The Meaning in the Making: Talking PictureS

I keep a paperback copy of Sean Tucker’s compact book, The Meaning in the Making, close at hand. Tucked away in a bag I carry with me every day. I am struck by this professional photographer and filmmaker’s take on creativity. He says, “When we pick up a paintbrush, or compose elements through our camera viewfinders, or press fingers into wet clay to sculpt form from a shapeless lump, we are bending things back toward Order and wrestling them from Chaos.” His message is clear, and it’s in the subtitle: ‘The why and how behind our human need to create.” I may have an understanding of what he is speaking about — it’s about this act of trying to make sense of what we’re feeling, that attempt to figure out our initial response to what we see, or experience. We turn to the page, or to the camera, or maybe we sit and daydream, and never let go of the moment. Tucker says it is “an act of defiance in the face of that evolving disorder.”

Strange as it might seem, I see that in places that I return to, and in some instances, the relationship to these places seems so remote, so far out of the reach of what one might think would interest me. Still, I go back, and each time, there’s the impulse to understand, to puzzle over where and how this curiosity or fixation originates, and why it leads to me writing about it and photographing it.

Is this mere documentation? Reportage? By ‘place’ I am referring specifically to a local boxing club about a 10 minute drive from my house, situated on Drouillard Road in the shadows of the old Fort Motor Company plant. I have been associated with this club for years, dating back to when I was a reporter with The Windsor Star, and my job was in circulating tales about local heroes, and in this establishment, there were many. My involvement eventually led me to putting together a book called A Show of Hands where I photographed these young fighters and urged them to write about what their experience was in the ring.

I still remember the first day I strolled into this gym and was met by Josh Canty. He was working with a young boxer but immediately engaged me in a conversation. I confessed that I was merely stopping in to see what his boxing club was like. I had no interest, of course, in training, or fighting.. I merely wanted to soak up the atmosphere of this boxing centre that was producing champions, like three-time world champion Margaret Sidoroff. Over the next few months — and then years — my relationship with the club and its trainers and fighters grew,. Indeed, at one point, I actually entered the ring myself for an exhibition match, and truth be told, though I did not lose the fight, I lost my hearing in one ear.

There is something about this club that because it faces west, it gets a direct hit from the late afternoon sun as it settles down over the buildings, and silhouettes the fighters as they skip, work the heavy bag, or shadowbox. The light wildly throws off the exposure in the camera, but its harshness makes for some dramatic portraits. And if it is a cloudy day, the vast room with a full size ring and a wall of floor-to-ceiling mirrors darkens. I gravitate to such conditions, as if they are two sides of a personality, maybe even reflective of the human emotions that arise in this environment, And maybe in the making, as Tucker suggests, I am struggling with trying to arrange my reactions, weigh them, analyze them, explore them, relive them.

I am not at all certain of the message, if indeed there is a message.

The pictures are there, snapped as I roam the big room, with little or no attention being paid to me by the boxers. They are simply going about the task of getting in shape, preparing for the provincials and nationals, praying for a shot at a little bit of glory, and to that end, some work harder than others. My move is to stand back, poke in, apprehend those tiny moments, and compress them into a frame on my camera. There are gifts in the action, sometimes just the way the light suddenly breaks through the hazy big storefront windows, and sends vertical lines across the hardwood floors, or the way it shimmers on the arms and necks of the boxers as they lean on the ropes to watch the action.

Admittedly In a way, I might be describing a cliche, but it’s living, and it’s real.

But how do you translate that into a picture that says all of that without cluttering up your brain with a myriad of stereotypical impressions? I can’t tell you. But in thinking about what Sean Tucker says, I reconsider my fascination with ‘place.’ And how it might affect my perspective, some deep wish to make sense of life in this neighbourhood, or at least my connection to it. It occurred to me it might have to do with my father, who arrived on this same street back in 1926. He was 16 years old, and he had travelled south from Cobalt, searching for a job. Luck was with him, He started at a car parts manufacturing company, and moved to Albert Road, right there in the neighbourhood. The car factories were crowding into that part of the city, too My father worked on the line, and over the years soon was in charge of the factory. My father, however, was no boxer. But he loved watching the matches on a small black and white television that broadcast the famous Friday Night Fights from 1948 to 1960, a show sponsored by the Gillette Razor Company. There were times in my childhood that my father would let me sit up, and I’d squeeze in next to him and watch the grainy screen of the TV set stuck in a dark corner of the room.. I recall Oct. 26, 1951. I had just turned five years old. My father told me, “Watch that big fellow — he’s going to show that man a thing or two.” He was referring to Joe Louis, and told me he would take down Rocky Marciano. But.I saw Detroit’s legend topple to the canvas in the last rounds. Norman Mailer in writing about it said Marciano was throwing punches at Louis like he had bricks in each hand. In that Esquire Magazine piece in February 1963 called ‘A Thousand Words A Minute” the New York novelist, turned reporter, described the old champion being knocked down, “like an old tree or momentous institution coming down,…. It was like the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: something generous had just gone out of the world.”

