When We Were Gods & Cherubs & Cowboys

Ah, the life of the working photographic model in the ’50’s. It was tough. Assignments were always at night or on weekends. You never knew what the job was week to week. Whether it was clothes on or off. There was no union back then. No breaks guaranteed. In fact, you had to cry to get one. And some assignments could be dangerous.

Like the time I was three-quarters of the way up the steel stairs that wound up the side of a gigantic oil tank in Toronto’s waterfront district. The Old Man (Father’s affectionate name for himself) wanted a spot of living colour against that humungous white pill. Handrails weren’t what they are today. It was Spring. It was windy. I kept my trembling hands on the steel tank. I did not trust myself to go near the handrail.

Overall though, the modelling job had its perks. I was photog’s main man. I got to ride shot gun to assignments.

Looking back one of my favourite photographs from the era was when I played Atlas. Titan god of endurance and astronomy.

Yep. There I was on a Friday evening a god posed on a dining room table. Unlike the original Atlas who held up the heavens, I held up a modern desktop globe without its stand.

Look at how thin I was! Talk about in-your-face nudity. No nude-coloured cloth protected me. I was bare-assed the whole photo shot!

Not many people have a pic of themselves so…. so… awkward yet artistic looking. I have always wondered if photoshoots like this one are the reason I am the man I am.

Consider the probable conditions at the time: there is the awkward physical action which probably imprinted in my small corpus a feeling of mild torture; there is the symbolism of holding up the weight of the world; there are probably multiple imprecations flying around my head to hold the pose one more time; then there are the countervailing arguments coming from the kitchen that father go easy on me. All of which goes to say, I am quite torn as an adult when I ask anybody to pose in an awkward position. There are the needs of the composition versus the comfort of the model. Personally, I think the former trumps the latter. As for the lasting psychological consequences….

During other photoshoots I was a sleeping choir boy. A modern day Tom Sawyer. A cowboy. A train engineer

Along with my regular duties as a model in my father’s “creative” photographs, I was featured in many other photoshoots as: Son with his bike; Son with his sister; Son with his parents; Son camping; Son Fishing; Son with school friends; Son delivering his papers; Son sick; Son here; Son there. Son, it appears, in thousands of pictures…..

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Helen of Troy’s face may have launched a thousand ships. Mine caused my old man to go through thousands of negs and transparencies. Heh. Heh.

Thankfully, there were some relaxed times.

Like the day I was a nature cherub. It was an easy gig. The river in this picture, by the way, is the Oxtongue River in Algonquin Park. I am probably about three years old. The pic was an afterthought during an adult photoshoot that didn’t involve nudity.

Yes, while the adults played their serious game, I – unwingéd cherub – took the time to smell the pine. Ponder the existential flux as deeply as was allowed someone whose brain had yet to solidify into the hardboiling caldron of doubt and raving ambition that it is today.

Please note: Re: The background in the Atlas pic has been photoshopped. I recombined the walls of our Yonge Street apartment in Toronto with the edges of the original transparency slide. I think Father never did anything with the pic because the background was so prosaic. He didn’t have Photoshop to put the finishing touches on it.