The Peace Builders: The Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition documents Toronto’s Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition (HNDC) a non-partisan coalition of peace, faith and community groups in the Greater Toronto Area. For over 35 years the HNDC has been educating citizens and government on the dangers of nuclear weapons and advocating for the total abolition of nuclear weapons.
Sointula
Sointula is a remote village on Malcolm Island located in the unceded Kwakwaka’wakw Territory of the Kwakiutl, Mamalilikala, and ‘Namgis First Nations in British Columbia, Canada. In 2017 I started making portraits with people on the island during a residency at the Sointula Art Shed. The intention of the work is a nuanced and partial portrait of Sointula that captures something of its history, complexity, beauty, and uniqueness through portraits of its residents, landscapes, and architecture.
Fieldwork
Teachers are the unsung heroes of alternative education. Students and parents may come and go, but teachers provide continuity and institutional memory, year after year, decade after decade, often in a career-long commitment to one school community… Who are these teachers, we wondered? Are all of them as interesting as the people who taught us? What drew them to their work, and what kept them there? We decided to find out.
Alpha Alternative School 1972/2012
ALPHA Alternative School is one of the oldest alternative schools in Canada. This project by Michael Barker and Ariel Fielding pairs childhood portraits of ALPHA students taken by F. Robert Openshaw in 1978 alongside portraits of the same people taken at ALPHA’s 40th anniversary reunion in 2012. The portraits are accompanied by texts by the subjects reflecting on their experience at ALPHA.
Toronto Wildlife Centre
A small selection of photos I shot between 2013 and 2015 while volunteering at the Toronto Wildlife Centre (TWC). My work documenting the centre bears witness to our often ambivalent relationship with our wild neighbours and the tragic consequences for animals as a result of our impact on their habitats and ecosystems.
The Lab
The Lab documents Niagara Custom Lab—a boutique motion-picture-film processing lab in Toronto—through still images of the lab’s profusely and anarchically decorated workspace. The last lab of its kind in North America, Niagara Custom Lab has been a vital resource for independent filmmakers in Canada and internationally since they opened in the early 1990s. This series captures the lab’s vibrance and its force of will to survive as it soldiers on for film in the midst of major cultural, chemical and technological change.