Interesting what Mailer says about the sports photographers from the 1950s and early 1960 who covered boxing.. He was surprised that in the 1962 match between Patterson and Liston, there was not one picture of a glove even touching the challenger, Patterson. “It is not highly probable the photographers missed every decent punch. Fight photographers are capable of splitting the strictest part of a second in order to get the instant of impact.” But if you watch the video, Liston pummels and punishes Patterson, and knocks him to the canvas several times.

When I first started going to the nieghbourhood boxing gym and later to the scheduled fights — and I drove all over Ontario, Ohio and Michigan — I was initially intimidated. It did not take long before that vanished. The reason in part is that fighters love pictures, and I gave them out freely.

There is maybe the sense that in documenting them, I was after a story, a story that somehow might define, or characterize something of that culture. Yet there has to be more. It can’t simply be a statement. It can’t just be reporting. The pictures ought to resonate — they must have a voice. But how? People will tell you what’s missing in a photograph are all the other senses, like smell and sound and taste. I don’t see that. I look at boxing photographs, and maybe it’s because I have been here so many times to this club, that there is a hint of that leathery smell, or sweat, something familiar like a cottage smell or a church or barber shop, or that earth smell of spring. It’s all about association, but certainly it has something to do with what’s in the photograph. Or in the lines that one writes, or in the way a story is told from one person to another — it’s captured, and certainly swirling in and around it are all those sensory impressions, bells ringing, shouts, the hiss and grunt and sounds of bombs being thrown at bare arms of a fighter, and of course, and of course the taste of sweat on the lips, the blur of colour. You simply need to pay attention. You will see it, touch it, hear it, smell it, taste it.

The Guardian Newspaper

Max Kandhola, photography lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, knows about this. He wanted to capture something of the prizefighter's essence, and came away with a 96-page book The Aura of Boxing. Surprisingly, he did not use a 35 mm camera. Instead, he dragged a 4x5 plate camera and a ruler into a club and shouldered it around day after day to document the action. He came away with a different understanding of the game, and in The Guardian in April 2014, he felt there was “an elegant intelligence to boxing,: and described the boxers as “graceful performers elevated within the theatre of their dreams.” He said, “Brecht would compare the theatre to the boxing ring – a place of drama, the audience anticipating every gesture and sound.”

Kandhola described his approach: “I used a 4x5 plate camera, a Hasselblad 500C/M, a Mamiya 645, a Polaroid instant camera, a tape measure, sketchbook and pencils. With my 4x5 camera I had a ruler taped to the side, which gave me a point of reference. Walking around the gym, with a blanket over my head so I could see the screen, it was difficult to gain a steady point of focus. The ruler acted as a guide, and when it would caress the surface of the boxers’ body, face or elbow, I knew I was in focus! I looked through the plate glass with the blanket over my head, to frame the subject in darkness. After 30 or 40 minutes of walking around with this 4x5 camera strapped around my neck, supporting its weight with both hands, I would be exhausted.

Kandhola started photographing the canvas floor, a natural, I guess, but of course, one would think you would point the camera at the fighters, or the memorabilia. Instead, he went to the boxing ring. “The canvas is the boxers’ sacred shroud, on which you may fall, or on which you are resurrected to perform another day. I see the canvas as a blank sheet of paper, prepared each time a boxer enters the ring. The trace of the boxer is an imprint, as a new scripture is written, orchestrated by the subtle ballet movements of the body and feet. After each sparring match or fight, the canvas is rewritten.”

