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Double Double 2022-06
DOUBLE DOUBLE 2022-06<br />
<strong>Island</strong> <strong>Peninsula</strong> <strong>Cape</strong><br />
A Holly Lee and Lee Ka-sing Publication<br />
First published in Canada by OCEAN POUNDS<br />
June 2022<br />
ISBN: 978-1-989845-33-2<br />
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication<br />
Photography, Visual Art, Poetry, Literature, Culture<br />
Authors: Holly Lee,Chad Tobin, Lee Ka-sing<br />
Copyright © Ocean Pounds 2022<br />
Individual Copyrights belong to the Artists and Writers.<br />
All Rights Reserved.<br />
For information about permission to reproduce material<br />
from this book, please write to mail@oceanpounds.com<br />
DOUBLE DOUBLE was published as a weekly webzine<br />
from January 2019 to December 2021. 158 issues were<br />
published. Full archives are available online:<br />
https://oceanpounds.com/blogs/doubledouble<br />
Some issues were re-packaged and published as<br />
print-on-demand paperback editions.<br />
Since January 2022, DOUBLE DOUBLE has become a<br />
monthly publication, released in both paperback (POD)<br />
and ebook versions. POD is available for orders at OCEAN<br />
POUNDS in Toronto or online at BLURB (blurb.com).<br />
DOUBLE DOUBLE ebook edition is available for read-on-line at<br />
Reading Room https://oceanpounds.com/blogs/rr<br />
Subscribe and Support<br />
https://patreon.com/doubledoublestudio<br />
Design and Editorial by DOUBLE DOUBLE studio<br />
www.doubledouble.org<br />
<strong>Island</strong><br />
<strong>Peninsula</strong><br />
<strong>Cape</strong><br />
Images on front and back cover, end pages,<br />
run-of-pages by Lee Ka-sing<br />
Some artwork featured in this publication might be available<br />
through OCEAN POUNDS<br />
Inquiry by email: mail@oceanpounds.com<br />
OCEAN POUNDS<br />
50 Gladstone Avenue, Toronto,<br />
Ontario, Canada M6J 3K6<br />
www.oceanpounds.com
Lee Ka-sing<br />
Istanbul Journal<br />
photographs, 2018<br />
ISTANBUL JOURNAL, a folio contains 178 diptych photographs, taken in October<br />
2018. Print size 6.25 x 13 inch (330 x 158.75 mm), printed on 192 g/m matte paper.<br />
A unique Artist Proof edition was produced in March 2019. Currently, this body of<br />
work is made into a book. Images featured in this issue (on front and back cover,<br />
end pages and run-of-pages) were selected from this soon to be released<br />
publication.
Holly Lee<br />
Istanbul<br />
a suite of<br />
four poems
A Room with a View<br />
All quiet<br />
Sunday morning rises<br />
Istanbul<br />
Hear call to prayer<br />
Across the Golden Horn<br />
The Valens Aqueduct<br />
Suleymaniye, Fatih, six minarets<br />
Penciling your silhouette<br />
Young Pamuk had another view<br />
From Cihangir<br />
Over looking Üsküdar<br />
Eminönü, Topkapi, the Blue Mosque<br />
Under hustling Galata Bridge<br />
A hundred fishermen compete<br />
The fine art of fishing<br />
“What’s for dinner tonight?”<br />
That evening<br />
We ate a Black Sea turbot<br />
A flat spiky fish<br />
Swam in rock salt<br />
October, 2018
Holly Lee<br />
two recent poems
Ferry Boat Ride II<br />
Ferry Boat Ride II<br />
Saltiness in the air constant sea wind combs my hair<br />
cruising up north we turned back<br />
at the confluence of<br />
Bosphorus and the Black Sea<br />
On the strait of Bosphorus I lost my sense of place<br />
dream riding on the ferry<br />
from island to island<br />
Peng Chau, Hong Kong<br />
A distant mirage emerging<br />
a dazzling cosmopolitan city rising<br />
a mountainous clustering<br />
of high-rises climbing<br />
from the foot of the harbour<br />
up Peak Victoria<br />
Flanking both shores sporadically<br />
manors on the west houses on the east<br />
aged fortresses stood, gratifying and unyielding<br />
medieval churches fraternize with<br />
minarets and mosques<br />
tarnished palaces adorned timeworn castle walls<br />
overhead a flock of seagulls<br />
