Jonah KondroI stepped over a pair of white panties in a parking lot while on my way to check out Amanda Hedden’s Lovable Dives: Vintage Colour Photography Exhibitions.
Amanda Hedden is the owner of Chronic Nostalgic, a local business that seeks out old colour slides, transparencies, and photo prints. After digitizing, cleaning, and editing vintage photos, Hedden sells prints of the restored images. She has chosen from 60 of her top photos to use in a month long exhibition in four Edmonton dive bars: The Sands (12340 Fort Rd.), Hilltop Pub (8220 106 Ave.), New West Hotel (15025 111 Ave. — restaurant and lounge each have separate exhibits), and the combat juice fueled Garneau Pub (8514 109 St.).
The panties I stepped over were in the parking lot of The Sands. The venue was recently renovated, however, Hedden still considered it a dive bar worthy of her photo exhibition. For Hedden the place has to draw a diverse crowd, have décor that preferably hasn’t changed over the last thirty years, be inexpensive, and be safe. “I want to entice people to places that I know they’re not going to get stabbed,” she says while sipping on two shots of brown rum.
Some of the venues featuring Hedden’s photos have personal nostalgic value for her while others are cozy little places she discovered to grab a drink.
“You walk in there at night, at the Hill Top, (and) it’s like walking into your best friend’s living room. There’s nothing uncomfortable there at all,” Hedden says.
But it’s not just about hanging vintage photos in relaxed old bars. Hedden wants her exhibitions to bring more than just the local bar flies out. “I really dig that idea of using what I got to kind of make people cross paths when they would never cross paths and go to places that they’ve never been or never think to go,” she says.
The photos displayed in each venue are as varied as the patrons inhabiting the dive bar. There are photos (and patrons) from the ‘50s through to the ‘80s. The images could be of ladies water skiing, men in suits holding dead ducks from a hunting trip, or mid-1950s downtown Edmonton. The patrons you’ll have to meet for yourselves.
Hedden recalls interacting with some of the crowd while initially hanging the photos.
“These dudes were ZZ Top after they’ve been, you know, working the rigs (for a while). These guys were hilarious and great and embodied exactly the whole gist (of the exhibition),” she says.
Each photo, like the venue itself, has something to offer a curious photography or dive bar enthusiast. Hedden says that you can find beauty in anything. “Just look at it for a second and don’t make a judgment till you let it fill your eyes,” she says. And she feels the same way about the oil and gas labourers she met while hanging the photos. “As soon as we started talking, they were good guys. Guys, you know, that got your back,” she says.
