Escape Into Reality, Part Two

“We don’t create a fantasy world to escape reality.

We create it to be able to stay.”

- Lynda Barry, American Cartoonist

A different take on fantasy and performance this week.

Last week’s blog post featured photos of people at last weekend’s exuberant Fan Expo 2018 in Toronto: real human beings having great fun dressed up as their favourite comic book heroes and heroines. This week’s photos riff on the September theme challenge for the Prince Edward County Photography Club: “Music, Dance & Performance”.

Only one of these photos features an actual human being: the gifted singer/musician Nicole Lisa Singer performing at the Wellington Market on July 28. I combined her photo with a Photoshopped souvenir Puerto Rican picture frame that I found at Value Village. (Thank you, Nicole Lisa Craig, for your permission to photograph you and to post the image.)

The other nine images are pure fantasy, all photographed in my basement studio. No human beings were harmed in the making of these photos - and no Photoshop manipulation.

So...coming up next on our stage:

• Toy police officers dancing and performing a precision routine with bullhorns; 

• Train engineers hoofing their way up the stairs of a 1:48 model of the Stratford Festival’s main stage that I built two years ago;

• Plastic soldiers practising yoga;

• Close-ups of china knickknacks rescued from Value Village;

• ‘Tableaux vivants’ featuring miniature eye glasses and creepy 1:48 scale humans on the Stratford Stage model.

 • An cutesy figurines of hunky synchronized swimmers. (Actually, they're wine glass identifiers!)

Nothing terribly profound – just me having fun with my camera!

Enjoy.