It makes sense, doesn’t it?

The other aspect, Kandhola points out, is that in experiencing the boxing club, he stepped into an
”intimacy” that he probably never imagined. There times when he was pushed or punched because he was too close to the immediate action. I have felt that. I had my lens partially through the ropes trying to get closer to this fighter working his opponent in the corner, and at one point, the glove hit the lens of my camera and sent me to the floor. The memory of that jamming against the bridge or dorsum of my nose.

“One should not only photograph things for what they are but for what else they are,” says American photographer and critic Minor White. Or as Singapore photographer Jia Meng suggests, pictures ought to offer something of the ‘unexpected.” True enough, you never know where a picture will take you. Capturing the moment is the first step, and how it plays out afterwords may be greater than what you noticed. Then again it might draw upon something deeper and rooted within you. Understanding ‘place’ and how it arises in my writing and photography could also deliver the ‘unexpected.” Roland Barthes, the French philosopher, calls this maybe the “cultural construct.”

In his book Camera Lucida, he states the reality in the photography is a representation of the cultural, historical, and social context mixed in with the personal, emotional and subjective response to the image.

That’s easy enough to understand. But are the pictures talking back? Do they have a voice? And what is that makes you take up a pen, or a camera, or sit and sketch a place? Time and time again, I return to this boxing club, often photographing the same fighters. Why? What am I seeking?

I do know this: I feel at home.

AUTUMN RAINY DAY & NIGHT

A rainy autumn day, a string of them, today darker with no chance of sun. Slipped on a better pair of boots, weather proof, and headed into the woods just at the limits of the city. A long loopy trail took me into an embrace of greens and bits of yellow. The rain was coming harder, but the colours begin to take on a lustre that one finds in all this wet. I unzipped my coat, and tucked the camera inside and kept walking. What struck me in such a landscape is how the rain is transformative, not only by enriching the colours and tones, but also by signalling something of the direction or perspective or symmetry of the scene. That’s what drew me to this large oak with its spirally arranged leaves with lobed edges, and a nut called an acorn, borne in a cup. The tree looked like it leapt out of a children’s storybook, and it was quietly heralding the start of a trail. All around its base were fallen leaves, touches of red and orange and yellow, and beyond the straight up and down vertical lines, softened greens and yellows. All glow and hue courtesy of the rain. Yesterday when the sun peaked out from behind a dark sky, I might not never have noticed. I was feeling a little anxious, too, because I had just been released from the hospital after six nights of a serious flare up with Crohn’s Disease. Or maybe it was compounded with walking in the rain, and wanting to find pictures to capture a Fall day. In any cases, I was there, keeping up the pace. Landscape or nature has its own signature style when it comes to photography. In most cases, photographers run out for a street scene, and easily capture umbrellas, rain jackets, puddles, reflections on the road, wind-swept trees with cars parked below, and at night, streaks of colourful light. The forest by contrast sits back, and watches you, It wants nothing of your attention, or at least, seems so, as it appears wrapped in mystery and silence. Unlike parts of the world, like the Amazon, where the earth ‘summons the rain” as the New York Times’ writer Ferris Jabr says, our area sees it as a gift, and after a summer of heat and dry, people in coffee shops will hunker over their cups and glance outside, and stay, ‘We need this rain!’ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would agree. Indeed he took this position: ‘How beautiful is the rain! After the dust and heat, in the broad and fiery street and in the narrow lane; how beautiful is the rain!’ And so, we venture forth into the woods, seeking something of its lushness, and learning how the wind will sweep pollen, leaf fragments and insect shells into the atmosphere. As Jabr writes, “The wet breath of the forest peppered with microbrews and organic residues … creates ideal conditions...” And I would add, to the physiognomy that poses before us when we step into its home. Before us is this transformation, and deep in its source is this part of the planet perhaps renewing itself. We ought to tap into that. We have to approach with a lightness, a shyness, and need to keep our eyes open. Patterns of leaves, and at this point in the Fall, here in the southwest, set against the sky, it could still be summer but the edges of the leaves, if you look closely are turning colour, like finding an annoying smudge or lipstick stain on a coffee mug that you take from the cupboard, and wonder if someone didn’t wash it properly.

