PHOTO ESSAY

Buck Shot

The portrait photography of Chris Buck

By Matthew McKinnon

March 21, 2006

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Kathy Buck, Hewlett Packard Photo Library, 1999.

In 1999, Buck accepted a commission to do something different: shoot non-celebrities. At his agent’s urging, he agreed to make a series of portraits of “regular” people for Hewlett Packard’s photo library. (It was the first of several commercial assignments. Buck’s corporate clients now include HP, Citibank, Microsoft and IBM.)

Buck returned to Toronto for the two-week shoot, intending to use his family and friends as his subjects. His sister Kathy was pregnant at the time; she suggested a picture of her doctor measuring her belly. “It’s a typical thing they do as part of the medical checkup when a woman is pregnant,” Buck says. “It sounded kind of clinical, personal and intimate at the same time. I thought it was great.”

Kathy’s doctor gave Chris permission to shoot at his office. The lighting in the examination room was awful, though, so Buck and his assistant began taping black boards over the ceiling lights. “The doctor came in and was aghast that we were remaking his entire office.... We took a few pictures, but then backed off and realized that we couldn’t get anything of use.”

Brother and sister retreated to the family home. They took the picture in their parents’ driveway at the end of the day. (That’s Chris’s old bedroom window in the top corner of the frame.) With 10 minutes of daylight to go, Buck got one of his favourite shots from the whole project.