defaulted on my loan.

I heard nothing more from the bank, who stopped taking the loan payments from my account, and spent the summer getting my financial house in order.  I spent the next few months living frugally, paying off store credit cards, cancelling the accounts, and ceremoniously cutting the cards into odd shapes and spirals before throwing them away.

I also moved into a less fabulous - but cheaper - apartment down the street. Shortly after moving in, I was woken up bright and early one Monday morning with a phone call from the Total Credit collection agency. They indicated that I was $12,000+ in arrears and the funds were due by Thursday. How would I be paying? 

What a way to start the week. 

I had no idea what to do. I ended up taking out a commercial bank loan - using my considerable comic book collection as collateral – assisted by my mother, who was willing to co-sign. The student loan I could not keep up with on a 10 year repayment schedule had now been compressed into 4 years and the monthly payment I was expected to make were almost as much as my rent.

I suddenly had to earn more money, any way that I could. So began what I remember as my period of working seven days a week for four years straight. For a while I worked mornings at a print shop doing graphic design and layout, then afternoons/evenings at Share doing the same. Weekends were photo assignments or darkroom work. The nature of weekly newspaper production was that the day the paper came out – Thursdays – was a day off. So I found a job driving a delivery truck. 

Playwright Judith Thompson at The Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, 1990.
No idea why she is touching the statue.

We were delivering “Toronto Tonight” a slim magazine devoted to the live theatre scene that was published every other week. The magazine was free, displayed in racks at tourist spots, hotels, theatres and comedy clubs all over the city.  The job was done with a driver and an assistant. We went to every venue, replenished the magazine supply one week, and replacing  any remaining copies of the magazine with the latest edition the next week. 

The racks also featured handbills and flyers – small, printed advertisements – that promoted the style of live shows the magazine covered. We refreshed and restocked everything in the racks, pulling out ads for shows that had closed, replacing them with new ones and restocked handbills for shows that were on-going.

When I first started, the assistant was Shaun, the editor of the magazine. Each day’s work took 12-14 hours. Toronto is large and there are many no parking zones and lots of intersections with turning restrictions. Getting to every spot was a maze. My years spent as a production assistant in films crews helped, as I already knew the parking spots, turn restrictions and many short cuts. Riding around in the truck involved a lot of talking. By the end of the first day on the job, Shaun knew I was also a photographer and had asked me to show him my portfolio. I did, and within a few weeks I was photographing an assignment for Toronto Tonight. Suddenly I had a second photography client and was working with performers - in colour!

Full colour printing only became economically and technically feasible for small publications in the early 1990s. Previously, anything printed on newsprint paper was strictly black and white. Colour photography was also much more complicated, with more technical requirements on lighting and exposure. Challenges which I both loved and embraced as technical challenges are the most interesting part of photography to me, and my primary visual influences – comic books and movies – are mainly in colour.

My first assignment was to photograph playwright Judith Thompson. Two of her plays, “The Crackwalker” and “Lion in the Streets” were being presented at The Tarragon Theatre in Toronto – where she was the playwright-in-residence – and where I shot the assignment. My job was to create a colour image for the cover of the magazine and something in B&W for the inside. 

I didn’t have much equipment at the time – a camera and a tripod, plus an on-camera flash, which I had figured out how to turn into an off-camera flash by mounting it on a light stand,  and bouncing the light into a small umbrella.

With so little lighting equipment, I had to work with what was available at the location and maybe add my one extra light. The theatre had a big moon on one wall that was lit red, which caught my eye. I decided to use that as the background for the cover image, with the addition of my own light coming in from the side. For the black and white images for the inside of the publication, I had Ms. Thompson pose near other props. 

This was probably the first time I set up and directed a cover shoot. My photos had been used as covers previously, but were all photojournalist images, that I captured as the event occurred. This was different. I got to choose the spots where we would take the photos, and had multiple chances to capture different expressions on the subject's face. For a first attempt, I thought the images were quite good.

Playwright Judith Thompson on the cover of Toronto Tonight magazine.
I don't know if I agree that this was the most compelling image to use.

However, for some unknown or forgotten reason, of all the images I took, the magazine chose the photo of Ms. Thompson with what was, to my eye, the dullest expression. As I’ve lamented before, if you give a client the opportunity to choose the wrong image, they will.

Technical stuff: Nikon FE camera with a Mikon 50mm f/1.8 lens using Kodak 5113 Ektapress Plus 400 colour negative and Kodak T-MAX 400 B&W negative films. Lighting is a combination of available light and a Vivitar 285HV flash used off camera, bounced into a small umbrella.