Bicycle culture is widespread in Toronto – lots of people ride them everywhere. The Toronto Bikeshare is older than some, and well established. I found myself photographing them as part of my work on public transportation (or at least as car alternatives).
Toronto Bikeshare
While THIS bike is obviously non-functional, it is extremely cool. It was imported from India god knows how long ago. With Canadian winters being what they are, it could be only a couple years in-country. This was found on Queen Street, a very bohemian and trendy part of town, still a little rough around the edges. There did not appear to be any particular association between the pedicab and a store or restaurant – it was just there.
Toronto Pedicab
This was spotted outside the TIFF Bell Lightbox theater complex during the opening weekend of the Toronto International Film Festival. It is emblematic of the multi-cultural, open-minded Canadian attitude toward just about everything. Canada, Argentina, Gay… it’s all good.
Ok, this one gets its own shot because it’s just too cool for school and doesn’t play well with others. I was up in Toronto for the Toronto International Film Festival last weekend. I rented an apartment on Fort York Boulevard, right down by Lake Ontario. The apartment had a view of the downtown skyline, including the CN Tower, which is the tallest structure in North America, and if I recall correctly, the 15th tallest in the world. As such, it attracts lightning strikes. I was lucky enough to be there for a late-summer thunderstorm, and to photograph it through my apartment window during that storm, and catch a shot of the CN Tower getting struck.
CN Tower, Lightning
I promise you it was far more impressive in person than it is in the photo.
Another sign of change and transformation is the ebb and flow of graffiti. My latest find was this:
Any Make or Model (Black is Beautiful)
I loved the serendipitous juxtaposition of the advertisement wording for the cellphone repair shop and the graffiti – “Any Make, Any Model… Black is Beautiful”. There’s truth in accidents. Or maybe it wasn’t an accident.
A generic graffiti tag on a bricked-up window of a house. This is casual art, that has its own accidental grace and beauty despite not having any great aspiration beyond marking territory or gang initiation.
Window, Graffiti, 15thStreet
Then there’s graffiti that is transformed from simple defacement by virtue of adopting the form and structure of the object upon which it is inscribed, like this manhole cover.
Graffiti-inscribed Manhole Cover
Some street art I found in Toronto. There’s a point where graffiti transcends defacement of property and really does become art in itself. Graffiti
More graffiti as street art. There is part of this wall that I intentionally cropped out as it makes a statement that I don’t know I’d want to make or pass on (decapitated nude female torso).
Graffiti, Chain Link Fence, Twilight
Back to simplicity, this bit speaks to collective identity questions – the figure transforms the Washington DC city flag of three stars over two bars into a humanoid with a hand for a head. