2020 Year in review

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!

2019 Year in Review

Swimming in Flores, Guatamala on New Year’s Eve

2019 was an up and down year. I spent 121 days of the year travelling (33% of the year), and went to 11 new countries. But sometime in February, one of the worst things that could happen to a photographer happened to me. 

I started 2019 in the most unlikely of places in the world - Flores, Guatemala, a small lake-side town of about 14,000 people. I had met a German traveller on the bus from Belize who was staying in Flores that night. With a group of others, we went into the old town of Flores City that consisted of bars and small restaurants and watched the fireworks and lit a few ourselves. It was wild. Merchants sold their own homemade firecrackers to anyone. In the square where we all settled in at the end of the night, many were lighting long epic chains of firecrackers and fireworks to the cheers of the watching crowd. The atmosphere was loud and exuberant. At one point, I thought I would go deaf. What a way to bring in the new year.

2019 was my first full year doing pure freelance and of course in a cruel twist of fate, in the second month of what was going to be my year of photography, my camera, laptop and lenses all were stolen out of my car. It’s just like life to do that. But it’s also just like life to give you some cool surprises too mid-year while you are licking your wounds - but more on that later.

After getting back to Toronto from Latin America, it was time to get to work. I photographed a few projects I really enjoyed and was fortunate enough to be able to develop my skills as a photographer through varied news assignments.

Shortly after the theft that nearly ruined me, I covered a rally against the cut of safe injection sites around Toronto. Some of the people I photographed were mothers who had lost their children to overdose. Their child had passed away two years ago and I understood their grief much more acutely than I might have before. I wondered how long I would grieve about my own loss.

A mother mourns her son at a Overdose Prevention Rally in Toronto, 2019. Shot for The Globe and Mail.

It was a cold winter for me grieving the loss of the gear I had saved up for and worked for since the beginning of this decade that was stolen in one night. My beliefs about humanity and my country were altered that night too. I realized Canada was not the safe haven I always thought it was. While I had known there was suffering here, I had not known it was so deep that it would compel some to take away from others and cause more suffering. It was a difficult time.

But with Spring came along photo projects I really enjoyed and assignments I loved doing and thrived at. I am grateful to have worked with new editors, new clients and also to have met new photographer friends.

I photographed the Canadian Barista Championships in Toronto for The Globe and Mail and it was one of my favourite projects this year. I go to so many coffee shops and love coffee but rarely talk to the baristas, though I should more often.

After a few photo projects under my belt earlier in the year, soon enough, it was time for me to chase after personal goals by going to India.

The Taj Mahal moments after sunrise is already crowded with tourists

I had placed India on my “To-Do” bucket list in 2012 after seeing a friend’s photo of their visit to the Taj Mahal. I also wanted to see this majestic building, one of the seven wonders of the world for myself. For years, I had waited for the perfect opportunity to go with friends or a partner, but every time I wanted to go, my travel companions who also wanted to go India would either have no money, not enough vacation time or our schedules wouldn’t agree.

Jaipur at sunset

I decided in the end to make the journey solo because I had waited long enough for everything to ‘fall into place’ and it did the opposite. Patience might be a virtue but so is taking action for what you want to do in your life.

I was rewarded with many beautiful scenes, delicious Indian food and a first-hand, unfiltered experience of India. I spent my days exploring many cities, lounging on Goan beaches and taking long, beautiful motorcycle trips alone. It also felt fantastic to finally check something off my bucket list. And in a surprise bonus, I had the fortune to meet a travel partner I would take many trips later in the year with. Thank you, India!

I capped off India by going to Sri Lanka, then Georgia and Ukraine on the way home. It was bliss after my harsh early start to the year.

Elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka

My road trip through Georgia was momentarily halted by sheep traffic, but who cares?

The top of Tbilisi, Georgia, one of my favourite destinations this year.

After a month of exploring India, Sri Lanka, Georgia and Ukraine, it was time to go back to Toronto. It was now summer which meant sailing season, barbecues and road trips. I started shooting film for fun.

Holga film photograph taken in Northern Ontario

Cabin days just outside of Ottawa. Some of my favourite days this year were spent on the road.

In the Fall, I applied and was accepted into the Missouri Photo Workshop - an absolute game changer in terms of improving my documentary photography. Through the process of getting there, I also got to see parts of America I had never seen before through a week-long road trip. 

Farm life in Missouri

In Missouri, I documented a veterinarian/farmer and was lucky enough to meet/work with experienced editors and other photographers. As someone who never studied photography formally, this workshop taught me the basic process and also really helped ease my debilitating serious attitude I have for my work. I chose the most straight-forward story I possibly could (no drama) that I was unfamiliar with and aimed to get the visuals technically right. There’s always more time later on in a career to delve into hard-hitting topics or emotionally complicated narratives.

Rigi, Switzerland

Then it was time for a long-awaited trip to Switzerland, Italy, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Slovenia and the Baltics. The Baltics had been on my list for the longest time and I had tried to go earlier in 2017, then in 2018 but conditions were never favourable enough (read: it was rain season). Highlights of my European trip included travelling by train through mountainous regions, tasting cheeses and chocolates; and a road trip through Italy and Slovenia. The last time I was in Switzerland, I only went for three days and slept on a couch because that was all I could afford as a new graduate. This time, I spent a full month and also travelled around to surrounding areas. I am grateful for the last decade which gave me opportunities that allowed for professional development, to pay off my student loans and also to see the world and capture it all.

Seeing the Gruyere region in Switzerland

Freddie Mercury statue in Montreux, Switzerland

San Marino, a country beside Italy

Having travelled the Baltics this year, I have now been lucky enough to see 80% of the countries of Europe. I have a better understanding of the continent and a greater appreciation of the varied history and cultures. I am hoping the experiences make me a more understanding and empathic photographer as well.

Santa Teresa, Costa Rica

I capped off 2019 by artificially extending summer and going surfing in Costa Rica. Costa Rica gave me an opportunity to rest and rejuvenate for 2020 and the next decade. I plan to keep travelling to places I’ve always wanted to go to (this world is huge!) and hopefully work on more exciting photo projects. I am so grateful for everything I’ve learned this year, all the places I’ve travelled to and the people I’ve been fortunate to have met through photography. This journey has not been easy, especially this past year, but I’ve learned a lot and I’ve lived a lot. I am hoping the next decade will bring more exciting adventures, beautiful memories and kind-hearted souls into my life. Will you join me?

Lake Ontario earlier this summer