Paul Till was born in 1953 in London, England and immigrated to Toronto, Canada in 1957. He's been here pretty much since them.

He was famous long ago for having an image from the first rock concert he ever photographed (Bob Dylan in Toronto in 1974) ending up as the cover of Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks". Back in those predigital days he was an expert in gonzo photomanipulation. "I blew up a small piece of the black and white negative onto another piece of negative film, which normally would give you a positive, but I solarized it and partially reversed it so I ended up with another negative (sort of). I printed that and hand coloured it." (If you understand that, that's good. If you don't understand it that's good too.) "I got Dylan's address from "Who's Who" and mailed him a print." Till later pulled off about the same trick with an image made at the Niagara Falls New York stop of the Rolling Thunder review which was used on the cover and slipcase of the songbook,"Bob Dylan, Songs 1966 through 1975". Although he tried the same thing a couple of more times none of it bore fruit.

Since then he's photographed a cryptic Leonard Cohen, a grumpy Chuck Norris, a Jerry Lewis enraged about Watergate, the charming Lena Lovich, as well as many people and bands that are seem to be really quite famous but when you're the oldest guy in the room you've got to expect to know why or how..

The bodies of work here don't really need much explaining. Technically Till is the master of such techniques as infra-red, split toning, panoramic photography, reticulation, melting, scratching, burning and otherwise distressing negatives, hand colouring with dyes, oils and pencil crayons, solarizataion, and a lot of other wierd voodoo poo, man.

If you want him to make some photos for you, (your wedding, your kids, your dog, whatever,) or you want to buy some of the photographs you see here you email him at paultill@sympatico.ca.