The Little Green Car takes on the PMO
Edmonton photographer Leroy Schulz adds Harper to his collection
There aren’t many people who can say they’ve played cars with the prime minister, but local photographer Leroy Schulz now can.
The enterprising shooter just returned from a trip to Ottawa after convincing Prime Minister Stephen Harper to participate in his Little Green Car Project.
The project is primarily a photo essay documenting people from all walks of life, both famous and anonymous, holding a toy, green 1972 Buick Riviera that Schulz bought for his seven-year-old nephew, Miguelito.
The boy lost it in his grandparents’ garage, where Schulz found it and kept it, just for fun.
He began taking the car along with him on climbing trips and in other travels, photographing it on top of mountains, or at local clubs in the hands of musicians and waitresses. His whimsical little project has evolved to include photos of the car with Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations; Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge; the late Jack Layton; comedian Jerry Seinfeld; and now, Harper.
“The main theme of the project is still to illustrate the interconnectedness of all the people in it; rich, poor, famous, anonymous, regardless of age or ethnicity or gender. There’s also the idea of goodwill towards strangers,” says Schulz.
He’s been trying for some time to connect with the prime minister’s office and get permission for a photo with Harper, to no avail. His recent success came largely with the help of his member of Parliament, Laurie Hawn, who has already posed with Miguelito’s little green car.
To maximize the impact of his trip to Ontario, Schulz booked appointments with other luminaries in Ottawa and Toronto around his meeting with Harper. Well-known politicians Justin Trudeau, Bob Rae, Stéphane Dion and Olivia Chow, as well as media celebs Peter Mansbridge, Jian Ghomeshi and George Stroumboulopoulos, all agreed to be photographed.
But Schulz is quick to add that the project is not just about compiling a gallery of famous faces. It’s about interesting people he meets, or strange encounters, or serendipitous crossings of paths.
“The project is not about just celebrities; the project is about people from all walks of life. So I made a point, as soon as I walked out of the prime minister’s office, I walked down the street and the very next person in the project is a homeless person by the name of Greg. Because this project is sequential, now, forever, there will be a homeless person next to the prime minister,” he adds.
“I want this project to be a bit of a social commentary as much as it is anything else.”
Along the way, he captured interesting faces of people with stories to tell, like a couple of Quebec City punks he met in Ottawa who were returning from a year-long trip around the world.
His serendipitous photos from this recent trip include the visiting Venezuelan conductor he watched at a performance at the National Arts Centre one night, thinking he’d be a great person to include in the project. The next day, he ran into the conductor in the admission line at the National Gallery. He agreed to be photographed, posing in the parking lot, conducting with a drinking straw and Miguelito’s toy car.
Chow and Trudeau, in particular, were warm and charming in their photo shoots, says Schulz. The prime minister, known for his serious demeanour, was surprisingly good-natured and engaging, he adds.
“When I handed him the car, his response was, ‘so this is the little green car.’ It’s probably not the case, but I want to think that he thinks the project’s really cool,” Schulz adds with a laugh.
“Then he sat at his desk and he ran the car along his desk, and I think he said, ‘vroom.’ ” Harper also lamented the fact that kids don’t play with simple toy cars much any more, and that his own kids now prefer video games, says Schulz.
Still, Harper’s handlers insisted the photo be taken by an official parliamentary photographer as Schulz looked on, presumably to protect the image of the prime minister that would be released, he says. They then sent him the photo and the rights to use it.
All of Schulz’s photos are posted on his website in the order in which they were shot, at miguelitoslittlegreencar.com.
He plans to eventually compile them in a book, along with the many stories he’s accumulated along his journey. He’d also like to see the photos mounted in a gallery show.
“Just picture walking into a large gallery space with thousands of photos that form a mosaic, and the one constant in all the photos is this green car — that’s always in the back of my mind,” he says.
He still has some luminaries on his photo wish list, foremost among them U.S. President Barack Obama. “I know that that is a Hail Mary, but it’s worth trying,” he says.
So many of the things that seemed unthinkable at the start of the project have since come to pass, he adds.
“There are times when I stand back and I’m astounded. I think, ‘This is crazy — I just got an invitation to meet with the prime minister of Canada,’ and arguably that invitation came about because of this die-cast toy car.”
He continues to connect with people who then connect him with friends, both well-known and unknown, reminding Schulz of just how closely linked all of us are, in a six-degrees-of-separation kind of way.
“And yes, Kevin Bacon is on my list,” he adds with a laugh.