I thought I’d post some Toronto streets in colour for a change, as most of my output in the 1980s was in black and white. There is another reason, too. Shortly, I’ll be releasing a new book titled, Toronto In Colour: the 1980s that features a collection of colour photographs not seen in the previous three Toronto books; many of these images, in fact, haven’t ever been posted or published at all.
These decades old photos have been saved for the future. At 1/60 of a second per photo, there is only a few seconds worth of time in the entire book. Yet the photographs are so full of history and information, with stories both obvious, and unknown; both real and imagined. For me having the ability to stop time for an instant still seems magical.
Corey Rice writes about Roland Barthes’s analysis of a photograph: “When we look at a photograph, we are confronted with what Barthes labels the “having-been-there” quality of its contents. It is a testament to the existence of a specific thing in a specific place at a specific time. I can paint your portrait from anywhere in the world, but I can photograph you only when you are in front of my camera. Similarly, a photograph offers a view of the world that you will never have access to except through the photo. You can look but you cannot touch. A photograph can only show the past—but it represents it in such a way that it appears in the present. This paradox lends every photograph a touch of nostalgia or longing.”
The older I get, it seems the more my nostalgia grows for those days in my twenties, walking around the streets of Toronto with my camera. I hope you enjoy this small selection from my upcoming book. Stay tuned!
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