The old days of photography

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.