Here are some Toronto street photos from the 1980s. They are images that I scanned quite recently, and have not been previously posted or published. There is a certain satisfaction for me in re-discovering these photos that I took so long ago. They tell me a lot about how much the world has changed, and I myself have changed. And, conversely, they also remind me that so many basic things in the world remain unchanged.
As we cannot travel back in time, photographs are a way to come face to face with the past–to reconnect with it without actually going there. Photographs are also a good memory aid. There is so much information crammed into our brains that forty year old information can slip away very easily. It’s funny that I can remember very clearly taking some of these photos, yet others are a complete mystery. I only know that I must have taken it for a reason. A few photos in this post were taken for a school assignment at Ryerson called “Exploration of the frame” – new and novel ways to frame photos. I’m not sure if I succeeded.
These Toronto street photos bring me joy and feelings of nostalgia. It’s hard to separate them from the memories that surround them: good times with friends at school and at parties, endless hours in the darkroom, the joy of being young and alive with a head full of tunes.
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!
The photos in my new book, Toronto In Colour: the 1980s, were taken during my time studying at Ryerson and a few years beyond graduation. I was doing street photography, looking for interesting people and scenes. My contact sheets formed a sort of visual diary. I carried my camera everywhere and shot about 800 rolls of film.
These images lay dormant for over thirty years. In 2016, with the encouragement of a friend and former classmate Michael Amo, I began scanning the negatives and posting the images on social media. Seeing images that had lain dormant for thirty-plus years was certainly a voyage of rediscovery! It seems there is a sense of nostalgia in the work. People love to remember their younger days and see a city that in some ways no longer exists. I thought that producing books would be a good way to edit the work and give it some structure. I put a lot of effort into the selection and sequencing of the images.
My intention is to connect with people in a meaningful way. Photography is one way of doing this. Toronto In Colour: the 1980s will be released on December 15, 2020, and will be for sale at Blurb Books.
Here are a few photos from the book. My camera sees the darndest things.
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!
Toronto Flashback (1980-1986) was self published in 2016. It came about with the scanning of negatives that had lain dormant for over thirty years. I was surprised by what came out of the scanner, as I had forgotten many of the images. Thirty plus years will do that to one’s memory. And there are so many images in the Toronto work to recall–over 800 rolls of film.
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 be reviewed from time to time when 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 am 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. William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Edward Burtynsky and other colour specialists were just emerging in the art world, 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. And there’s also the psychological component of how the colours make us feel. There have been numerous requests that I post and publish more of my Toronto colour work, so my next book will be “Toronto Flashback in Colour.” Stay tuned.