circling, making squeaky calls<br />
No glittering ultra-modern mega city of the 21st century<br />
the blemished splendour thrills like fine wine and poetry<br />
from the pier of Eminonu<br />
we set foot on a Sehir Hatlari ferryboat<br />
Sailing<br />
lost track of<br />
time, and place<br />
July 4, 2019 / June 21, 2022
Chad Tobin exhibited his work To be Frank<br />
at our gallery in 2018. During the exhibition<br />
I talked to him casually about the series, and<br />
was moved to find he put some much heart and<br />
effort into building trust and friendship with the<br />
legendary photographer, and had been treating the<br />
project so delicately.<br />
He talked about some afternoons there was simply<br />
no conversation between them; they just sat and<br />
watched the sea.<br />
Some time after the trip to Istanbul, I fancied going<br />
to <strong>Cape</strong> Breton, to meet Robert Frank myself. I<br />
emailed Chad to see if he could be a lead. He didn’t<br />
reply. Now I understand why, it was simply too late.<br />
Frank died in September 2019.<br />
(Holly)<br />
Chad Tobin<br />
two portfolios<br />
(photographs<br />
and words)<br />
To be Frank<br />
St. Valentine’s Day<br />
Chad Tobin is a photographer living and working in<br />
<strong>Cape</strong> Breton, Nova Scotia. He is one of the founding<br />
members of the Hot Fog Collective, a group of east coast<br />
artists specializing in project-based photography and<br />
documentary work.<br />
chadtobin.com
To be Frank<br />
AN IMPROBABLE MENTORSHIP WITH A LEGEND<br />
Photographer Chad Tobin spent ten years visiting and<br />
photographing the legendary photographer, Robert Frank.<br />
My heart beats faster. Should I park the car at the bottom<br />
of the driveway or by the house? I think it will be more<br />
respectful if I park at the bottom of the driveway. The engine<br />
idles with my indecision as I begin to question my cold call<br />
actions. Surely he won’t call the cops? Is this trespassing?<br />
This is definitely trespassing. He must have people<br />
approaching him all the time. Maybe this is exactly why I<br />
should turn around and forget this whole thing. At the same<br />
time, I’m here. I think he is here. If I don’t at least try, I will<br />
regret it forever. Turning the engine off, I grab my camera<br />
and the book. Walking up the steep driveway, I notice my<br />
feet in battle with my brain, shuffling one in front of the other<br />
with a hurried step, as if to shut down the inner voice telling<br />
me to turn back. I sheepishly knock at the door. “Yes?” a<br />
gray haired woman answers. Without thinking, I blurt out,<br />
in a quivering pitch, “ I am a photographer. I was wondering<br />
if Mr. Frank would sign my book.” Once I was done, she led<br />
me towards a small studio near the main house and called<br />
out loudly, “Robert, there is a guy here asking if you would<br />
sign his book, and he has the same type of camera as you.” I<br />
hear a voice from inside say, “Send him in.”<br />
From 2009 until 2019, I visited Robert Frank at his summer<br />
home in Mabou, Nova Scotia. After that first unannounced<br />
visit, it became a yearly ritual that eventually turned into<br />
a body of work called To Be Frank, a series of photographs<br />
with Frank woven into the rural landscape to which he would<br />
escape from New York City. Our conversations were mostly
St. Valentine’s Day<br />
(a suite of twelve<br />
photographs)<br />
St. Valentine’s mixes a series of encounters with people who are living their lives authentically and<br />
without reservation on the eastern island of <strong>Cape</strong> Breton, Nova Scotia.<br />
The photographer would cold call subjects in an almost date like fashion based on leads and<br />
connections of meeting different people explaining his intent.<br />
Tobin’s pursuit of each subject would bring up feelings of his 15-year-old former self when he would<br />
