“Toronto in the 1980s” represents a sort of greatest hits of my 1980s Toronto photos. I’m thankful to Chad Tobin for is valuable assistance in editing this collection. It is available at Blurb Books.
From the introduction:
There is a feeling of freedom walking around a city with a camera. At 66, I still have that feeling but it was more pronounced when I was in my mid twenties, studying photography as a student at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Toronto Metropolitan University.) I took a lot of photographs in my early years in Toronto, capturing street scenes and ordinary aspects of daily life that happened to catch my eye. American photographer Henry Wessel sums up my approach in this way: “Part of it has to do with the discipline of being actively receptive. At the core of this receptivity is a process that might be called soft eyes. It is a physical sensation. You are not looking for something. You are open, receptive. At some point you are in front of something that you cannot ignore.”
Back in the 1980s I would shoot a roll of film (usually black and white), process it a few days later and make a contact sheet. After that I might make an enlargement of one or two of the strongest shots, and then move on. The contact sheets may have been reviewed from time to time when I was preparing for an exhibition, but basically, I didn’t look at them for years and years.
For a long time, my photos were almost all black and white. I paid a great deal of attention to lines and form and the abstract qualities that monochrome provided. My influences had been Robert Frank and Lee Friedlander who were all about documenting the social landscape. It seemed that this type of photography was so much better suited to black and white, or as Frank called it, “the colours of hope and despair.
.
I had no way to anticipate how significant these Toronto photos would seem to me 40 years later. They show things that no longer exist, even though it hasn’t been that long. Without necessarily trying to, I caught images of buildings, cars, fashions, gadgets that are no longer part of our world. Toronto’s entire skyline is utterly changed, part of the inevitable growth and evolution. I sometimes think about the children and young adults in these photos who are now in their 50s and 60s. How have their lives been?
.
Looking back now at the photos I spent my precious film on back then, so much comes back to me about dropped into a new environment. We use our creative tools as extensions of ourselves; they help us understand and define our place in the world. For me, having a camera in my hand at all times helped me remember, You only get to do this once. We have to take time and see it, as clearly as we can.
.
Product Details
10×8 in, 25×20 cm
Softcover, 62 Pages
59 black and white photographs
Store Window, Yonge Street, 1981
Jarvis Street, 1980
Eaton Centre, 1980
Chess players at Yonge and Gould, 1982
Watching TV in the Junction, 1986
Crazy Joe’s Flea Market, 1983
Pay Phone, Union Station, 1986
Photo Booth, Union Station, 1981
Laundromat, Kensington Market, 1983
Mirrors, Kensington Market, 1983
Beer cases, Gould and Yonge, 1985
Allan Gardens, 1985
Pape Avenue, 1986
Bay Street, 1983
Fish market, Kensington Market, 1983
Queen and Yonge, 1981
Dundas West near Lansdowne, 1984
Lakeshore Road, Etobicoke, 1982
Party scene, 1985
Sandwich shop, Yonge Street, 1983
Apartment on Dundonald Street, 1982
Kensington Market, 1983
Nathan Phillips Square, 1982
Film Premiere, Eglinton Theatre, 1986
U.S. Cruise Missile protest, Yonge Street, 1983
Yonge and Gerrard, 1981
Halloween on Yonge Street, 1981
The Spectrum Nightclub, Danforth Avenue, 1986
TV in store window, Yonge Street, 1981
Funland Arcade, Yonge Street, 1981
Streetcar scene, 1984
Dundonald Street, 1982
St. Clair Station, 1984
View from Yonge and Gerrard, 1989
Grace Street, 1986
Gay Rights Toward Equality, 1980
Santa Claus Parade, Yonge Street, 1981
BMX riders at Bloor W. and Dundas W., 1986
Rock and Roll Forever, Yonge Street, 1981
New Wave fashion, Yonge Street, 1985
Art auction at Sotheby’s, 1983
St. Joseph and St. Nicholas, 1984
Toronto Camera store window, 1984
Man and dog, Dundas Street West, 1983
Bay Street, 1983
Dundas and Yonge, 1983
Jarvis Street, 1981
Outside Global Cheese, Kensington Market, 1983
Bay and Dundas West, 1983
Jesus Is The Way, Kensington Market, 1983
View from Neill-Wycik, Gerrard East and Mutual, 1982
Subway Scene, 1984
Bay Street lobby, 1983
On the College streetcar, 1981
Gas Station, Pape Avenue, 1983
Southdown Road and Clarkson Road, Mississauga, 1985
Toronto In Colour: the 1980s is my recent collection of Toronto photographs, and is now available at Blurb Books. A recent feature on a popular Toronto site BlogTO has brought my photos to a new audience. I thought I’d post a few of my favourites, as well as some outtakes from the book.
