UPDATE: Please note that sales to USA have been discontinued due to prohibitive tariffs and associated red tape. Please contact your local bookstore if you wish to order in the USA, or try Simon & Schuster.
In 1977, I bought my first 35mm camera, just in time for the golden-moment birth and ensuing melee of what is commonly referred to as punk, in Toronto, capturing the earliest gigs of local bands, primarily from 1977-79, including the Viletones, The Diodes, The Dishes, The Curse, Teenage Head and visiting ambassadors Iggy Pop, Ramones, The Clash and more.
The camera gave a shy 15-year old -- wary of getting busted and thrown out -- a reason to be in the front lines. Luckily, the Crash'n'Burn, Hotel Isabella, the Horseshoe, David's back-alley gay disco and other dives turned a blind eye to the underage. Hidden behind my camera, observing yet unseen, I witnessed the birth of the revolution.
I joined my high school's camera club to learn how to print, develop and to get free chemicals. At the time I could only afford to make contact sheets and a very limited number of prints. Thirty years later, I scanned my negatives and saw what I had for the first time.Images were restored as much as possible, revealing the hidden beauty behind the poor exposures and the scratched, dusty and watermarked negatives.Many of these photographs were shown publicly for the first time at The Beaver, in Spring 2007.
This resulted in the publication of my first book, Trouble In The Camera Club, published by ECW Press in 2011.
UPDATE: Please note that sales to USA have been discontinued due to prohibitive tariffs and associated red tape. Please contact your local bookstore if you wish to order in the USA, or try Simon & Schuster.
In 1977, I bought my first 35mm camera, just in time for the golden-moment birth and ensuing melee of what is commonly referred to as punk, in Toronto, capturing the earliest gigs of local bands, primarily from 1977-79, including the Viletones, The Diodes, The Dishes, The Curse, Teenage Head and visiting ambassadors Iggy Pop, Ramones, The Clash and more.
The camera gave a shy 15-year old -- wary of getting busted and thrown out -- a reason to be in the front lines. Luckily, the Crash'n'Burn, Hotel Isabella, the Horseshoe, David's back-alley gay disco and other dives turned a blind eye to the underage. Hidden behind my camera, observing yet unseen, I witnessed the birth of the revolution.
I joined my high school's camera club to learn how to print, develop and to get free chemicals. At the time I could only afford to make contact sheets and a very limited number of prints. Thirty years later, I scanned my negatives and saw what I had for the first time.Images were restored as much as possible, revealing the hidden beauty behind the poor exposures and the scratched, dusty and watermarked negatives.Many of these photographs were shown publicly for the first time at The Beaver, in Spring 2007.
This resulted in the publication of my first book, Trouble In The Camera Club, published by ECW Press in 2011.
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