FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
| COVER STORY Ever get the feeling you're being watched? And not in a paranoid way that has you avoiding the toaster, which you could swear has been making a funny whirring and clicking noise lately. No, I mean in a way that can have you unnerved in a crowd and certain that you're being violated in some intangible way. Consumed or ravaged, breathed in, dissected, and shelved in labeled Far Side bottles before being exhaled and returned to the world whole, but missing... something. If you have, don't worry, that's probably just Zoltan Varadi doing what he does: watching, recording, photographing. Maybe you've seen him hunkered desperately over a beer and alternately scowling and staring blankly into space. Certainly you've seen the results of his observations and violations. Over the past five years Varadi's work has graced the covers and inside pages of VOX, The Calgary Herald, and Fast Forward, and this week will get a showing in its rightful context - as art. Crawling Eye is the photographer's first exhibit and it showcases some of his finest moments capturing the local rock world and its more colorful characters: The Forbidden Dimension, Chixdiggit, Curse of Horseflesh, Tariq, Field Day, and Pussy Monster have all been collected and exploited by his lens. The show is more of a visual accompaniment than a historical document, making the images - simple, honest and true - and Varadi himself as much a part of the world they capture as the subjects that inhabit them. "Most people don't know who the hell I am," he scoffs at the suggestion. "I keep a low profile. I never viewed what I do as part of the scene, just as being around it. "The bands and people I admire in the city and who are well represented in the show is this community of people like Val from Pussy Monster, Al from Curse of Horseflesh and Tom Bagley from The Forbidden D., who are all in their 30s and live normal lives... yet they're still out playing on the weekends. People who do it because they like doing it - they work hard at it but they don't worry about getting recognition." Which is where his photos come in. He doesn't have to worry about vapid quotes or redundant prose to tell a story or pay tribute; with one shaky handed snap of the camera he can say more about the subject matter and say it more eloquently than anyone else who has vainly tried to document this city's musical subculture. Not that his technique is anything spectacular ("I haven't even read my camera manual," Varadi says straight-faced), nor does he rely heavily on props for style or effect ("I can't afford that shit"). Even his other shots of, for example, local actors pale in comparison to his work with musicians because since childhood, he's been a consumer of rock culture and when he talks about it, he does so with a passion that can't help but bleed onto the film. What makes the images so trustworthy and successful is that you can tell they're taken by a fan, not by someone who resents being relegated to the sidelines by an ineptitude at something others do well - he came to terms with that years ago after fucking up "The March of the Terrible Troll" during a childhood piano recital. Even though he reveals that after Crawling Eye he plans to concentrate on more diverse subject matter, it's somehow hard to believe he'll stray too far from what's featured in the current show. No, thankfully, Varadi seems most comfortable behind the camera and in front of musicians. And like most true observers, even that's a relative thing. "The odd thing is that I'm not a people person," he admits "Most of the time I feel uncomfortable around these people and I probably make them uncomfortable, too, with my silences. They just stand there waiting while I set up gear and I don't even talk to them. Usually half the time I don't try to make them comfortable, I just point the camera at them and start banging away. That's when you capture them, that's their personality right there. "Maybe there's something there. I was born an observer not an interacter. A person who interacts can miss a lot or not see it, whereas I sit there most of the time in my stony silence and I see a lot. That's my main source of sensory input, not what anybody has to say to me, because I don't talk to anybody. Just what I see going on around me. "It must have been a long time building because I used to go to gigs as a teenager by myself and I'd stand in the corner. The kids who were moshing couldn't see anything because they were getting boots in the face. I was standing on a chair in a dark corner observing that aspect, too. "So, I guess that explains it," he laughs. "I don't really like people." Which, fortunately for us, musicians rarely are. |