The Guardians — Vladimir Antaki

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01 / 06 ONGOING SERIES · 32 PORTRAITS · 11 CITIES 2012 →

THE

GUARDIANS

The Guardians is a deeply personal series, born from my need to hold on to what is disappearing, and to make visible what is so often no longer seen.

Through these portraits, I meet artisans and shopkeepers whom I consider the true guardians of our cities. Their shops are not just places we pass through — they are lived-in spaces, shaped by gestures, stories, and layers of silence accumulated over time. Quiet yet essential "urban temples," they carry fragments of a shared memory.

Photographing these men and women is, for me, a way not only to document, but to preserve. To slow down, if only for a moment, the gradual erasure of these places in an increasingly dematerialized world. There is a fragile beauty in them, a dignity, a quiet resilience that deeply matters to me.

The way I present these images is an integral part of the project. I print them at life size so that an encounter can take place — so the gaze cannot turn away. I then install these portraits in the windows of closed shops, directly in the street. Spaces that were once alive become sites of exhibition. A presence emerges within the absence — a haunting illusion where the guardians seem to still be there, in their place.

I like to think that, for a brief moment, these spaces breathe again. That they find their voice. And that those who pass by take the time to look, to remember, or simply to feel.

PORTRAITS · SELECTION CLICK A PHOTO TO ENLARGE · ▶ TO LISTEN · ↓ TO READ

EDEN NASSIB · SALALAH

FAIZA · SALALAH

THE BIRDMAN · NEW YORK

They know me as the Birdman. My age is seventy years old, and I've been running this store for thirteen years. A lot of people look through the door and say, "Oh, look what's in there, it's a disaster." But then a lot of their friends say, "Oh, the old man knows exactly what he has and what he doesn't have." If you're not afraid to come in, you'll probably end up buying a lot of stuff. I don't use a computer. I don't use a cellular phone or anything. I'm old school. I do everything by hand. I don't use the cash register; I do it by hand. I never know how to work the cash register anyway. I didn't know how to work a cellular phone either. So I gave it up. I may be old, but my mind is very sharp. People used to say I had a photographic memory for things. I was a whizz-kid. I had made a lot of money by the time I was thirty-five on the stock market, in investment banking, and then I called it quits. And I got involved when I was fifty-seven again, and I'm still kicking. I tell them what I think is good. I say, "Not everybody likes the same thing, but I think you'll like it." Certain people I know that if they don't have much money, I'll give them a discount or something; what fits their pocket book. We talk about different things: the stock market, antiques, movies, that's they like. If you handle the customers the right way, they'll come back again. This store when we opened up, it was very crowded, and a lot of people were coming. But over the years not many people were buying music like before. A lot of people they just want one song or something, they'll buy it on the Internet for a dollar or something. There were plenty of days I got a hundred people, a hundred and fifty people a day. And then little by little went down and down. Now you're lucky if you get twenty, thirty people on certain days. Money is very tight now. Food prices are going up and everything. A lot of my customers lost their jobs on Wall Street; now they're bringing in CDs to sell just to survive. I never saw empty stores all over the place. Every block on the side streets you have empty stores. There was a video store on the next block; it became a Subway. It's better when you have more stores around because it brings more people to the neighborhood. On 14th street I see Duane Reade. Every block is a Duane Reade. Wherever you go, it's Subways, Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts and everything. They don't bring anything to the neighborhood. When I grew up you had the barber shops and the little delis; they all knew you and everything. You used to be able to charge your stuff then you paid at the end of the week or something. You can't do things like that anymore. I like this store, I like the music. I don't need the money, but I like to work. I have a lot of stuff; it doesn't make any difference if I sell it or I don't sell it. Eventually, I'll have to get rid of it. I'm gonna throw it out in the end, a lot of stuff. This is not really an asset of mine, it's just stuff. I'm old already, who knows how long I'll be around. I can be around ten years, I can be around fifteen years, I can be dead in three years. I'm hoping to be around a long time yet. But in life, you never know. Rainbow Music closed permanently on September 30, 2015.

MARIO ANTONIO HERNANDEZ ESCAMILLA · MEXICO

My name is Mario Antonio Hernández Escamilla; people call me Don Mario. I'm a seventy-two-year-old sculptor: I restore and create Catholic art. I started when I was fourteen. My workshop has been at this location since 1944. My father studied at the Academy of San Carlos; he taught me everything: anatomy, drawing, sculpture, carving. My great-great-grandfather Margarito Hernández was the first sculptor in our family. Two hundred and four years later, I am the twelfth sculptor of this dynasty and unfortunately the last one. The Church was one of my most important clients, but it doesn't send me business anymore. It's more interested in politics. It has abandoned its parishioners. Everything is made in China nowadays. It's cheaper. I work every day to survive. My biggest wish was to train an apprentice, but unfortunately, no one is interested. If people don't care, why should I? I may sound selfish, but that's the sad truth. In a way, this is going to be my revenge. I am going to take all of this knowledge to my grave.