But again, there is something fundamental and deep rooted in the way nature presents itself, or what we first perceive. It reminds me how in the Qur-an we are told that whenever we look at the natural world we find a revelation of the divine. “Muslims,” writes Karen Armstrong, “are far more impressed by the regular rhythms of nature than by the supernatural miracles celebrated in the Jewish and Christian scriptures … because … the natural order is the revelation of divine power and wisdom … All creatures praise God simply by existing …” She goes on to stay the ‘invisible forces of nature are sacred.”

David Abram, an American anthropologist believes at an earlier stage in human history we would have experienced nature as ‘animate too, but over time we have come to regard it as mechanical, prosaic and predictable.” He says a closer look gives us insight “leaving one open to a world alive, awake and aware.” He gives the example of watching a sunbeam illuminate a column of dust and realized in that instant maybe something of the divine but certainly of the mechanical of how this sudden lighting up of the dust particles,“imbued the air currents with warmth but altered the mood of the room.”

There’s something to that when I step into the woods. A familiar respect. Especially in the rain, or the early morning and late day light. There is a giving-to, a surrender maybe to its will, to step into its patterns and rhythms. To let the dark and the light and the shimmering colours have their effect.

Where the urban street can come alive in the rain as people rush home, driving or walking or running for a bus, the woods retreat, though deer will often continue to graze, heedless of the storm. Wild turkey, often seen in these parts, behave differently, If you go out at dawn and it is silent and calm, maybe a slight rain, you might find one of these gobblers roosting somewhere, waiting out the storm. As one writer noted: ‘I’ve succumbed to the chills or boredom of wet, silent woods and stood up to go prospecting, only to bust a lazy longbeard off a limb nearby. Even turkeys are prone to slapping that snooze button when conditions are dreary. Let him make the first move.” Turkeys flock to open areas, and around these parts, you will find them in the Tall Grass, or soaked fields, “brush-busting” as it has been described as they make their wat through water-landed vegetation. But today, here, in these woods, the day was silent, the trail itself like a sentence in a line of poetry, taking you on a journey, beckoning you to be patient. Still, I found myself hurried, and at times messed up on a couple of photographs, where I ought to have reset the depth-of-field. Later when I climbed back into my car, a leaf fell to the wet window, like a face in the crowd, and behind it the vast array of greens and blacks and hints of other colours. Like the final line of the poem suddenly showing itself.

Much later, I went back out at night, drove down to the river, the Ambassador Bridge glowing in the misty evening. The rain had just started again. Light drizzle but persistent. My attention was this tiny brick building, actually a public washroom, its architecture with that dip and slant of its rooftop reminiscent of a circus tent. The photograph shows it huddled in the shadow of the towering massive suspension bridge, the trail of lights leading back into the city from the river. A misty night, the glow around the quizzical building with its flipped up lines of the roof, like a French bob cut. I parked my car across the park and walked back across the lawn and then captured the sculpture of the nuns leaning into the wind, all intent and fierce evangelism at play in the rainy night. Here is where you feel the colours coalesce into an evenness, a muted tone highlighted by the sharpness of the bridge’s path.

A good day and night.

Black Walnuts in October

There is something about trees, straight and tall and the way they stand. I caught sight of them as I wound my way into Heritage Village just off the Arner Townline. The Black Walnut grove is to the right of the dirt road that winds around and into the village. My focus was this tree stand, and as I moved closer, small groups of these trees huddled, one or two shyly pausing behind one another, stock still, like children in the schoolyard who cease playing to spy your car drive by, and now they’re watching me. I have something to learn from them. It reminds me of a quote from the German novelist Hermann Hesse who declared trees to be “the most penetrating of preachers.” He wrote, “I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche.” Hesse says: “Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.” Hesse also describes trees as “sanctuaries … Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.” The German writer finally says, “A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.”

