A passion for pictures

BOB LANSDALE MARCH 10, 1931 — JULY 13, 2021 For prolific Toronto Star photojournalist Bob Lansdale, the camera opened up whole new worlds

My father took to a new photo shoot as would an artist to their next major painting.

ROBERT C. LANSDALE

It was the depth of the Great Depression and times were hard, but for young Bob Lansdale it served as fuel for his inner fire. The only way to go was up. And the passionate photographer and photojournalist took that opportunity to get out into the world.

In his 70 years as a photographer, Lansdale travelled the world as a photojournalist, where his work would feature on the front pages of the Toronto Telegram and the Toronto Star in 1950s and 1960s; he took more than 50,000 images for the University of Toronto, where there now exists an online archive of his work; and, in the pursuit of the perfect image, he became highly respected among his peers.

Lansdale also made his mark as an award-winning commercial and industrial photographer. Although that particular genre could be seen as unexciting, he worked to make it his own, says his son Robert C. Lansdale. “(His) passion and determination were best exemplified by his commercial/industrial photos of the 1970s,” says Robert. “My father took to a new photo shoot as would an artist to their next major painting. His photos were small masterpieces of art.”

The second of three children born to William Rodney Lansdale and the former Constance Mary Durance, Bob Lansdale grew up in Etobicoke with two sisters, Deidee and Phillis. He attended D.B. Hood Community School. During this time, he met his future mentor Jack Marshall, a well-known photographer who introduced Lansdale to what would become his life’s work.

Shortly after his graduation from the photography program at Ryerson Institute of Technology in 1953, Lansdale got his first job at Federal News Photo, a Toronto-based agency of press photographers, where he took pictures for the Toronto Telegram, the Toronto Star and Star Weekly. It was during this period that he covered the Queen’s visits to Canada in the 1950s; the first-ever Grey Cup game in Vancouver in 1955; Marilyn Bell’s record-setting swim of the English Channel that same year; the Springhill Mine Disaster in Nova Scotia in 1956; and presidential visits to the House of Commons (Eisenhower’s in 1958 and Kennedy’s in 1962).

“My father had tunnel vision and a razor focus on photography,” says Robert, which meant that sometimes he risked his life. On the scene of a police confrontation in Caledon with a rifle-toting youth (allegedly determined to stop his parents from selling his horse), Lansdale got his front-page photo despite having a weapon pointed at him.

While working at FedNews, Bob met former Scottish national Margaret McGibbon Adie, whom he married in 1962. Herself a talented photographer, Marg was a partner and collaborator in Lansdale’s work. She co-wrote a “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Darkroom!” a 1997 book of anecdotes from well-known Canadian photographers; and together, they contributed to the Professional Photographers of Ontario for 40 years. Their 45-year marriage, which lasted until Marg’s death in 2007, produced two children: Robert in 1964 and John in 1966.

Lansdale was also a devoted grandfather to Christopher, Andrew, Matthew, Vanessa and Cameron, encouraging them at an early age to “get their hands dirty” with power tools and paint brushes, says Robert. Together, they built many creative things, including a replica 19th-century camera using a Hoover vacuum box and a vintage bronze lens.

Throughout his early career, Lansdale stayed in touch with Jack Marshall. In 1960, he left FedNews to work with him at Jack Marshall Photography, and together, they shot millions of photos. In 1969, with the help of Marshall and Marg, Robert Lansdale Photography launched, with Lansdale concentrating on his commercial and industrial images.

This was the area in which he truly shone. Robert recalls, in particular, his father’s photographs of the newly painted Dunlap Observatory in 1969. “That was truly a job of passion, determination and ingenuity, to get that huge interior dome lit from strobes hanging from balloons and ‘hand-painted light’ (in the dark) with portable fixtures,” he says. “His glory was in the ‘art pieces’ he made through his camera. He saw a scene as would a fine-art painter.”

Lansdale became one of the first photographers of his generation to get into digital work, and after taking a course in Photoshop and Quark at Humber College, landed a job as editor of the Photographic Historical Society of Canada’s Photographic Canadiana. He published 100 issues of his beloved journal, says Robert, “which consumed all hours of the next 24 years of his retirement.”

“Looking back, when I think of my father in the 1950s, all I can think of is ‘photography, photography and photography,’” says Robert. “I have often speculated that he spent all of his time either on the road or in the darkroom. That defines pure passion, not a job or career. That passion continued with him right up to his final days.”