MARIE GAGNÉ · MONTREAL

[English narrative — coming soon.]

RICHARD LÉVESQUE · MONTREAL

[English narrative — coming soon.]

JOSE LUIS · MEXICO

ANASTACIA FAHNSTOCK · PHILADELPHIA

My name is Anastacia "Stacy" Fahnestock. I'm fifty-eight years old. I've been selling antiques for thirty-one years. I'm married to Scott Evans, and we run the store together in Philadelphia. Our business started at a very grassroots level in the early 1980s. We both had art degrees, but I was waitressing, and Scott was a carpenter. I needed to have my wisdom teeth pulled, and to get together the money, Scott and I used our trash-picking skills to hunt for goods and set up at antique shows. On our very first weekend, we made five hundred dollars. We realized that we had a gift for figuring out what people wanted, and so we started selling things we found on the street. Twice a month, on Saturdays, we would have a street sale. Our clientele grew bigger and bigger week by week, so we knew we had to make it more official. Back in 1985 we heard about the opening of a flea market in a former synagogue and decided to rent a space there for two hundred dollars a month. We moved to our current, much bigger location in 1996. This block was a rat-infested shit-hole, the neighborhood wasn't safe, but we decided to buy the building from the owner. We renovated the whole building and rented one of the apartments to a family who needed a place to live. We do have a lot of energy in here. In the place that we're standing right here, we had bought several things that came from an estate where the person died violently: he had a lung aneurysm, and he basically coughed himself to death. He drew his final breath while on the toilet. He was in a second-floor apartment. The body just leaked and became watery as it decomposed until the neighbors downstairs noticed flies and a stain on the ceiling. So that was the situation that we came into: there was blood everywhere. We bought some things, and we brought them back to the garage, and we made sure that everything was cleaned and disinfected. This person had very specific tastes, so everything made a nice display together. One day this woman came by. She'd never been in the store. She was on her way down the street to apply for a job as a masseuse, and she says: "I just love your store, I just want to take a look around." She came back to me, and she said: "Do you know where everything in here comes from?" I asked her, "Well what are you sensing?" She said, "Well there's one area in here where I'm distraught, and I feel like the person had a very violent death," and she came right over to the case with the man's former belongings. I get the chills when I think of it. We're in business because we love old things. We love curating, we love finding interesting things. We love the history of it; it has become an emotional experience. There are times that I have sold things that I have regretted because I know I'll never see an item like that again. To me, the heart of the shop is the puppets. If I sell those, I think I'll close up. But they're very expensive, so… [laughs] We've had them for twenty years. I don't know if I could sell them.

CHARLES NERI · PHILADELPHIA

My name is Charles Neri, I'm eighty-one years old. I have this shop in Philadelphia that has been here for forty years. I hope the shop will be here another forty even though I won't. I hope my daughter Cindy will run it after I'm gone. I just happen to like the antiques. I love to be around beautiful things, listen to good music; it keeps me alive. I opened this store in 1976. I was in another business for twenty-five years and just got tired of it and didn't know what to do. I wasn't educated for anything, and I knew I liked antiques, so I bought this building and opened up an antiques shop. Gave up half of my other work; I would go to my other work in the morning, come here in the afternoons until I saw after four or five years that I could make a living doing this, then I gave up all my other work, and that was my retirement. I've been here for forty years now and I can't wait to get here every day.

JACQUES « LÉO » LÉOBOLD · PARIS

My name is Jacques Léobold, but I go by "Léo." I am ageless. I started without a book, bare walls, bare shelves. Then I gradually filled the space. The truth is that I'm missing 500 square metres, that's it. I am a victim of the lack of space and high rents in Paris. I opened this bookshop in 1984; it's been a few years now. I don't understand why I've never moved out. I tried, I had another shop, but it didn't work. I had an accident. To make it short, that's my story. I like paper. I love books; otherwise, I would be doing something else. The logic behind my shop? There ain't any. The ranking is in order of entry because I have no space. [laughs] If I need to find a book, I'll go and look for it where it is, if I have a copy left of course. I have other projects, things I've been thinking about for a long time. A documentation centre on contemporary art. I specialize in art, especially the visual arts. I'll never get bored. One must be crazy to get tired of this. [the phone rings] Léo died in early October 2017 after a long illness. He was seventy-six years old.

MEHMET ÖZTEKIN · ISTANBUL

My name is Mehmet Öztekin, I go by "Gramofon Baba" [father of gramophones], I'm seventy-seven years old. My shop is located in Istanbul's historic Grand Bazaar. I am Istanbul's last gramophone repairman. I've dedicated my entire life to gramophones. I learned the trade with my father when I was seven, by helping him in his workshop. Back then, gramophones were very precious; I was not even allowed to touch them, only assist him with the tools. My father inherited his passion from his father. I miss the old days where an apprentice would learn from a master. The transmission of knowledge is essential to keep a trade alive. The oldest gramophone I own was made in 1905. I have produced more than nine thousand gramophones in the past forty-five years. Most of them were sent to different countries around the world. Turkey was the only country where gramophones were repaired in the 1980s, and I have trained many masters, but they became unemployed over time because interest in the instrument waned and people would get rid of their gramophones. I have trained gramophone collectors as well. As a result, more people have started listening to gramophones again and looking for them on the Internet and in flea markets. I divide my gramophones into three categories: the ones I have repaired, the ones I designed and the antique gramophones. I repair gramophones for people to play them; I don't like when people do not use them. I see my work as a kind of cultural preservation. Gramophones should be protected for future generations. My dream is to establish a gramophone museum in Turkey.

