Walk For Life and newspaper memories
500 Weeks #32
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| Black CAP (Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention) members (clockwise from left) Courtnay McFarlane, Angela Robertson, Stefan Collins, Dionne Falconer, Bentley Ball, Cecelia St. Louis and David Harrison at Walk For Life in Toronto in 1991. |
By October 1991 I had been shooting photo assignments for a little over a year-and-a-half and was starting to feel comfortable in the role.
My main source of assignments – Share Newspaper – had sent me to Queens Park in Toronto, to catch up with a group called Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention - Black CAP - who would be at the Walk for Life, a walkathon fundraiser for AIDS research. I went, found the group, and staged them all together for a photo under the shade of a tree.
On any editorial assignment, the photographer should try and bring back more than the obvious. You learn to look around and capture a few images the editor didn’t ask for, but still might like. I was confident enough that day that I barely took any extra photos, convinced that the group image was all that the editor would want. The photo ran in the paper, I filed the negatives and thought nothing more of it.
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| Courtnay McFarlane, displaying Black CAP's black cap. |
Then, in February 2019, I received the following message through Facebook from Courtnay McFarlane, who I did not know, which opened with:
“I am curating an archival exhibit looking at organizing in Black communities in the 80's and 90's and I came across an image of yours that was published in Share. It was in the October 17, 1991 edition of the paper.
The image is of a group of Black CAP volunteers who had taken part in a walkathon to raise funds for AIDS research.
Not sure if you are the photographer, or if you would have negatives from that long ago in your archives, but I would love to get that image printed and exhibited as part of the show.
Please let me know.”
I responded with:
“You found the right person. Can you take a photo of the printed image and send it to me? I file negatives based on the name of the event. I don’t have anything in my files under AIDS walk from 1991.”
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| I don't have any note indicating who these are. Does anyone know? |
Mr. McFarlane then sent me a snapshot of a newspaper clipping he had been saving – for 28 years - that featured one of my photos. I took a look, read the description at the bottom of the clipping and discovered the error. I had been searching under “A” for AIDS walkathon, but the cutline referenced Walk For Life. So I went back to my files, located the “W” section, and there were the negatives, tucked away under “Walk For Life.” It took less than 10 minutes.
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| Can anyone place a name to this un-identified volunteer working at Walk For Life, Toronto in 1991? |
Mr. McFarlane was excited, and the project moved forward. He had a list of other people he was interested in and yes, I had photographed some of the others as well, including Willie Ninja, who I will try and feature in the near future.
The result was several large prints for his excellent “Legacies In Motion” exhibit, which were very well received by the audience at the show.
I was surprised by how good the photos looked on display, and by how positive the response from the guests at the exhibit was. This got me thinking about my photo archive as something that should be explored. I have long had the belief that photos were valuable the week they were taken and 25 years later. Well, over 25 years have elapsed, and it was this inquiry by Mr. McFarlane that got me contemplating about creating this blog.
By the time I took the photo Mr. McFarlane held onto – for almost three decades – I had about 18 months of experience as an editorial photographer, and had gotten quite comfortable with the requirements. All things considered, they were not very challenging. Share was a community weekly, with modest circulation numbers and paid commensurately small assignment fees. The editor was content with any image that was in focus and framed in the centre, so he could crop it to fit the space available. For me, the assignments taught me to show up on time, be polite, record the names of everyone I photograph, and try to get an image with everyone’s eyes open.
However, that same month, a sequence of events changed everything. But that is a story for another blog post.
Technical stuff: Nikon FE 35mm film camera with Nikkor 35mm, f/2.0, 50mm f/1.8 and maybe a Nikkor 85 28mm f/2.0 lens, lenses using Kodak T-MAX 400 B&W negative film.
Interview with Mr. McFarlane about his exhibit:
Show link:
http://www.myseumoftoronto.com/programming/legacies-in-motion-black-queer-toronto-archival-project/
More coverage:
https://anglescovered.blogspot.com/2019/03/new-exhibition-showcases-black-queer.html
Featured in Canadian Art magazine:
https://canadianart.ca/features/group-theory/
Black CAP is still around:
Walk For Life is still going on:
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