In the years 1980 to 1986, I shot about 800 rolls of film, most of them street photographs. Of the thousands of photos only about 10% were in colour. I tended to look for different scenes when I had colour film in my camera–usually Kodacolor II, but sometimes Ektachrome or Kodachrome. I would think in terms of “light and colour” rather than “tones and the moment.” So, I sought out slightly different subject matter than when shooting in black and white.
Book Introduction to Toronto In Colour: the 1980s
There is a feeling of freedom walking around a city with a camera. At 62, I still have that feeling but it was more pronounced when I was in my mid twenties, studying photography as a student at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute. I took a lot of photographs in my early years in Toronto, capturing street scenes and ordinary aspects of daily life that happened to catch my eye. American photographer Henry Wessel sums up my approach in this way: “Part of it has to do with the discipline of being actively receptive. At the core of this receptivity is a process that might be called soft eyes. It is a physical sensation. You are not looking for something. You are open, receptive. At some point you are in front of something that you cannot ignore.”
I had no way to anticipate how significant these Toronto photos would seem to me 30 years later. They show things that no longer exist, even though it hasn’t been that long. Without necessarily trying to, I caught images of buildings, cars, fashions, gadgets that are no longer part of our world. Toronto’s entire skyline is utterly changed, part of the inevitable growth and evolution.
Back in the 1980s I would shoot a roll of film (usually black and white), process it a few days later and make a contact sheet. After that I might make an enlargement of one or two of the strongest shots, and then move on. The contact sheets may have been reviewed from time to time when I was preparing for an exhibition, but basically I didn’t look at them for years and years.
Looking back, I wish I had taken more colour photos, but I’m thankful for the ones I have. There were reasons for not shooting much colour. First, there was the added cost; second, I didn’t have much access to a colour darkroom to make prints. And in those days black and white was the preferred medium for fine art and documentary photographers. Ernst Haas was one of the few to exhibit colour photographs. William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Edward Burtynsky and other colour specialists were just emerging, and colour photography was not yet fully accepted in the art world.
There is a sense of hyper realism in a colour photograph, like looking at a Technicolor movie, that you don’t get with the more abstract black and white view. Japanese photographer Shin Noguchi is one of my favourites. Chuck Patch writes, in the introduction to Noguchi’s In Colour in Japan, “He prefers shooting in colour, because he says, black and white distances his audience by interjecting a layer of artifice between the viewer and the ‘Real World.’” And there’s also the psychological component of how the colours make us feel. Toronto In Colour: the 1980s is a collection of colour photos not seen in the three Toronto books I assembled previously; many of these images, in fact, haven’t ever been posted or published at all.
Toronto In Colour: the 1980s is my recent collection of Toronto photographs, and is now available at Blurb Books. In the years 1980 to 1986, I shot about 800 rolls of film, most of them street photographs. Of the thousands of photos only about 10% were in colour. I tended to look for different scenes when I had colour film in my camera–usually Kodacolor II, but sometimes Ektachrome or Kodachrome. I would think in terms of “light and colour” rather than “tones and the moment.” So, I sought out slightly different subject matter than when shooting in black and white.
Book Introduction to Toronto In Colour: the 1980s – There is a feeling of freedom walking around a city with a camera. At 62, I still have that feeling but it was more pronounced when I was in my mid twenties, studying photography as a student at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute. I took a lot of photographs in my early years in Toronto, capturing street scenes and ordinary aspects of daily life that happened to catch my eye. American photographer Henry Wessel sums up my approach in this way: “Part of it has to do with the discipline of being actively receptive. At the core of this receptivity is a process that might be called soft eyes. It is a physical sensation. You are not looking for something. You are open, receptive. At some point you are in front of something that you cannot ignore.”
I had no way to anticipate how significant these Toronto photos would seem to me 30 years later. They show things that no longer exist, even though it hasn’t been that long. Without necessarily trying to, I caught images of buildings, cars, fashions, gadgets that are no longer part of our world. Toronto’s entire skyline is utterly changed, part of the inevitable growth and evolution.
Back in the 1980s I would shoot a roll of film (usually black and white), process it a few days later and make a contact sheet. After that I might make an enlargement of one or two of the strongest shots, and then move on. The contact sheets may have been reviewed from time to time when I was preparing for an exhibition, but basically I didn’t look at them for years and years.
Looking back, I wish I had taken more colour photos, but I’m thankful for the ones I have. There were reasons for not shooting much colour. First, there was the added cost; second, I didn’t have much access to a colour darkroom to make prints. And in those days black and white was the preferred medium for fine art and documentary photographers. Ernst Haas was one of the few to exhibit colour photographs. William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Edward Burtynsky and other colour specialists were just emerging, and colour photography was not yet fully accepted in the art world.