VINCENT PIRIMIAN · PARIS

My name is Vincent Pirimian, I'm seventy-eight years old, and I'm a Catholic Armenian from Lebanon. I am married to a French woman. We had lived in Gemmayzeh, a neighborhood of Beirut for fourteen years when the war started. Every day I would find my wife in tears. She was terrified and didn't want to die in Lebanon. Following my mother's advice, we left Lebanon and moved to France in 1980. In Lebanon, I had thirteen employees working for me, making leather sandals. Here I'm my own boss in this tiny 21-square-foot shop [laughs] located under the porch of the former Manège Duphot, where high-society people used to come to ride horses until 1914. I fix everything: bags, heels, soles and suitcases. I am often asked the meaning of all these pictures glued from floor-to-ceiling in my shop: they are mostly postcards that I have received from all around the world and images that I cut out of magazines. I love to tell jokes and make riddles. Besides I sometimes give discounts to people who guess the answers.

YACEK KUZMA · PARIS

Welcome home! Even though I work here this place feels like a second home to me. My name is Yacek Kuzma. I turned fifty-one today. I have been working at La Galcante since 1989. I will be celebrating my thirtieth year here next year. That's more than half my life! I was born in Poland on November 23, 1967. My country was still behind the Iron Curtain when my family fled to France when I was fourteen-years old. Years later, I interrupted my law studies to come and work here. La Galcante is not your traditional bookstore. It is a unique place founded by Christian Bailly in 1975. It specializes in old newspapers and periodicals from the French Revolution until today. Even though we refer to this place as a bookshop, we don't really sell books here. We're located on a small street in the heart of Paris, a few steps away from the Louvre. I was officially hired in 1989, after working here part-time as a student. I started at the bottom, sorting never-ending piles of newspapers and magazines from all periods, of all kinds for roughly two years. Working in the basement wasn't easy because I didn't get to see much daylight. That's how I learned the basics of the profession. Knowing what you're selling and how to locate it is essential. Then I worked my way up as a sales manager while keeping a foot in the archives and taking care of the rankings. This allowed me to get a better understanding of the job; the requests of clients and collectors, and how to find and buy new stock, mostly through people looking to sell their collections. They contact us, we pay them a visit and take a look at their collection. Then there is a negotiation phase obviously. You never know what you're gonna get: you can end up with just two boxes or a ton of newspapers that you'll need to transport, classify and store before putting them on sale. There's no overnight success in this business. It requires a lot of hard work. I am challenged everyday, but I love what I do. It's crazy how time flies: it's been three decades since I first started working here. Interacting with strangers gives me the most joy, and we often become friends.

EDWIGE CHAREY · PARIS

My name is Edwige Charey, and I am sixty-six years old. My original name is not Charey. My grandfather, a Polish Jew, came to France at the beginning of the last century. When he declared his name, Szare, with the pronunciation of a Polish Jew, the person behind the counter understood "charé," and wrote "Charey." It was under this name that my father was born in 1908. Life was hard in Paris for my grandparents, so they decided to return to Poland, to their small village near Warsaw. When the Second World War started, my grandparents decided to keep the name of Charey hoping it would save them. Unfortunately, it didn't. After the war, my father, who was a prisoner of the Germans for five years, did not know where to go. He returned to France, taking advantage of the fact that he was a French citizen. He tried to find some family members at the Hotel Lutetia, where all the Polish Jewish deportees used to meet. After a few months, he realized that nobody would come back, and he settled permanently in Paris's 13th arrondissement. He worked all his life as a tailor and married a French woman. Following this marriage, my sister was born in 1949, and me in 1952. I have never been to Poland for fear of not being able to return. I wanted to become a great artist, and I met a man at the Beaux-Arts who introduced me to art, literature and the press. He's the one who showed me La Galcante, where I worked for twelve years. In 1993, I took over Les Archives de la Presse, a specialist bookshop selling all kinds of magazines: old, recent, fashion, cinema and sports. We closed the bookstore in July 2013. My boss wasn't able to find a buyer, so he decided to call it quits. My biggest wish was to be able to train someone and pass on the knowledge that I acquired over the years. I find it hard not to be able to pass the torch. A very cold art gallery took the place of my shop. I enjoyed meeting new people and being the confidante of some of my clients. In front of my desk, I had a chair, and many people sat in front of me to talk to me and tell me their woes. One of my most beautiful encounters was Patrick Modiano, a Nobel and Goncourt prizewinner, who liked to come and see me at La Galcante. Despite his shyness, he had complete confidence in me. His wife would drive him to the shop and leave him with me for the whole day. I spent time with him discussing his subjects, the Second World War and Paris. When Patrick Modiano quoted a telephone number or an address in one of his books, it meant that he had found it in a directory that I had sold him. I had extraordinary moments with him. Today, I share my passion for books and beautiful things with my grandchildren. I did not leave with sadness because I realized that all that I've learned helped me grow. I continue to look for and buy books and magazines and to share my passion with whomever wants to hear my story.

