David Trattles Environmental Portrait

Detail from Portrait of David Trattles ©K Hollinrake 2012

Dave is one of those guys who kind of flies under the radar....a friend of a friend...I kind of know him but not really. I know he is a photographer, I’ve seen a  few pieces, really great pieces, actually, but I don’t really know what he does day to day...until one day...a friend mentions his space...comes up in conversation somehow, and my photo locator starts beeping. So I call him up and he invites me to come over, and OMG. I discover the most fascinating guy, and this jam packed little treasure trove he lives and works in when he is actually in Toronto.

Dave is a collector. Everything in his space is found. I ask him what compels him to acquire these objects and he says they all have some kind of social significance, or are simply beautiful to him...beauty being in the eye of the beholder...and what an eye he has. Which brings me back to his work. He shows me a poster, which you can see  off to his right in my shot. He printed this poster, one of about 4,000, himself, on an offset press in India, a giant, really old press that was shipped over from England, and has now been dismantled. It was the size of a room. The posters...Dave plastered the posters all over Calcutta to invite people to his exhibit...The Boxing Ladies. The poster pictured here has been signed, Dave points out, by the Hrithek Roshan the actor (look him up...he’s big). Dave shows me the catalogue for The Boxing Ladies. He wrote the essay accompanying the images. He is a writer. The images, and the story are spellbinding. I want people to know about this. But the prints, all of them, remain in India, because, somehow, for Dave, that is where they belong. And here, he has this one catalogue, in a ziplock bag.

Above and behind Dave’s left shoulder in my picture, is a poster he wanted me to include. It wasn’t actually there when I did the shot, so I had to add it in later. But it was important to him, because it depicts the bicycle on which he rode around India, over 10,000 km cumulatively, over four visits. He’s going back. And you can go with him....just go to southindiabicycleadventure.com for all the details. You’ve got until the end of January 2013 to pack.

Dave is currently working on a book, to be published in Germany, to go along with an exhibit entitled The German Rodeo. Two images from this series reside on the wall of another photographer friend’s studio and they are sublime. These are the images I think of when I think of Dave. He shows me some of the images for the book...works in progress. They are the kinds of images that inspire me and tinge me with a brief cloud of hopelessness (mine) in the same moment....so beautiful. The exhibit, and the book, will be available in Germany.

I hope you’ll go to Dave’s website and check out some of his work...not the greatest self-promoter...too busy being the artist that he is. He does have commercial and editorial clients, lucky for them. But since I’m pretty sure he’s not going to call you to tell you about himself, I’ll just include a link here because people are missing out!
http://www.davidtrattles.com

And of course, if you need images that look like this one, then call me.

P.S. I showed Dave what I wrote about him to make sure he was O.K. with it and he showed me these (below). These are for sale, in Canada. They are posters advertising the German Rodeo show, made the same way he made the Boxing Ladies posters, on that big press. It took him weeks to make these...you should hear the story. You can get them folded or flat...I kind of like the ones with folds pictured here. Call him if you want one. They are fantastic.