PHOTO ESSAY

Buck Shot

The portrait photography of Chris Buck

By Matthew McKinnon

March 21, 2006

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John Cale, “Things That People Carry,” 1986.

Buck was born in Toronto in 1964. His father worked as an engineer for Kodak; Chris has called his own career a continuation of the family business. He studied photography at Toronto’s Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Ryerson University), and landed his first assignments as the photo editor and a photographer for Nerve, a student music newspaper. He liked the work, but found better satisfaction taking pictures to suit his own needs.

Buck was eager to develop a personal style. He initially favoured natural to artificial light, and black-and-white to colour film. (Both preferences have evolved in the years since. He now lights about half of his portraits and often works in colour.) In 1986, he photographed ex-Velvet Undergrounder John Cale for a personal project titled “Things That People Carry.” Cale had a favourite hat, but refused to wear it. He clapped a hand onto his head instead.

“He said, ‘You have five frames.’ As I shot, he counted off the frames,” Buck says. (This one is No. 3.) “This was the first picture I did that I felt like, ‘This is a really great picture. I really nailed it.’ I thought that even in 20 years it would still be interesting to look at, that it would hold up. And lo and behold, I think it does.”