I have always been monochrome dreaming. Since first picking up a camera, I have been interested in recording odd scenes; photos that make you do a double take. In the early days, I didn’t concentrate on it very much. I’d take a photo whenever I came across something unusual. It wasn’t until I got a digital camera in 2006 that I began to actively look for everyday scenes that make the familiar seem a little strange.
With a digital camera, I could experiment more–take many photos of the same scene in order to change the angle of a reflection or align elements perfectly. My image making went from taking a one-off of a particular scene to exploring the scene more fully to get the best possible shot. In this post I show a few early examples from Toronto in the 1980s, and then some more recent examples.
In my Wish You Were Here series, I aim to challenge the viewers’ attention in a subtle way by finding everyday scenes with elements of whimsy and surrealism. Like Magritte, and Friedlander, I want to make the familiar seem a little strange, but without Photoshop and image manipulation. These photos come about through observation, using juxtaposition, reflection, typography, and scale. My new project, “Wish You Were Here – Monochrome Dreaming” shows black and white images that aspire to challenge and entertain the senses.
These are photos taken in a neighborhood of Toronto called, The Junction. I lived in this neighborhood from 1982-1986. For part of that time I was attending Ryerson in the downtown core, and did most of my street photography there. But I also took the time to walk around the Junction with my camera recording everyday scenes. It may have been a little gritty and down-trodden, but the area had a lot of character, a lot of soul.
Today, The Junction is totally revitalized with lots of cafes and bars and a vibrant night life. Back in the 1980s it was a dry area (no alcohol was sold) and it meant a long trek to the liquor on public transit. I miss those carefree days days of my youth.
There are various motivations for taking a photo–to capture a moment, to document a place or thing, to record beautiful light, or to fulfill an assignment. One of my interests in photography has been to somehow challenge the viewer so that they do a double take; the image holds their attention because there is something thought provoking about it. The notion of using visual trickery and humour came to me early on after discovering the work of American photographer Lee Friedlander, and also the paintings of Belgian surrealist painter Rene Magritte.
It was in Paris in 1978 that I first saw Magritte’s dream-like, illusionistic images. I could gaze at them for a long time and really never figure them out. But that really didn’t matter, for it was the feeling that they invoked that was special–that little area of my brain, the “Magritte zone,” had been suddenly stimulated. Over time I began using these perceptual tricks in my own photography.
“The Treachery of Images”- Ceci n’est pas une pipe./This is not a pipe, Rene Magritte, 1929
One of Magritte’s most famous works is “The treachery of images” (1929), a painting that challenges the viewer’s notion of art. An image of a pipe has the words “This is not a pipe.” written below it. When Magritte was once asked about this image, he replied that of course it was not a pipe, just try to fill it with tobacco. Andrea K. Scott writes in the New Yorker, “It may be art’s most famous one-liner, but it’s a startlingly modernist proposition: this isn’t a pipe, it’s a picture. Magritte’s enduring popularity has edged his once shocking imagery into the realm of cliché. But his radical use of language and his transposition of the banal and the unnerving set a precedent. Would the enigmas of Jasper Johns’s flags or Ed Ruscha’s deadpan pairing of image and text have been conceivable otherwise? Magritte, who dressed like a banker and was known to paint at his dining-room table, saw himself as a “secret agent” in the war on bourgeois values. He once said of his mission, ‘Too often by a twist of thought, we tend to reduce what is strange to what is familiar. I intend to restore the familiar to the strange’.’’
In my Wish You Were Here series, I aim to challenge the viewers’ attention by in a subtle way by finding everyday scenes with elements of surrealism. Like Magritte, I want to make the familiar seem a little strange, but without Photoshop and image manipulation. These photos come about through observation, using juxtaposition, reflection, typography, and scale. My new project, “Wish You Were Here – Monochrome Dreaming” shows black and white images that aspire to challenge and entertain the senses. Is that really a fish, or just a fishy picture?
Earlier this year I had the pleasure of visiting the Magritte Museum in Brussels, Belgium, and found that I was still deeply inspired (and entertained) by his whimsical, dream-like images. I realized that I had never really left the Magritte Zone.
During the years 1980-1986, I did a lot of street photography in Toronto. For the past four years I have been scanning an archive of this material, and posting it online. Toronto Gone represents the final photos, the ones that have been recently scanned or have not been published in my Toronto books.
My memories of living in The Junction have faded. That’s why I’m so glad I have the photos to help me remember my time there (1982-1986). They bring back the feeling of living there and, for me, the colour photos seem to carry a more emotional and psychological component than the black and white ones. It also reminds me the importance and value of the documentary photograph.
Looking at a photo many years later, you may not know exactly why you took it but still be glad you did. Among other things, photography has been a visual diary for me. It helps me remember the places I’ve been and things I’ve seen. Photos can also become valuable documents of things and places that no longer exist.
We never know the full significance of the photos we take. They’re a picture of a moment, and that moment is gone as soon as you’ve taken the picture. That place–or that person, or cloud, or animal–is already changing before you’ve even walked away. We don’t know until much later whether those changes will accrue quickly or gradually. We don’t know if we’ll ever be there again, ever talk with that person again. The relentlessness of change is masked by its ordinariness.
This has been so evident to me in hearing people’s responses to my Toronto series. Taken in the 1980s, they show a city that many feel no longer exists.
The Junction is a neighborhood in west Toronto with the main intersection being Dundas and Keele. When I lived there in the 1980s, it was gritty and somewhat run down. It was still a dry area then–no alcohol could be sold or served. That meant there were no good restaurants, no bars, and practically no night life. It didn’t seem dangerous, though; just a working class neighborhood with lots of small Mom&Pop shops. It was known as Little Malta because of the large Maltese-Canadian community.
I used to walk around the neighborhood sometimes with my camera. It had a lot of character, a lot of tarnished charm. Living there for four years gave me the opportunity to feel at home, and relaxed. I remember the characters who hung out at Crazy Joe’s Flea Market and Poor Boy Restaurant, the tasty toasted western sandwiches at Mimmo’s Place, Vesuvio’s Pizzeria, the pungent smell from the stockyards when the wind blew the wrong way, and numerous parties and gallery openings at our studio. All of these are gone now.
The Junction has been completely revitalized. It’s no longer down at the heels. The elimination of prohibition in 2001 has been a positive change; there are now lots of cool bars and pubs along Dundas Street West. The Stock Yards is now a huge area of box stores. And the electric lines have all been buried, giving the streets a neater, cleaner look.
It’s been almost forty years since I lived there; time has a way of smoothing out the bad times and magnifying the good ones in a tide of nostalgia. And memories are notoriously fickle. The photos, however, do not change. They are documents, and tell a story of what it was like to live there.