There is a sense of hyper realism in a colour photograph, like looking at a Technicolor movie, that you don’t get with the more abstract black and white view. Japanese photographer Shin Noguchi is one of my favourites. Chuck Patch writes, in the introduction to Noguchi’s In Colour in Japan, “He prefers shooting in colour, because he says, black and white distances his audience by interjecting a layer of artifice between the viewer and the ‘Real World.’” And there’s also the psychological component of how the colours make us feel. Toronto In Colour: the 1980s is a collection of colour photos not seen in the three Toronto books I assembled previously; many of these images, in fact, haven’t ever been posted or published at all.
Toronto In Colour: the 1980s photographs by Avard Woolaver Hardcover, 44 pages; 89 colour photos 20 x 25 cm / 8 x 10 in.
Here are a few photos from the book. I hope you enjoy them!
Colourville is a place in my mind where colour lives, the part of my brain where colours meet and mingle. It’s what propels me to record colour scenes with my camera. But it wasn’t always this way.
For a long time, my photos were almost all black and white. I paid a great deal of attention to lines and form and the abstract qualities that monochrome provided. My influences had been Robert Frank and Lee Friedlander who were all about documenting the social landscape. It seemed that this type of photography was so much better suited to black and white, or as Frank called it, “the colours of hope and despair.” The price was another big reason to use black and white. A darkroom could be set up anywhere, and it wasn’t so difficult or expensive to process and print black and white film. I had almost no access to a colour darkroom. It was 90% black and white and 10% colour.
While attending Ryerson in Toronto, I did learn how to process and print colour film. Thanks to a wonderful professor named Don Snyder, I became quite proficient at colour printing but didn’t get use the skill for several years.
In the 1990s, when I co-owned and operated a custom photo lab in Toronto, the hundreds of hours spent balancing prints, dialling in the cyan, magenta, and yellow, taught me so much. I learned more about colour photography doing this, than in the previous decades of photography.
One client was a designer whose understanding of colour astonished me. She created a line of elegant women’s fashion, and our lab printed catalogues for her annual shows. Not only could she identify and choose from among subtle differences in colour on a print, she could even remember shades without looking at them—the way some people have an uncanny gift for recalling the characteristics of a wine they tasted years earlier, or a music performance heard in childhood. Working with clients like her helped me understand colour precision, and relationships between colours. It made me appreciate the photographic potential of the world around me in a new way.
When I began using a digital camera in 2006, I began shooting almost entirely in colour. Living in the country, I became more aware of light temperature and natural colour casts in the sky. And I no longer needed a colour darkroom. The magic that I felt in my early days of photography had returned.
In this book I take a trek across the colour spectrum following the colours on the rainbow flag seen on page 2. Violet to indigo, to blue, green, yellow, orange, red, pink, and finally gray. I also have included images that serve as a transition between two colours. It is my hope that the photos are interesting on their own, without the colour connections. They are a glimpse into Colourville—a marvellous place.
No Money Down – Toronto (1980-1986) documents the city of Toronto, Canada, in the 1980s. It is a follow-up to my first book: Toronto Flashback (1980-1986).
From the introduction: These photos were taken in the early days of my twenty years
in Toronto. I’d just moved there to study photography at Ryerson, and I found
myself inundated with new images and experiences. Whenever you’re plunked down
in a wholly changed environment, there’s lots of space to create new memories.
Leafing back through my archived slides while pulling together this book, I
found I could remember taking so many of these shots. And, of course, there
were many others I had no recollection of taking, pictures from places I
couldn’t remember being and sometimes couldn’t even identify. Moments fly past
us, noticed or unnoticed, all with their particular shadings of beauty and
uniqueness.
When I look back on that time, everyday routines and
unforgettable events are all mixed up together. I lived in a gritty
neighbourhood near the school and spent hours walking around downtown Toronto
with my camera. I was simultaneously watching and participating in the life of
this new city. I had french fries at least once a day, usually at a diner,
usually late at night. Squirrels got into my apartment through an open window
and chewed my prized Bose speakers to shreds.
Our Ryerson professors gave us assignments like
photographing shadows, or reflections, or exploring the use of the frame; this
guidance helped me walk the pavements with intention and with something to
learn each day. I carried a Konica SLR at first, and later a tiny Rollei 35S;
they were my constant companions. Being frugal with film was important to me,
since I was on a student budget–usually I shot just one or two frames of a
scene. Most of the photos in this book were one-offs.
In those years, walking with my camera gave me a way of
getting to know this new city at the same time I was getting to know myself and
honing my skills as a photographer. My shyness faded. Toronto became a place I
felt at home. I lived there for years–I got married, had children, and felt
completely a part of things.
Looking back now at the photos I spent my precious film on back then, so much comes back to me about dropped into a new environment. We use our creative tools as extensions of ourselves; they help us understand and define our place in the world. For me, having a camera in my hand at all times helped me remember, You only get to do this once. We have to take time and see it, as clearly as we can.