ABOU GEORGES · BEIRUT

HAGOP · BEIRUT

JOSEPH HOVSEPIAN · MONTREAL

Hello, my name is Joseph Hovsepian. I came from Greece in 1960, after serving in the Royal Greek Air Force, I came to Montréal. I worked for Canadair for a couple of years, and then I started Radio Hovsep Company, and I have had it for almost fifty-three years. But at the same time, I'm a volunteer pastor at a Baptist church in Outremont. I do both, and I enjoy it. This store has become an antiques shop. People come from all the cities, and even provinces, to take pictures. Movies have rented my space and the stuff I have. You may also see some of the things I have in movies. Seeing that is a pleasure for me. In my store I have things that are actually of great value. Tubes, receiving tubes that people can't find anywhere, and I sell tubes or ship them to outside the country or the province. I have parts and accessories. I have old radios that go back to the 1920s and 1930s, and people still bring me their radios to fix. They keep saying that this belonged to my great-grandfather or grandmother. The problem there is that today people don't even recognize them. Sometimes someone will come and say, "You know sir, I went to a store and showed them the radio, and they thought it was a toaster." They don't understand that radios in those days had lights inside and would get hot, and they would be surprised that I know how to fix them. I know how to fix them because I've been doing it for more than fifty-five years here. And for me, it's not only a pleasure, but it's something that comes with experience. You cannot buy experience, you cannot find it anywhere, except by practising. So I've been doing this day and night. Well not night but during the day. And it gives me pleasure. So if anyone would ask me would you ever give this up? Well, I'd tell them I will give it up when God takes my life away. I like it. I'm seventy-five years old, and I get pleasure from dealing with customers, repairs and also of course as a pastor dealing with the public, counselling and helping people, young people with drug addictions and alcohol problems. I help them as much as I can. I travel to mission fields. I've already made five mission trips to help poor people and build their churches and provide medication. People don't understand why I do all this, but I do it because God has given me a life and I want to enjoy my life. The store is a place where I can live my life and help others to live their lives to the fullest. What really makes me very pleased or excited is when someone brings me an old radio from 1920 or 1930 and mice have chewed the wiring and mice are trapped inside, and everything is bad, and my wife says, "What is this garbage? What are you going to do with that?" So I work on it for a couple of days. When the customer comes and sees the radio working, they start jumping and laughing and is so pleased, shaking my hand. That's the greatest pleasure I get out of my business: making people happy when they bring me broken-down things and I fix them. To go back into my history, I remember one day when I was about fifteen or sixteen years old my father told me, "Son, I want to talk to you." I thought he was going to talk to me about girls and sex, so I was excited. He said, "Sit down son. I want you to be a pastor, a reverend of a church. If you want to become a minister of a church, I will work two jobs, and I'll provide money for your schooling. But if you decide to be an electronics engineer instead, then I will only pray for you." To which I replied, "Dad, you know I love electronics. Pray for me." But, you know, thirty years later I managed to do both and this made him really happy.

BENOIT FORTIN · MONTREAL

JOSE URENA · BROOKLYN

My name is Jose Urena. I came to this country in 1973 from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. When I arrived, I started washing dishes in a restaurant, then I went to school and learned a little bit of English. I was working all the time. I started here in 1977. So it's been almost forty years. Life is tough, very tough. The American Dream is not easy to get, you need to work hard for it. In my country, it's not easy, but you need to work half for it. If you do what you're supposed to be doing, doing the right thing, you know, not being a crook, you are gonna get it, sooner or later. I made two big mistakes in my life: the first one was not to buy this building when I had the opportunity. Back in 1986, the owners were selling this building for eighty thousand dollars. The guy told me to give him five thousand dollars downpayment to make the papers. I was young, I told him I didn't need to own a building, I'd rather enjoy life instead. You see today I feel like knocking my head off because this building is worth at least ten million dollars. I don't wanna think about it. [laughs] The second time was when I went to the Dominican Republic in 1987, and somebody offered me a big piece of land, about five hundred acres. That was a beautiful piece of land for maybe thirty-three thousand pesos (approximately three thousand dollars back then). Today the land is worth something around twenty-five million dollars. That's life, you know. I regret these decisions with all my heart. [laughs] This is unbelievable.

PHILIP MORTILLARO · NEW YORK

My name is Philip Mortillaro, I've been a locksmith since 1964. I started doing this when I was fourteen years old, as an apprentice, and now I'm sixty-five years old and I'm still doing it. The shop here is Greenwich Locksmiths. I opened this up in April 1980, and it's the smallest freestanding building in New York (19 feet across the front by 14 feet on the triangle, 125 square feet total). My shop is my life. I love my shop, and I think when you look at the building you can tell. I like to make metal sculptures, so I made metal sculptures for my shop out of keys: I made a chair out of keys, I made a clock out of keys, and everything is "keys." I like to take the harder jobs: making parts for locks that don't exist anymore, safes, picking locks. I make thousands of keys a week. I charge four dollars for a key that will last more than twenty years; that's a good investment. People pay for quality and service. I'm a good locksmith. There are so many metaphors to keys: keys to success, keys to happiness, and everybody is looking for that key. Years ago, when I first opened here, this shop was normal, this was how NYC was, there were lots of little shops across the street from me. There was a place called Casey's Rubber Stamps: it was this guy from Dublin who opened up a shop just to make rubber stamps; you could make your name, you could make whatever you wanted, that's all he sold; and up the block, there was another guy who would just take pictures of streets in NYC, of people, of whatever, and he would put them in a frame and sell those. This is how business used to be. Years ago I would go to a café, I knew the owner, there was one guy around the corner from Italy, he would have a little café, now you go to Starbucks. When you wanna go to a hardware store, you go to Home Depot. When you wanna go to a bookstore, you go to Barnes & Noble. So this is the way the world is now, the world is shot; NYC is not really NYC anymore. NYC reminds me of a gift shop in an airport. Before there used to be a lot of old antiques shops over there and they would give me some business, they would bring an old lock for me to fix it, now it's different. But now I'm an old man, so it's okay. I own the building, have no mortgage and a lot of expenses. Everything is paid for. My son works with me and in the beginning I didn't think he was gonna go into this with me 'cause he went to college and everything; I thought he was gonna do something else. But now he loves it, he's twenty-nine years old, all of a sudden he thinks about this kind of business all the time, and he does lots of IT stuff, so he's gonna be dealing with all the electronic locks, which I don't do. As long as I'm around I'll be doing the old-fashioned stuff.

ALYSSA DE SANTIS · MONTREAL

JULIETTE TROLIO · MONTREAL

My name is Juliette Trolio, I'm sixty-two years old. I'm the owner of Rix Rax, a haberdashery in Montréal. Back in my younger days, I used to travel everywhere. In the early 1980s I met a man in Indonesia who helped me discover West Berlin. I lived there during the Cold War, from 1980 to 1985. Those were the most exciting years of my life. Graffiti art was in its early stages. I met a bunch of artists there, especially at the Endart Gallery. The name of my shop, Rix Rax, comes from an imaginary character from a Paul Scheerbart story. I fell in love with a painting based on it and brought it back with me to Montréal in 1987. This was when I made one of my dearest dreams come true: I opened my own shop. Initially, I wanted to open a thrift store. I found a store for sale that had specialized in handicrafts and knitting. I immediately sold all the inventory, and while cleaning the place, I discovered sewing articles. That gave me the idea to open a haberdashery instead, a place of imagination and creativity, like the world of Rix Rax. One thing led to another: I started to look for suppliers, travelled a lot and made a name for myself. One day, Nicole Bordeleau, a renowned author, talked about me and my name caught the attention of a European supplier. He showed up that same day with suitcases full of samples of beautiful buttons from Italy, Germany, Spain, and France. This is how Rix Rax became the go-to place if you were looking for beautiful buttons, trimmings, lace, belt buckles, silk flowers, feathers or ribbons. Over the years Rix Rax has become well-known in the world of fashion, costumes, hats, cinema, theatre and circus. Multidisciplinary artists and those who want to give a personalized touch to their wardrobe and their decor come here. Earlier this year, the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts honoured me alongside one hundred other women who influenced the world of fashion. I am so grateful for this recognition.

DAVID FRENCH · LONDON

My name is David French. I'm forty-seven years of age. I'm a male, or at least I was last time I checked. Things change so quickly these days. Younger generation. [laughs] I'm the manager of Mark Sullivan Antiques & Decoratives in London. It's a great place to work. Not only are you surrounded by beautiful objects but there's also a great sense of history that you get to talk about every day with different people, and you're continually learning new things. People want to come in and tell you about their collections, or stories and mythology, and the exploits of these great people from history, and of course, there are always stories I have never heard that only increase my knowledge and turn my curiosity. I had a stall in Camden Market thirty years ago, which is where I met Mark, the owner of the shop. I became very close friends with him over the years I worked at Camden Market. But when the market became a little bit untenable for us, he asked me if I wanted to manage a shop for him in the West End because he was going to open one and I sort of jumped at the chance, and that was twenty-two years ago, and now here I am. It's very convenient as well, because I get to take my dog with me, which is absolutely delightful, having my best friend and companion with me at work. Hopefully I'll be here for at least another twenty-two years.

