The Real Mad Hatter

8th March

one response · Blog

What a weekend! Full of visual stimulation! Started out with a ballet performance. Marie Chouinard is officially my favorite choreographer! Oscars! Of course! Alice in Wonderland before that on the IMAX and it was worth missing part of the Academy Awards for! It reminded me how much I love stories and fairytales. When I was little we would sit in the kitchen with my four siblings and take turns reading a book while our Mom cooked dinner. It was a wonderful way to spend time together and is one of the many reasons why I adore all of my sisters and my brother.

Stories have been a part of my life ever since I started seriously getting into books, I must have been five when I carried huge stacks of them home from the library couple of times a week . Nobody believed I really read them. I got quizzed for the first couple of weeks before I earned the trust of the Librarian that I really didn’t just look at the pictures.

In that sense I can relate to Alice’s fantasies and desire to go back to Wonderland and create more Worlds in your mind. If you are anything like me, you visualize the stories you are reading on the paper in your head. It is a challenge then for any movie based on such a well known piece of literature to live up to it’s hype. We all have a picture of Wonderland in our minds, that may be hard to beat. But watching a movie by Tim Burton is just a crazy and wonderful trip into a very creative persons mind that keeps on fascinating with each new layer. Double that with Lewis Carrol stories for Alice and you end up with a wonderful film.

I loved it all, the cast, the make up, the costumes! And the crazy visual effects! Wow! Really fun! Willy Wonka’s factory should have been done in 3D. But again, you can find tons of movies that would be amazing in an extra dimension!

My favorite Mad Hatter, as I do have one for a friend too is John Kenneth! I have more photography of him and his work on my website.

But I want to show you another side of the Mad Hatter, John the Milliner today. I love visiting him in his studio and see what new crazy idea he is up to. I find it a little voyeuristic to walk into someones private or working space and pull out a camera. It is very personal and it requires a certain amount of trust for a person to let you into that space. I feel lucky to have an excuse to be invited or sent to photograph people in their space. My curiosity is without borders and my profession makes it an asset rather than a bad trait. But enough with the words! Here is John Kenneth, the Milliner as well as Mad Hatter from Toronto not Wonderland in his studio.