Peter Wohlleben, a forester turned writer and philosopher, takes the story further in his book, The Hidden Life of Trees. As someone whose lifetime is working in forests, he learned that trees experience pain and have memories and that tree parents live together with their children, and then you can no longer just chop them down and disrupt their lives with large machines. He recounts going out one day and passing by a collection of odd mossy stones he had seen many times before. This time, however, the arrangement looked different, and so he bent down and picked up one of the stones. They seemed odd-shaped, curbed with hollowed-out areas. He writes: “Carefully, I lifted the moss on one of the stones. What I found underneath was tree bark. So, these were not stones, after all, but old wood. I was surprised at how hard the “stone” was, because it usually takes only a few years for beechwood lying on damp ground to decompose. But what surprised me most was that I couldn’t lift the wood. It was obviously attached to the ground in some way. I took out my pocketknife and carefully scraped away some of the bark until I got down to a greenish layer. Green? This color is found only in chlorophyll, which makes new leaves green; reserves of chlorophyll are also stored in the trunks of living trees. That could mean only one thing: this piece of wood was still alive! I suddenly noticed that the remaining “stones” formed a distinct pattern: they were arranged in a circle with a diameter of about 5 feet. What I had stumbled upon were the gnarled remains of an enormous ancient tree stump. All that was left were vestiges of the outermost edge. The interior had completely rotted into humus long ago — a clear indication that the tree must have been felled at least four or five hundred years earlier. How can a tree cut down centuries ago  could still be alive? Without leaves, a tree is unable to perform photosynthesis, which is how it converts sunlight into sugar for sustenance. The ancient tree was clearly receiving nutrients in some other way — for hundreds of years.”

Much later when I returned home from walking in this over-cast autumn day, I processed the pictures, and printed out a picture from that day, the one of the Black Walnut grove, and used a 100% cotton fibre based paper with beautiful tonal transitions to show it off. My wife nodded approvingly and tipped her head to one side, then remarked, “That’s nice.” The response was not at all what I expected. I never anticipated praise. Somehow maybe I couldn’t capture that quiet, solitary, surprised look, or stand-back and hesitant cloistered aura of the moment. I must return. Fay Goodwin, a British photographer known for her black and white images of the British countryside, said, “I like photographs that leave something to the imagination.” So, maybe it’s that. Maybe there is too much in the picture, not enough of subtlety to leave the picture posing its own challenges, provoking the imagination of the viewer to script their own tale. I am not sure. Still, the picture warms my heart.

FRAMES MAGAZINE

This appeared this week on the FRAMES Magazine site. It was a pleasure working with Tomasz Trzebiatowski, the editor of the magazine to produce this little video.

Television images

I have always been fascinated by the television screen. I sit with my camera waiting for images to occur that when taken out of context generate countless scenarios never meant or considered by the script or advertisement writers. This is nothing new of course. Lee Friedlander in particular did a whole series of captures from the television in a 1960s series called ‘The Little Screens’ which show television screens propped up near radiators, or on dresser tops, or in motel rooms, anonymous spaces, as someone once wrote, “pairing disquieting glowing TV images with their mid-century surroundings.” He worked primarily with black and white film with a Leica 35 mm camera, and put his attention to the social landscape that included urban life as he encountered it: storefronts, shadows, reflections, rows of fences, bathrooms, doorways. Some of it is so fascinating: an eyeball filling the screen, face of a movie star, or another of a mirrored door along with a view of the bathroom and to one side a glowing television. I relate to his fascination.

As interesting, but really not to my taste, is Harry Gruyaert who found his inspiration with  “the ubiquitous cathodic ray tube televisions” of the 1970s. He wanted to document the world as viewed from the living room, or as he suggested from popular daytime shows like Coronation Street or the BBC coverage of the Munich Olympis, or the Apollo flights.. His resulting images are bizarre distortions, weird colours. Gruyaert said. “It made me see the world in a different way and to question the ever-growing influence of television throughout the world.” Some regarded this work as a parody of current affairs, political figures, big sporting events, everyday life — the observation being that this was the way millions of people experienced the changing political and social changes all around them — through the television set. One might say we have evolved to an even more intimate way, now carrying that little box around with us in our hands every day. Our world seems ruled by it. It is literally an extension of us. His work with the television screen — weird and flashy colours, nearly abstract in their rendering — were first exhibited in 1974. He developed his style by manipulating an antenna and messing with the controls and suddenly he was being deluged with weird colours and shapes. As I say, not a great fan of it. But I could see his intention, and sometimes when I am slumped down over the iPad, I slip out the X-100v Fuji, switch to a favourite simulation, adjust the focus, and gently press the shutter.  As Elliott Erwitt, the French-born American photographer says, “You can find pictures anywhere. It’s simply a matter of noticing things …”