FRANK SAVAZZI · TORONTO

My name is Frank Savazzi, I'm eighty-two years old. I came from Milan sixty-five years ago, in 1951. I was seventeen years old. At first it was very hard for me because I didn't understand English very much and I thought people spoke more French than English. I started being a tailor at a very young age: when I was nine, I would go to school in the morning, and my mother would send me to spend the rest of the day learning the skills of the tailoring trade, because she didn't want me to hang out in the street and get myself into trouble. If I had a penny for every stitch I have made, I would be a millionaire. [laughs] I love very much the trade that I learned in the centre of Milan, the capital of fashion, among very very good tailors. When I moved from Milan to Toronto, I came by myself, then after three months, my wife followed me with our three young children. She spoke French, English, Italian and German. She helped me with my French and made things more comfortable for me. When my wife passed away, I raised our three children by myself and remarried after they were all married. I've been with my second wife, Connie, for twenty-six years now. When I came to Canada, I started to make a lot of suits, twenty-five, thirty suits a week for Hudson Bay. Now I'm older, so I decided to slow it down, but I still make suits once in a while, because I love my work very much. Nobody wants to learn anymore. Learning a trade demands a lot of time, patience. Nowadays, people want to make money right away because they want to have a car, a better life. They don't learn like we did, with some kicks in the backside sometime; we learned the hard way. We know to do everything: from the vest to the jacket, to the coat. Not like now where people are chain workers: someone does a pocket, someone else does the sleeve, etc., and it's a different kind of work. I don't like it when people follow like sheep. Create your own style and be yourself for what you are and don't follow everybody else. I love everything about Canada: from the Native peoples, the Royal Mountain Police and the mountains of British Columbia and I'm very grateful for the life I was able to live here. My place is like a museum, filled with objects and memories collected through the years: paintings and sculptures from and inspired by the Native people. Unfortunately, I know that I'm gonna have to close shop one day.

ABRAHAM ARAZARIAN · BEIRUT

FADI MATTA · BEIRUT

FOUAD PANAYOT · BEIRUT

HAROLD PAUL · PHILADELPHIA

My name is Harold Paul, I'm eighty-seven years old. I am the owner of Paul and Sons and I work six days a week. This is my livelihood. With my wife, I run the business now that was started by my parents in 1919. Our children are not in it. Our grandchildren are not in it. We're just in it ourselves and we still enjoy what we do. We get along very well. We manufacture draperies, we have our workrooms here, we do the styling, we have the installation people. Our work is not only confined to homes: we do commercial work, we do movie work, we do work on ships, on cruisers, everything, as long as it hangs we will make it. You're welcome to come and visit us any time you like. Sylvia and I are both getting up in years, and we think maybe perhaps we should try and not work, and just confine ourselves to each other as we have been. We had an anniversary last Monday which was a leap year. It was the sixty-seventh anniversary of our marriage, which if it were not the twenty-ninth of the month, it would have been sixty-eight years that we've been happily married and I hope we are both well enough to keep our happiness going.

ABDO ABOU CHABAKE · BEIRUT

MIGUEL · MEXICO

DANIEL GALLANT · PARIS

[English narrative — coming soon.]

« BABA » CONRAD SARR · PARIS

My name is "Baba" Conrad Sarr, I'm fifty-nine years old. I call myself Baba as a tribute to my Senegalese father Babacar who passed away a few years ago. My passion for shoes came from him. I've been a shoeshiner for about twenty years now, but when you do something out of love, you don't count the time and effort you put into it. I went to college and got a senior technician certificate, then I decided to travel for a bit. Travelling made me realize that some trades weren't recognized for their true value in France. I had an all-consuming passion for the maintenance of my shoes. As the saying goes, "A man is known by the shoes he wears," and this is why I decided to start this salon: a unique place where I could make a living from my passion, spend some time with my friends and meet new people: Salon Baba was born. I meet people for my own enjoyment. I like to spend time here; the atmosphere is very relaxing. We talk about everything and nothing. The most impressive thing is that we barely talk about shoes. This place is about human connections. Some of the happiest moments in my life have happened here. I meet a lot of people through my work. When you walk through the door, you become an "Average Joe," you are not defined by your work or social rank; you are Baba's friend, you are part of the Salon. We're located in a neighborhood of Paris known as the "Golden Triangle." Traditionally, people usually go to a bar or a café for a quick break from their hectic life; others come to my Salon to relax and meet new people. Everyone who comes here is an added value to the Salon because they bring their knowledge. It's cultural I guess. I learn from others every day; it's gratifying for me.

SECTION 03 2016

INTERVIEWS

& PRESS

Press features and interviews that have accompanied The Guardians across international media.

TV5 Monde · 2023 🇫🇷 YOUTUBE

THE BOOK KEHRER VERLAG · 2019

The Guardians, monograph published by Kehrer Verlag in 2019, with a preface by Edward Burtynsky. A selection of portraits with the Guardians' narratives, in their original language.

