A Home in Los Angeles, California (2)

Edgar R. Morrissey, around 1928

St. Joseph's Oratory, Montreal

A Winter Night

A Home in Los Angeles, California (1)

A Tree In Hollywood, California

The Vehicule Poets

The Vehicule Poets, Montreal, Maker Press, 1979. Front cover, top: Ken Norris, Tom Konyves, Stephen Morrissey; back cover, bottom: Endre Farkas, Claudia Lapp, Artie Gold, John McAuley. Group photo taken at Vehicule Art Gallery by Chris Knudsen.

Doors and Portals

The Chinese gardens at the Montreal Botanical Gardens.

A mausoleum at Mount Royal Cemetary, Montreal.

An upstairs room at St. Michael's Church, Mile End, Montreal.

An upstairs room at St. Michael's Church, Mile End, Montreal.

An entrance to St. Patrick's Basilica, Montreal.

Notes on Photography (unrevised) One

Alexis Nihon Plaza, solarium, 2013

1. Unless I was taking a picture of a person, or a group of people, I always felt that people in my photographs spoiled the photo. Often, I waited until someone passing by would be out of the scene before I would take the photo. I don’t know where I got this idea of not wanting people in the photograph, but eventually I realized what I was doing and purposely waited to photograph a scene minus anyone who may have been in it. Perhaps knowing that there was someone there just a second before and perhaps a second after the photograph was taken, adds something to the photo. 

2. I began to see my photographs as another aspect of my creativity and not just snapping away at pictures for no reason. I realized that the photographs I took are an act of creativity in addition to the poems I was writing. Some of the photographs manifested the same psychic content of my poems. 

3. Today, I sometimes want people in my photographs. People in a photograph can sometimes heighten the intensity of the image. I am also interested in the irony one can observe in life, of the humour that exists in what might seem to lack humour. 

4. I never thought of my photographs as “snapshots” although perhaps that is what they are. These snapshots were always an expression of my inner being, unless it was a photograph of friends or relatives. Then it was archival work, documentation, family history or some event in which people congregated. But always the finiteness of time, of life, has been somewhere in my consciousness, even when I was a child, and it is present in some way in many of my photographs. Since I have researched my family’s history for many years, I have taken many archival photographs, or photographs for documentation and research purposes, of graves, churches, old buildings, and other places of interest. This is a large part of my body of photographic work. 

5. When I worked in the Science and Engineering Library in the Hall Building of Sir George Williams University in the early 1970s, I would look through books of photographs that were part of their collection. That’s where I saw a photograph of Dostoyevsky’s desk, which I mentioned in a poem in my first book, The Trees of Unknowing (Montreal, Vehicule Press, 1978). Later, over several years, I took photographs of my own desk. Then it occurred to me that these photographs of clutter were also a way to divine the psyche and life of the person whose desk was being photographed. It was a kind of photograph of the person, it was a way of seeing their psyche and ego in the clutter of the desk. I have always loved looking through books of photographs, whether it is famous artists like Diane Arbus or Anselm Adams, old photographs of cities and people by now anonymous photographers, or contemporary photographs by as yet unrecognized artists. 

6. A subject of some of my photographs are archetypal images, something that was pointed out to me by CZ. I believe there is an order to the universe that can be observed in mythology and archetypes. Life is not a series of random meaningless events; life is full of meaning, with an order to the universe. My photographs of archetypal images, as we tried to do with the Aquarian Symbols (Vancouver & Montreal, Coracle Press, 2000), are meant to open a portal into the depths of consciousness. 

7. I’ve always owned a camera. Since I was ten, eleven, or twelve years of age I’ve taken photographs; it was never considered "unusual," it was never a decision, if I was interested in taking photographs then I was given the means to take photographs. Photography has been a source of happiness for me. I have enjoyed living a fairly solitary life, and photography has been an important part of what I do, in addition to writing, in order to fulfill the meaning of my existence. Photography is a way, like poetry, that I can be creative, but I can also express my concerns about life. If there is an art form other than poetry that I feel is a true expression of my inner being, an expression of the divine presence in life, of the epiphanous moment that captures an existential reality, the transience of the human condition, it is photography.

St. Hubert Street

The sidewalks on the several blocks of St. Hubert Street are covered, making it an attractive shopping district. This is the street in Montreal where brides' and bridesmaids' gowns, and just about everything else that is needed for a wedding, can be found in the dozens of stores lining both sides of this street. St. Hubert Street is a Temple to the Wedding, a street dedicated to the Feminine, to union, new beginnings, an affirmation of life, sexuality, and joie de vivre.

Stairs, St. Patrick's, St. Joseph's

Stairs on St. Alexandre entering St. Patrick's Basilica, Montreal.

Stairs at St. Joseph's Oratory, Montreal.

James Wilson Morrice

James Wilson Morrice was born at Montreal on August 10, 1865; he died in Tunis, Tunisia on January 23, 1924. Morrice was one of the first Canadian modernist painters and achieved acceptance in Europe before being acclaimed in Canada. Regarding Morrice's work, George Woodcock writes, "They are among the first truly great Canadian paintings."

Our Last Day at 4350 Montclair Avenue, March 23, 2007, 5 p.m.

I returned to the empty house at 5 p.m. and took some of these photographs. I had been there earlier in the day when the movers arrived. The photographs of the house, furnished, were taken the previous Christmas, 2006. The group photo, from left to right, is my mother, myself, and my sister-in-law Kathy. This was our family home from spring 1962 to March 23, 2007.

At Edmonton City Hall

To my left, a rainy day outside Edmonton City Hall. To my right, several hundred people at the League of Canadian Poets' awards night during their Annual General Meeting, June 2007.

The Hermes Building

A crowd of people passes the Hermes Building on Peel Street in downtown Montreal.

Smokers' Corner at Edmonton Airport

The comfortable smokers' lounge at Edmonton Airport, for those eighteen years and older.

What we all need...

Seen on St. Francis Xavier Street in Old Montreal.