This brings me to last night, sitting in front of my iPad and watching my grandson, 20-year-old Julien, skating with the Calgary Canucks in the AJHL, and hoping he is going to score, and indeed, he finally deflected the puck past the goalie in the first period. I watched the replay closely and took out my iphone and captured the moment. An aerial shot. I can read his #16, red and yellow jersey colours, and feel the way his body sails in toward the net, while four opposing players float into the weary pantomime like innocent bathers in the lake — and there’s the puck already tucked away at the corner of the ragged net like a sock in a drawer. It’s the movement, but when I blow up the photograph, combined with the grit of the iPad screen, the arena meshing, the orange glow of the lights overhead in the room, the muted colours on the ice, the blur effect, this is a painting. It is more real and vidid and glowing than the moment itself. It’s really like someone spinning a tale, layering upon it all their biases and impressions, and telling it over and over again, until it is far from the truth. Sure, it’s my grandson. Sure it’s the first of three goals he scored that night. But there is also a bigger picture. It’s a moment that defines a summer of unsparing discipline and fierce determination, and the sense that maybe instinctive rhythm will finally have its own way of making all of this more meaningful

One Camera, one lens

All You Need: One Camera, One Lens: Review of the new GFX100 II from Fujifilm Canada and BJPhoto Canada.

I have been using Micro four thirds cameras for many years. My -preference is small and light and naturally I moved from big DSLRs like Canon and Nikon to Fuji cameras, beginning with its first X-100 series. Now I own the X-H2, X-T5 and a X-100v. All are small, light. I operate mostly with one lens. I run out the door with the camera slung over my shoulder, and maybe, another lens tucked in a coat pocket. A practice developed after a lifetime as a journalist. I carried a Canon F-1 with a 50 mm lens.  Fires, floods, elections, summer concerts, car shows, pie-eating contests, you name it. All the gear I needed.

This brings me to the newest adventure, courtesy of BJPhoto Canada, a Waterloo Ontario family-run camera shop, and Fujifilm Canada. All the hype around the Fuji GFX100 IIcaught my interest, but I shied away because of its size, weighing  a little over two pounds. It dwarfs the X-100v (of course), but even to some extent the larger X-H2. But I heard this newest iteration adopted measures to be a better all-around camera, notably for action, street, or even sports. I gave it a try. The first photo was in a nearby woods in Windsor, and a woman passed me who was entirely taken with the first change of autumn colour in the landscape. Unbeknownst to her, I captured her with her arms stretched out behind. I took others, in the soft light, and at one point when I turned on the trail I was struck by this blaze of yellowing shimmering leaves. None of the colour — those deep reds — of Northern Ontario except for the splash of clumps of red baneberries on nearby bushes. Our woodlands instead breathe the soft yellows and faded browns of a Robert Frost’s stroll into the woods. And on my way back home, I spotted the quietude and contrast of a dark window with weathered and crumbling panes set against fine lacy curtains. A backyard picture of clothespins, the ordinary domestic scene shot at f3.5 so the clotheslines practically disappears into the array of orange and browns of a backscatter of light. I made  quick run to the other side of town — I was chasing colour, with the sun glowing on the rising towers of the new Gordie Howe International Bridge rising above the Detroit River. I finally retreated indoors to a not so well-lit room with the muted glow peaking through a set of flowered curtains, and saw how it highlighted a small windowsill figure. Lovely halo, sharp detail in the screens, dazzling but not over-the-top colours. Shooting this on simulations but backing off the Velvia choice. Another image of two newspaper frames, one from the Second World War, one of the Kennedy shooting, both awkwardly askew. And another windowsill collection of bartered hockey pucks with fading yellowed tape marking the date of a game winning goal. Again magnificent light, the story in the detail and tone of the curling tape.

I was already conscious of the GFX series’ vaunted reputation for high resolution and rich tonality in stunning studio portraits and glorious landscapes. It was aimed at the professional market. The difference this time around was transforming it into a more versatile camera product that would not limit itself. What about action? What about street photography? What about point-and-shoot? Every day portraits? For my curiosity, the real test was a neighbourhood boxing club in the shadows of the original Ford Motor plant in Windsor, Ontario. The Border City Boxing Club is home to several Canadian amateur and professional champions. It’s also home to a throng of young boxers, some of whom were rescued from the street and away from gangs of young offenders. And so, it is to this place that I ventured. One camera — the new GFX100 II— and one lens, the snub-nosed 45 mm 2.8.

