Toronto Gone – photos from 1980s Toronto

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 I have not posted before or published.

That Toronto is gone. Or at least parts of it. Buildings, businesses, parking lots, and people that used to be a part of the city in the 1980s have disappeared, and been replaced by others. It’s part of the inevitable cycle of death and rebirth, of disappearance and reappearance. There is no way to know exactly what aspects of a place will change. So in some sense the photos are accidental. Their significance now is something I never could have foreseen.

I still feel the same way about Toronto as I did when I took the photos, thirty-odd years ago. I still love the vibrant neighborhoods, the parks, the restaurants and beaches. And the people are nice, not overly friendly but civil and courteous. I haven’t lived there for 15 years but it still feels comfortable, like home.

There are roughly 25,000 images in my files, with 90 percent of them black and white negatives. There hasn’t been a much of a method to the scanning–just choose the strongest photos. It has made me realize that I was a poor editor when I took the photos, and I’m a bit more proficient today. In the ’80s, I mostly processed the film, made contact sheets, and moved on. Sometimes I took the time to study the contact sheets, and on occasion made work prints or exhibition prints of the best images.

Looking at these images today I have a lot of time to reflect on them. Many of the photos I have no recollection of taking; I just know they were taken for a reason. (And the reason usually had to be good one. I didn’t waste much film then on frivolous photos; film, paper, and chemicals were not cheap on a student budget.) Colour cost more than black-and-white, and my access to a colour darkroom was limited. I usually took only one photo of a person or scene, unless it was an event like a parade. And even then, most of the photo were one-offs. For this reason it is sometimes difficult to pinpoint a location.

I will be posting more from the series: Toronto Gone over the coming months, and it may lead to a new book.