Interview with Lorne Bridgman

During an elementary school assignment in the late 1970's, photographer Lorne Bridgman remembers picking an illustrated card out of a box and then having to write a short story based on the drawing. It had a profound effect on him, since Bridgman approaches his photography the same way today ' by asking viewers to wrap their own narratives around his shots. To immerse readers in a story about the rebirth of Toronto's Don River, Bridgman returned several times during different seasons and times of day to capture the mood around the waterway. His other work has appeared in The Walrus, enRoute and The New York Times Magazine.

		PHOTOGRAPHER Lorne Bridgman Bridgman says he's pretty sure the first good photo he took was a mistake, but that he's been making good mistakes ever since. After studying at the Emily Carr University of Art & Design and spending 12 years in Vancouver, he's now back in his home town of Toronto. To see more of Bridgman's photos, check out the June 2011 issue of Canadian Geographic or visit his website.
View photo gallery Tips from photographer Leave a comment

Q Did you visualize how you would shoot the Don before you got out there?

AI wasn't really given a lot of direction for this piece other than to speak with the writer and talk about what he was going to be focusing on. We did that, but I found that this piece grew organically and I think a lot of that came out of my interest. Travelling to the Don, I started seeing things I hadn't noticed before that kept drawing me back.

I didn't go in intending to express anything specific, other than what the place had to say. What I found is that it has a sense of loneliness. Given that it's right in the middle of the largest city in Canada, it was interesting to find moments of quiet and solitude there.

Q Being from Toronto and already knowing a bit about the Don River, did you learn anything new?

AIt's an easy place to take for granted, but it's very evocative if you let it speak to you. The fact that there's old construction and concrete, that there's an abandoned aspect to it, can be a bit disheartening. But it seems that, despite those things, you can pull a lot of different images out of the place: dreamy, idyllic ones or ones that make you understand the river's relation to the city a bit better.

Every time I went back, I saw something new. I often had to stop and say, 'wait a minute, I've been past here a hundred times before and never noticed that.' Contingency is part of our daily lives. Sometimes you just have to look to see it.

QYou went back to the river several times for this project. Why is it important to do that for some assignments?

AWith a lot of assignment photography you have to get the pictures in a short period of time. What I liked about this was being able to go back numerous times and build a body of work. I wanted to portray the mood, but I knew that wasn't going to happen in a day or two. It's important to let a place speak for itself, but also to be smart about seasons and time of day to convey its essence.

QHow much time did you spend there?

AIt's hard to say the total amount. The shortest amount of time I spent there was about two-and-a-half hours on a very cold night in March when I took shots of the railway tracks. There were some days that were day-long shoots, where I would grab my camera bag, get on my bike and ride from the west end of the city to the Don and then ride all through the bike trails there.

QYou use light in a very interesting way in many of you photos. Even in dark photos, how are you able to find a source of light?

AI'm very fond of mixing light sources. Possibly the biggest lesson I ever learned was that absolutely anything can be a light source. I like looking at a situation and seeing a certain amount of light. For example, if you're shooting the Don in the moonlight, you're using a key light source such as the moon and adding additional light to that equation ' any stray artificial light sources that might be bleeding into the picture, such as sodium vapour lights that are running along the Don Valley Parkway. I like the combination of natural and artificial light and long exposure times. It creates interesting results.

One of the most enjoyable parts of this project were the peaceful evenings when I went out to stand, just me and my camera and a tripod, doing 30-second or minute-long exposures. You have a lot of time to stand and look around at things because you're not just clicking away. It allows you to take notice of things you might not otherwise see.

Interview by Jessica Harding