I started right away with Jayden Trudell, the 19-year-old welterweight champion training hard for a rematch. He was working the pads with the wily André Gorges, the Iraqi-born former Ontario champion and now coach at the club. I only had the GFX100 II— at this point — for a little more than a few hours, and not really enough time to be comfortable with its ergonomics. I jumped right in, quickly shifting the ISO to 2,000. The day had turned overcast, and the gym that late afternoon was dark, and challenging. I set the shutter speed to 500th of a second, and shot wide open at 2.8. All jpegs straight-out-of-the-camera-provided simulations. Soon I was at ringside studying and following the lightening jabs, right crosses, body punches, and the dancing of three boxers sparring, each taking a turn, one after another. I never noticed the time running down, and then heard Jayden at ringside barking out encouragements. He leaned on the ropes, intense in his gaze, and his neck glistened in the light with sweat from his workout with André. It was then I realized I had been lugging this beast of a camera around without any effort — it could’ve just been my X-H2.  Weight wasn’t the slightest concern. This was the only package I needed. The 45 mm (equivalent 35 mm.) was the perfect focal length, fixed on Continuous focus, eight frames a second. Soon I moved to areas outside the ring, fighters working the Heavy Bag. There was Rosalind Canty, 18 years old — now Ontario Champion in bantam weight. She comes from a family of boxers. Her mother, Margaret Canty, was a three-time world champion, a professional who fought all over the world, including Japan. Framed by two  swinging heavy bags, Rosiland dipped in and out and from side to side, firing and timing quick jabs and uppercuts —the radiant background walls behind her, adorned with old photographs and boxing ephemera. As I turned away, other fighters were tiredly stuffing gloves into lockers, or into gym bags, while others wrapped their hands for sparring, or worked the speed bag or hydrated themselves after the workout, or lazed and leaned on the heavy bag catching their breath and studying  the action, while still more resumed skipping, jumping, or shadow boxing in the mirrors that covered the south wall of the club. This camera worked the scenes without a thought. Magical the way it eked out such rich, deep, gorgeous colour with detail and drama from the poor light of an old gym on a dark afternoon day.

Physically, the GFX100 II  itself appears  chunky, and prodigious, especially if you are accustomed to the  clean retro lines of a camera like the tiny x-100 or the X-T5  Mind you, this a Medium Format camera, and so it shouldn’t disguise itself as anything more than that.  The grip certainly declares its heft, but surprisingly it is a good feeling in the hand, actually steadies the hand. You are holding something substantial. And as a Medium Format, it carries a kind of elegance. Another real blessing is that when you bring the EVF to your eyes, it is vast and clear. I actually found my eyes stretching to catch the corners as I framed the action. The buttons and dials are perfectly placed with no distraction. In essence, this new GFX is really a simple camera to use. The camera is everything that Fuji promises. It will deliver arresting and handsome portraits, stunning landscapes, meaningful street action, and offers up colour and gorgeous light control. You also really don’t need to worry yourself deep into its menu system. Go with the tried and true. Set the shutter speed with a dial, twist the aperture ring to 2.8 and dial in the ISO, and there is nothing to hold the camera back. The clicking sound of the shutter is satisfying and reassuring — and the colour is dazzling. There is no real need to fiddle with Simulations. I went with whatever was in the provided list but also experimented with the  new Reala which softened the reds of the canvas ring and the nearby lockers. It provided a much truer colour to what I was seeing. Outside on the street, the Reala took on a different look, a little flatter.

This is a big step for Fuji. And for me, moving from cameras that are smaller, more accessible, in terms of heft, this was a surprise. It is versatile with blisteringly- fast autofocus, and there’s absolutely no need to fear for what unfolds in front of you as you move in to capture the action. You can trust its performance. You can concentrate solely on the image, and forget everything else. You suddenly find yourself in the midst of action, moving directly in, just a hair’s breadth from it, and capturing the scene in a more compelling and authentic way. I believe this camera is a package for everyday, especially if you pair it with a smaller prime. Take it with you. Leave everything else behind. One camera, one lens.