"Through his photographic survey, Antaki addresses the social value and fragile nature of individualized work in an increasingly homogenized, consumerist society. The artist sees this, and he responds. With his acute perception of the present moment and a gentle curiosity, he eloquently takes stock, allowing us privileged access to the idiosyncratic wealth of the Guardians."

— EDWARD BURTYNSKY

PRINTS — LIMITED EDITION

112 × 78 cmed. 6 + 2 AP PRICE UPON REQUEST 150 × 100 cmed. 3 + 2 AP PRICE UPON REQUEST

ACQUISITION

Signed certificate of authenticity,
hologram seal.

Framing not included. White wooden frame
with anti-reflection glass recommended.

WhatsApp · +33 6 21 04 60 00
hello@vladimirantaki.com

THE VOICE OF THE GUARDIANS · AUDIO ARCHIVE 13 RECORDINGS

My name is Anastacia "Stacy" Fahnestock. I'm fifty-eight years old. I've been selling antiques for thirty-one years. I'm married to Scott Evans, and we run the store together in Philadelphia.

Our business started at a very grassroots level in the early 1980s. We both had art degrees, but I was waitressing, and Scott was a carpenter.

I needed to have my wisdom teeth pulled, and to get together the money, Scott and I used our trash-picking skills to hunt for goods and set up at antique shows.

On our very first weekend, we made five hundred dollars. We realized that we had a gift for figuring out what people wanted, and so we started selling things we found on the street.

Twice a month, on Saturdays, we would have a street sale. Our clientele grew bigger and bigger week by week, so we knew we had to make it more official.

Back in 1985 we heard about the opening of a flea market in a former synagogue and decided to rent a space there for two hundred dollars a month.

We moved to our current, much bigger location in 1996.

This block was a rat-infested shit-hole, the neighborhood wasn't safe, but we decided to buy the building from the owner.

We renovated the whole building and rented one of the apartments to a family who needed a place to live.

We do have a lot of energy in here. In the place that we're standing right here, we had bought several things that came from an estate where the person died violently: he had a lung aneurysm, and he basically coughed himself to death.

He drew his final breath while on the toilet. He was in a second-floor apartment. The body just leaked and became watery as it decomposed until the neighbors downstairs noticed flies and a stain on the ceiling, so they called the realtor. So that was the situation that we came into: there was blood everywhere. When his things came in, it was summer, so they had a terrible smell.

That's just business though. We bought some things, and we brought them back to the garage, and we made sure that everything was cleaned and disinfected and after about a week I put them out on the floor.

This person had very specific tastes, so everything made a nice display together as a little unit. I had them all here up on top of this showcase on the very first day that they were on the floor.

One day this woman came by. She'd never been in the store. She was on her way down the street to apply for a job as a masseuse, and she says: "I just love your store I just want to take a look around." I was way on the other side as she did her loop. She came back to me, and she said: "Do you know where everything in here comes from?"

I replied, "Most things. I mean, sometimes we get into a house where we're the very last person in, you know, so it's the lawyer who's there, so we don't really always have a history of who owned it, but in this case, we do."

I asked her, "Well what are you sensing?" She said, "Well there's one area in here where I'm distraught, and I feel like the person had a very violent death," and she came right over to the case with the man's former belongings, and it was just remarkable; I get the chills when I think of it. And she was just so into it. And I told her the story, she thanked me and left. I never saw her again.

We're in business because we love old things. We love curating, we love finding interesting things. We love the history of it; it has become an emotional experience. You know some things are unique in time. There are times that I have sold things that I have regretted because I know I'll never see an item like that again. If I have too much of an emotional attachment to an object, it won't come to the store, or we'll keep it in the back closet, not on the floor. To me, the heart of the shop is the puppets. If I sell those, I think I'll close up. But they're very expensive, so … [laughs] We've had them for twenty years. I don't know if I could sell them.

My name is Philip Mortillaro, I've been a locksmith since 1964, I started doing this when I was 14 years old as an apprentice, and now I'm 65 years old and I'm still doing it.

The shop here is Greenwich Locksmiths, I opened this up in 1980, in April it will be 36 years, and this is my story. My shop is my life. I love my shop and I think when you look at the building you can tell. I like to make metal sculptures, so I made metal sculptures for my shop out of keys: I made a chair out of keys, I made a clock out of keys, and everything is keys. I'm a good locksmith.

Years ago when I first opened here, this shop was normal, this was how NYC was, there were lots of little shops across the street from me, there was a place called Casey's Rubber Stamps, it was this guy from Dublin who opened up a shop just to make rubber stamps, you could make your name, you could make whatever you wanted, that's all he sold; and up the block there was another guy who would just take pictures of streets in NYC, of people, whatever and he would put them in a frame and sell those. This is how business used to be.

