Selfies.
It seems like everywhere you look these days someone is holding their phone up
taking a photo of themselves or of the group they’re with. It didn’t used to be
like that. It wasn’t a thing to do way back when. Sure, people tried to hold
the camera up and guess that the shot was framed properly. It was just a guess.
Plus, you had to be carrying a camera with you. That was something you would
mainly do if you were on holiday. And you had better be packing extra rolls of
film.
It was always a bit of a guessing game, especially if you were sporting a Kodak
Brownie Hawkeye. Push the button and hope for the best was all you could do
back then. And you couldn’t enjoy the photo right on the spot as you can these
days; you had to take the roll to the drug store or camera store and wait for
them to develop the film, which in some cases could take a couple of days. And
of course, once you got the photos back, you’d discover how many were out of
focus, or just a bad shot.
Those were the days when nobody was packing a phone that doubles as a camera!
Your phone was attached to the wall of your house. Camera and phone were two
different animals. Phone and watch was a thing, but only if your name was Dick
Tracy!
But
there was one way of getting a selfie, well, sort of a selfie, and that was to
get captured walking down the street, usually Granville Street, by a man with a
metal box on wheels and a camera mounted on top. A Vancouver legend, Foncie
Pulice was his name and he became famous in Vancouver as the man on the street
with a camera who took millions of pictures of ordinary people just walking
along.
Foncie started out shooting for other companies but decided to start his own
business in 1946 and kept snapping shots until his retirement in 1979. Most of
his pictures are those taken on the east side of the 700-block of Granville,
and that’s where I remember seeing him on my trips downtown.
The photos were usually a full-length shot of you, or you and your friends just
walking down the street. He would try to make eye contact to make sure the
person wanted to be photographed. He didn’t need to worry about adjusting the
focus; when the subject stepped on a certain spot on the sidewalk, Foncie would
snap the shot. Some were candid shots, or if you saw he was aiming at you, you
could put on your best smile. Either way, Foncie had captured you, being you!
After
a full day snapping shots on the street, Foncie and his wife, Anne, would
develop the film at home. Then, the next day, he would take the proofs to his
store downtown. Anne would handle the store while Foncie went back on the
street to shoot more photos. Customers could redeem the coupon he had given
them and purchase their photo. How much did he charge? Well, back in the 1940s
you could get three photos for 50 cents!
Foncie was snapping photos on the streets of Vancouver for 45 years. He would
work long hours, sometimes into the evenings, six days a week. The business of
street photography started to die out in the early to mid-70s as more and more
people owned their own cameras, and of course these days, with the camera in
your phone, it wouldn’t stand a chance of survival.
Foncie retired and hung up his camera on September 27, 1979. He and his wife
Anne, moved to the Okanagan. Foncie passed away in 2003 at the age of 88. His
wife, Anne, lived to be 97 and passed away in 2011.
He was so much a part of the old days of Vancouver, and a lot has been written
about him and his photos.