ask people out over the phone on Valentine’s day. “It became an addiction to see if I could get them<br />
to agree to meet me for coffee, let them see what I do and then have them invite me in their space and<br />
explore what makes them happy.”<br />
The jigsaw nature of the different collaborations mixed people like Kurt, a Buddhist who collects<br />
machine guns, a professional Disney Princess named Vanna, and Hank the 85-year-old drag racer.<br />
Not everyone agreed to be in the photos, but would consent to their spaces and areas of tranquility<br />
being represented.<br />
Tobin soon discovered through spending time with the subjects, “These people are here for<br />
themselves but not selfishly, which in turn, means they are here for us.” Using direct flash allowed<br />
the photographer to illuminate the subject and bring the viewer closer to the celebration of the<br />
freedom of resistance against the status quo. St. Valentine’s is a reminder to look internally at our own<br />
choices on what makes us happy and why we do not pursue our own internal calling.<br />
(Chad Tobin)
Holly Lee<br />
<strong>Island</strong><br />
What is geography to me? In my advancing years, I’m still asking myself the same question, or, did<br />
I ever ask myself the question? I recall faintly, but with a hint of vividness, the geography exercise<br />
book I used in primary school; a picture of Australia I drew with colour pencils, opposite the page<br />
with hand-written notes of the country. The continent was vast, covered with greens. I loved drawing<br />
then, so was singing. I still do, but have long lost that confidence and shine. My drawing now is<br />
reduced to alphabets trying to line up thought fragments. I rarely talk, let alone sing.<br />
So what does Byzantium mean to me? In younger days, it meant only one thing, which came from a<br />
Chinese translation into three characters. It followed closely to the phono-semantic method with a<br />
spectacular rendering. Every Chinese character represents one syllable, and each syllable has its own<br />
meaning: BY 拜 (to worship) / ZAN 占 (divination) / TIUM 庭 (court). BYZANTIUM 拜 占 庭 , already the<br />
word sounds reverential, majestic, glittering with gold, connecting at once to the magnificent mosaics<br />
in churches and mosques, to two thousand years of never-ending struggle, of religion, power and Glory.<br />
My fascination with Byzantium, then Constantinople, now Istanbul, owes a lot to this unidentified<br />
translator. It is like a legendary city existing at the edge of my consciousness. Strange, desirable, and<br />
untouchable.<br />
Then Orhan Pamuk came to launch his new novel The Red-Haired Woman at the Reference Library<br />
in Toronto. I have read My Name Is Red and Istanbul briefly, and was eager to go and meet him. The<br />
tickets were sold out, but I went an hour earlier to try my luck. After the talk, I lined up to buy the<br />
book. The queue was long, as everyone was waiting for his signature. I was so excited when he signed<br />
my copy, and expressed enthusiasm for visiting the city. Without raising his head, he replied cooly,<br />
“Then you should go and see it for yourself”.<br />
Old and new fascinations collided, and a journey to Istanbul deemed inevitable. In the beginning, it<br />
was simple: to visit Hagia Sophia, to see the Museum of Innocence, to taste Turkish food, and attend<br />
a Whirling Dervish ceremony. Yet, upon research, there was much, much more. It brought me to<br />
multiple trips, on paper and on screen. I was sucked into the incredible layering and heaviness of<br />
Anatolian history, built upon empires and cultures that have come and gone. The less than two weeks’<br />
visit felt extremely inadequate. At which point, and how, could one even begin to fathom its two<br />
thousand years history, grasp and fully appreciate the magnitude and splendour of this ancient city in<br />
a matter of, eleven days?
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