Marshall To

It was everything to me from the get-go; it was my first introduction to my own culture in a place where there were very few Chinese people. It taught me that food can bring people together no matter their beliefs and differences. It was also the only way some people knew how to show their love and now, for better or for worse, I started doing the same thing. Words can sometimes be very difficult to say when you’re not used to saying them but it’s easy for me to cook you whatever you want and show you how much I care.

Early on in my cooking career, I began doing food photography at the same time. It made me look at light differently than I ever did before — good light, bad light, etc. I really enjoyed styling and creating a whole scene with food but it started to feel hollow, it was missing a sort of chase. I wanted to feel butterflies, so I chased the first thing I ever loved and that was animals. It was also then that I realised that I was more of an artist than I was a chef. I needed to create physically and intimately with food or illustrations and simultaneously taking photos which then satiated my visual hunger with more immediacy.

First- or second-generation immigrants are the most unique people I find, almost a perfect combination of different or older worlds colliding with new, and with that comes very specific stories and uniquely relatable ones. As I started to grow into my identity as an artist, I realised that I needed to stop compartmentalising who I was. That being fully myself would make my work inherently unique.

I grew up in the plains of Alberta. In the summer, it would be hot and dry during the day but thunderous and exciting at night. The winters were sunny and dropped down to minus fifty degrees Celsius, the sky would be blue but the landscape would be blanketed in snow. It made me aware of the force that nature is and the beauty that it creates.

I think that the Western world has moved on so much faster than other cultures. Since modernity it has, understandably so, become increasingly more of a secular society and less interested in the unknown and mysterious. Older traditions seem to have space for mystery and the unknown.

My parents burn incense on an altar that carries statues of deities and photos of our ancestors every morning and ask them to look over our family. I’ve carried on those rituals more and more as complicated health situations have risen in my family. In times of need, it helps me even if I have one foot in and one foot out half the time. Sometimes it allows me to be more vulnerable because it allows me to believe in something bigger than myself, even just for a second. That impacts me the most as a person foremost and secondly as a photographer. Letting in the pain and heartache to only digest it and create from it.

As a child, my parents would tell me to not do anything disrespectful outside of the protection of our house like peeing behind a dumpster or screaming and shouting in the ether, inviting unwanted attention during this festival. I’ve had my own experiences with the supernatural that made me fear these festivals. I wasn’t allowed to get out of the car when we would go visit our ancestors at the cemetery because I would fall ill every time. I stopped believing in all these things for so long as I grew into adulthood, it was in the back of my mind and I was never sure whether it was all real or not. I guess Blank Notes is my way of translating it into something tangible and real.

I found that black and white film allowed you to immerse yourself faster in a different world and mindspace. Black and white movies such as Kuroneko and Onibaba really helped me see how those specific stories could be told and allow one to suspend belief.

Movement is such a big part of it for me, you can bend the depiction of reality with movement of the subject matter and movements of the camera itself. I honestly just like to have fun with it and experiment and hope for the best. If a rabbit hole presents itself, then I’ll go down it as far as I can. In this case I chose to photograph the things that gave me butterflies, gave me a sense of chase and fear. At times I would go to a park alone at night with all noises with a headlamp afraid of the unseen and attempt to photograph that feeling.

It’s pretty safe to say that I gravitate towards the dark as there is a different kind of beauty there. I remember the first time I saw Francis Bacon’s painting Figure With Meat and it was seared into my brain. I couldn’t stop looking at it because I had never seen anything like it before. I’m not sure exactly that it’s reflected in my photography, but I’m keen to reflect it in my practice in the future as they are both very much in the same breath.

It felt imperative to depict the thin divide, the weaving back and forth of realities because that’s how I imagine that it is, constantly confusing and blurry like a fever dream.

A lot of that came from inspiration of other artists' work such as Trent Parke and Masao Yamamoto, who photograph their environments but make them look supernatural, like a beam of sunlight lighting a single person up like a god in a crowd of people. I tried to find ways myself of photographing the same objects in different ways to create more dualities. When you open up the shutter, you allow the reality in front of you to be distorted.

Where do I start… I guess Masahisa Fukase’s Ravens specifically, which allowed me to see how weaving nature and personal life can be photographed. Jesse Lenz, who mentored me and encouraged me to lean into all this. Igor Posner, Masao Yamamoto, Daido Moriyama, Daisuke Yokota. Painters: Francis Bacon, Jenny Saville, Justin Mortimer. Movies: Kuroneko, The Wailing, Onibaba and those are just some.

Most of my family really like the pictures of the owls (laughs). They haven’t really shared what they truly think about my photographs but it’s a book more so dedicated to them than it is for them.