Years ago I would go to a café, I knew the owner, there was one guy around the corner from Italy, he would have a little café, now you go to Starbucks; when you wanna go to a hardware store, you go to Home Depot; when you wanna go to a book store, you go to Barnes & Noble, so this is the way the world is now, the world is shot; NYC is not really NYC anymore. NYC reminds me of a gift shop in an airport: you go on Bleeker Str. now and it's all these Marc Jacobs, Ralph Lauren and everything else I don't even know anymore. Before there used to be a lot of old antique shops over there and they would give me some business, they would bring an antique lock for me to fix it, now it's different. But now I'm an old man so it's ok.

My son works with me and in the beginning I didn't think he was gonna go into this with me cos he went to college and everything, I thought he was gonna do something else. But now he loves it, he's 29 years old, all of a sudden he thinks about this kind of business all the time, and he does lots of IT stuff, so he's gonna be dealing with all the electronic locks, which I don't do. As long as I'm around I'll be doing the old-fashioned stuff.

My name is Robert Perry, I'm fifty-four years old, and I live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The place is Tattooed Mom, and we've been here for twenty years next year. This place is not me, this place is everybody's who comes here and leaves a little piece of themselves here in some beautiful way. And it changes every day and every night, and that's what makes it just my absolute passion.

It's evolved over the years in interesting ways. So many different communities come here to gather, to meet and challenge each other, exchange ideas, and to create together. Whether they be visual artists, or writers, or filmmakers, or politicians, or moms or kids, or anything that you can think of; every community has been here and has enjoyed the space and has left their mark here. That's amazing to me.

My dream for this place is to just keep it going and keep going for another twenty years and another twenty years and another twenty. To have this be a real heart of a community for people where they can come and they can express themselves, and they can find their communities and enjoy each other and enjoy each other's company in a nice, inviting, safe space.

The biggest compliment that anybody could ever tell me about Tattooed Mom or about their time here is that they feel at home. That's how I know that my work is done, that I did a good job. That is my dream, to keep that going.

I have people come in, and they say, "Oh wow, this place is so cool!" A place like this could never exist anymore in—fill in the blank—New York or London or Paris or wherever you're talking about. It's not possible anymore for a place like this to be around.

So my concern is maybe that it isn't possible at some point, and perhaps the change that is happening in lots of places is happening in this city too, and will cut short our lives here in some small way. The encroaching condominiums, chains and speculative realtors will force somebody like us out of this space, but you know this space, even if we aren't around in twenty or forty or sixty years, will live on in many people's hearts, memories and photographs, and their own art will continue to keep going.

I was born in Hawaii. I lived there till I was seventeen. I went to school in Boston, travelled a lot on the East Coast and all across America, landed in California and went back to Hawaii and travelled in Europe and went to all different kinds of places and eventually ended up in Philadelphia because I had a friend here. It looked like a cheap, cool, scary place to live. It was easy to live on very little here, and that made it fun as a young artist to be in that kind of a city. There were lots of us doing that, whether you were making music or making art.

I was working as a graphic designer at one point, as an art director at a small book publisher. We used to go up to this bar, and I became friends with the owner who asked me to do graphic design work for him and then to help him produce nights and then to deejay and do all this other stuff. One thing led to another, and one of the bartenders there was opening a place with him called Sugar Mom's in another neighborhood up in the old city. They invited me and said, "Just quit your job and come start this place with us," and I said, "I don't have any money," and they said, "You don't have to worry about that, just quit your job and it's going to be fine." So I was ready to do that, and I did. And there was no turning back, so I just helped them with the visuals of the space, lots of fun details.

So I started Sugar Mom's with them and then one of the partners at Sugar Mom's said, "I want to start a place down in our neighborhood, South Street. Would you like to come with me and do that?" And I said sure. So we started Tattooed Mom. Everybody knew her as "mom"; she was tattooed and looked out for travelling bands and other travellers. She was just a mom to a lot of people, so we started this place.

The upstairs was not quite as filled with the beauty that you see now. But we'd lived and hung out in places like this that were squats and band houses. So it was just natural for our friends to show up and start doing things like this. And I guess that word kind of spread, so people who were doing sticker art, graffiti and wheat paste and everything else also showed up and started adding to the walls and it just kind of hasn't stopped since then. It's beautiful to see people from all over the world now appreciate it. And people who, through things like Instagram, people from all over the world might see things that are happening here and say, "Oh when I come to Philly, I need to stop by Tattooed Mom and check it out or add my art to it."

And it's nice to see artists from all over the world who travel stopping by. But it's not just artists; it could be skateboarders, bicycle messengers from Prague—I had like eleven sleeping on my floor once because they were all here for a big race. You know things like that make it super fun to be here. It's a home to a lot of people, and if people feel like that, they feel comfortable here and feel at home and feel that they can express themselves here that is really the highest compliment.

INSTALLATIONS 2014 — 2019

The Guardians have been presented life-size in public and institutional spaces — empty storefronts, JCDecaux billboards, museums, festivals. Organized by event.

JCDECAUX · ABRIBUS JCDECAUX · 2014