Amsterdam on March 14, two days before everything shut down. The girl in this photo had no idea about the next nine months ahead of her.
2020 was a heart-breaking, frustrating and all-around strange year for everyone. I made the best I could out of it. It was all I could do while sheltered at home in Toronto. I continued making photos, writing and saying what I felt needed to be said. I know being able to stay home is a privilege and I am grateful to our frontline workers who sacrificed so much these past few months.
I’m not going to count my losses from this year but to be honest, maybe I needed this pandemic to focus myself in my art and practice. In years past, I likely would have been on a trip somewhere when photo editors called (this has happened twice that I know of, but who knows how many other times I lost photo work because I was out of the country...). It took a global pandemic to ground me to one spot, but it was probably very helpful to both photo editors and to me, to actually physically be in the place they expected me to be in when they commissioned an assignment.
My photo of Hannah Wei (bottom left), a COVID-19 survivor, commissioned by Bloomberg Businessweek.
This year, I’m grateful I got to tell stories about alternative housing, precarious living conditions, lifestyle and travel through my van life series in Toronto Life Magazine. As a millennial who graduated from school into a housing bubble in Toronto, this idea of thriving under difficult and different conditions that previous generations didn’t have has been on my mind for a while now. I am thankful to my editors and all of the individuals who shared their lives with me so that we could (in our unique way) add to the dialogue about housing affordability, alternative lifestyles and the increasing cost of living relative to stagnant wages in Ontario.
Max Schneider, 26, resting during a break at his courier job in Toronto. Max, originally from Germany, arrived in Canada in the spring of 2018. He bought a used van to sleep in and save money on accommodations.
Logan Barbosa, 21 and David Snow, 25, live in a converted van home in Caledon, Ontario. Logan says the property market in Southern Ontario is out of reach for people her age.
Jamieson Lamb, 37, lives in a van in Barrie year round while working two part-time jobs to be able to afford grad school without going into debt.
Crystal Drinkwalter, 25 (right) and Jazmyn Canning, 26, travel full-time in their converted Mercedes Sprinter van.
This summer, I also photographed many social justice protests. I feel like I’ve aged years through these past nine months. I’ve now photographed enough arrests to know how a police officer will approach a person to arrest them. Those movies where the person who is about to be arrested has an entire two minutes before being handcuffed to give a speech about they how will get their revenge from jail? I know now that is totally fake. In real life, that would never happen. In real life, arrests are quick and swift.
Police form a human barricade to prevent protestors from entering the building Toronto Mayor John Tory resides in on July 6. The protestors were asking for the mayor to reinstate an eviction moratorium that would be lifted in August as the emergency order in Ontario ended.
As the pandemic played out, I also watched with sadness and frustration as more and more reports of harassment towards people of Chinese and Asian backgrounds happened. Despite living in Canada, a country seen internationally as multicultural and accepting, the reality is xenophobia is still prevalent out there. I am grateful to the editors at Maclean’s Magazine who provided me space to publish a piece about how racism has affected the lives of several Chinese Canadians.
Inthida Ngeth, 40, and her two daughters Emily, 11, and Audrey, 8. As the coronavirus spread across the country, Ngeth, who volunteers at North American Association of Asian Professionals, wondered about how she would explain how to handle covid-related racism to her to young daughters.
Andre Goh, 57, has encountered racism almost his entire life since moving to Toronto as a teenager. “The experience of being ‘othered’ has been with me a long time. I’m always wondering if I’m good enough. There’s even a point in my life I convinced myself I was white. It was easier,” he says.
I also made time to relax in the summer and covered ‘softer’ pieces like how a drag queen shifted her business outdoors during the pandemic because nightclubs and bars were closed and how people were trying to get outdoors after being cooped up inside all spring.
Sofonda Cox has been performing as a drag queen in Toronto for over 20 years. Before the pandemic, she was very busy with regular shows and hosting gigs. With bars and restaurants closed, she has had to find new ways to make money including performing a ‘curbside drag show’.
My friend Brian bought a sailboat during the summer months of the pandemic to get outdoors. I photographed and wrote about him in Toronto Life Magazine.
I also made a few portraits I am really proud of.
My friend Alix, originally from France.
Nazima Qureshi, a registered dietician, sits in her garden. Commissioned by the Globe and Mail for a piece about nutrition and food.
Author Robyn Maynard for Winnipeg Free Press.
My friend George was a working model in the 70’s and 80’s. He has since retired but does occasional shoots for fun.
And like many people under lockdown, I levelled up in my cooking skills at home and also watched many movies I normally would not have time to watch and rewatched a few favourites. I read 20 books in total.
Here are the movies I enjoyed this year (I didn’t include movies I didn’t enjoy on this list):
Sophie’s Choice
Batman trilogy
Tootsie
The Firm
Rosemary’s Baby
Manhattan Murder Mystery
Marvel movies (I tried to watch them in order)
Funny Girl
King Kong (2005)
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Primal Fear
From Dusk till Dawn
The Lobster
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
Django Unchained
Reservoir Dogs
Internal Affairs
Public Enemies
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
The Basketball Diaries
Mordecai
Moon
The Gentlemen
Along Came a Spider
A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood
Clue
Jumanji (1995)
American Gigolo
The Jackal
The Score
Here are the books I enjoyed this year (I didn’t include books I didn’t enjoy on this list):
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
The Hate U Give - Angie Thomas
Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion
Educated - Tara Westover
The Psychopath Test - Jon Ronson
Crazy Rich Asians - Kevin Kwan
Chop Suey Nation - Ann Hui
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
Open Book - Jessica Simpson
Nickel and Dimed - Barbara Ehrenreich
Moneyball - Michael Lewis
Meditations - Marcus Aurelius
This is Cuba - David Ariosto
Pachinko - Min Jin Lee
Daily Rituals - Mason Currey
Though I didn’t get to go many places this year, I am still grateful for the many photo projects I was able to work on, the new people I was able to meet socially-distanced and for all of the great literature and media I was inspired by. I am hoping 2021 brings more normalcy, more photo projects and more travel. Right now I don’t have any plans because it’s hard to plan during a pandemic, but I do have an idea of where I’d like to go. For now, I am just grateful to have survived this strange year… and if you’re reading this, you did too. Congrats. See you in 2021!
