“Gentlemen take Polaroids
They fall in love, they fall in love” ~Japan (1980)

TDF Zoo L-R: Vinnie Barbera (nephew of cartoon tycoon Joseph), Ken, Peter “Big Hair”

Compiling these memoirs I sometimes fancy I understand why Anaïs Nin chose to censor her diaries (unexpurgated editions were published after her death). Not that my dalliances include the sort of scandalous sexual escapades that punctuated Nin’s life (alas), ultimately driving her to psychoanalysis, yet some details of my life might better be revealed postmortem.

When it comes to the minutiae of the Toronto Period, the contents of my archive are limited. You see, I stopped keeping a written journal in late 1986, at the height, or rather depths, of another doomed love affair. I have to rely on photographic evidence and a stash of old letters to assemble a picture of the time.

I offer these exhibits as a representation of my initiation into the bizarre world of mass-produced catalogue photography in the 1980s.

Officially, I had no photographic duties at TDF studios — I got my foot in the door as a janitor, but never got further than sweeping up the mess. Unofficially, photographers who recognized my talent snuck me into their studios (often at night) as an assistant. When the bosses were otherwise preoccupied, (you’ll have to wait for the unexpurgated version), I’d step in to help with lighting and as a “model” for test shots.

These sprawling studios were hothouses of activity and intrigue, and not just from the dozens of Fresnel lights illuminating room sets. The demands of producing flawless advertising images on schedule and on budget made for a pressure cooker work environment. Even the managers recognized the importance of letting off steam safely.

Looking back, however, I wonder how water fights around the aforementioned high-voltage lights didn’t result in someone getting fried.

This game was taken seriously. Staff would turn up with pump-action water guns of various capacities. To illustrate his position as Rambo-in-chief, the vice president, whose office was reached by a steel staircase against the end wall of the main 10,000 square foot studio, turned up with a veritable cannon, powered by a small compressor contained in a backpack and with a water capacity of, I’d guess, 4 litres. Anyone rash enough to assail his stair-top position would have to raid the fashion studio for a change of clothes.

TDF Toupé (Peter’s Mane)

“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.” ~T.S. Eliot,The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

TDF might have been short for Testosterone Development Facility (I can’t remember what the initialism stood for). Women employees (besides visiting models) tended to work in the art department. The sea-girl tangled in my net below (I forget her name) was an exception. I recall she was a top-notch assistant, as much in demand for her technical skills as her outrageous sense of humour. Many an art director’s life has been saved by a good joke delivered just as a photographer reached the end of their tether.

The lighting test (shot on 4×5 transparency film after a preliminary Polaroid) records another stress-relief tactic — Halloween at TDF.

I can’t remember what the set was intended for  ⎯ endangered Atlantic cod perhaps. Unfortunately, the hilarity of the moment caused the assistant to forget to turn the film holder in the view camera, resulting in a double-exposure. We’d already wasted expensive film on this tomfoolery, so we didn’t want to risk the wrath of the film police on another shot. Still, I proudly took the transparency back to the communal house, showing it first to the roommate with whom I’d become romantically involved. I held it against the window, framed between drapes rescued from TDF’s dumpsters.

My girlfriend, an ardent feminist who also saw in the way I crushed garlic all the violence of the patriarchy, was disgusted that I would shamelessly illustrate the wanton oppression of the feminine spirit. “Gee, we were just having fun.”

“Fun! You call that fun?”                Oh well, another romance all washed up.

Catch of the Day