Tag: <span>street photography</span>

Published October 5, 2022 by

Toronto, Spend Your Savings – 2022_10_05

Toronto, Spend Your Savings
Yonge Street, Toronto, 1981 – © Avard Woolaver

Taken on Yonge Street in the autumn of 1981, this photo always gives me a little chuckle. It features a very 1980s-looking garbage bin (trash receptacle), some sidewalk art, and the phrase: Spend Your $avings. Also, a cigarette butt and a few scattered leaves. The shadows cross the frame in an interesting way. It suits my mood at the moment as I listen to Jefferson Airplane’s 1967 experimental psychedelic album, After Bathing at Baxters, and sip cold coffee.

Spend Your Savings seems like both a demand and a plea. I laugh because I managed to do just that before leaving Toronto in 2005.

This photo appears in the photo book: Toronto Hi-Fi.

Photography

1980s film photography Spend Your Savings street photography Toronto

Published October 4, 2022 by

Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto – 2022_10_04

Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto
Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto, 1996 – © Avard Woolaver

Roncesvalles Avenue is one of my favourite areas of Toronto. I lived just west of there on Parkside Drive in the mid-1990s. The street is named after the Battle of Roncesvalles, which took place in the Roncesvalles Pass in Spain in 1813. (In Spanish the name ‘Roncesvalles’ means ‘valley of thorns’.)

Culturally, the area is known as the centre of the Polish community in Toronto with prominent Polish institutions, businesses and St Casimir’s Catholic Church. When I lived there in the 1990s there were lots of Polish restaurants and bakeries, as well as two second-run movie theatres–The Revue, and The Brighton. It was a really vibrant place, and probably still is.

This photo was taken diptych-style, a technique I still use to highlight juxtaposition. It appears in the photo book: Toronto Hi-Fi.

Photography

1990s film photography Roncesvalles Avenue street photography Toronto

Published September 19, 2022 by

Twin Lens Reflex – 2022_09_19

Twin Lens Reflex
Yonge and Gould, Toronto, 1980 – © Avard Woolaver

When I first arrived in Toronto, I took a few photos with a twin lens reflex camera, a Yashica Mat-124G. Looking back at these photos, I wish I had used this camera more often. The twin lens reflex is an ideal camera for street photography, as the camera is held at waist level and you look down into the viewfinder to frame the photo. The negatives are large and crisp, but there are only 12 exposures on a roll. Perhaps this is the reason it was abandoned in favour of the 35mm SLR.

Photography

1980s film photography street photography Toronto Twin Lens Reflex

Published September 17, 2022 by

Coffee Shop, Toronto, 1980 – 2022_09_17

Coffee Shop
Coffee Shop, Carlton Street, Toronto, 1980 – © Avard Woolaver

It was my friend Bill Knetsch who introduced me to the wonders of coffee in the fall of 1980. Before that I had been a tea drinker, but there was something about relaxing with a coffee and doughnut, that couldn’t be beat. After a marathon printing session in the Ryerson darkrooms, Bill and I would hit up a local coffee shop such as the Donut Castle on Church Street. At 1:00 am the place would be crawling with all manner of characters–cab drivers, cops, prostitutes, night owls, students, partiers, etc. But is was the lure of coffee that brought us together!

According to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, good coffee is: “Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love.”

Photography

1980s Coffee Shop film photography street photography Toronto

Published September 11, 2022 by

On the Metro, Montreal, 1983 – 2022_09_11

Metro
On the Metro, Montreal, 1983 – © Avard Woolaver

This photo was taken on the Montreal metro in 1983. The colour red really comes alive with Kodachrome film.

Photography

film photography Kodachrome Metro Montreal street photography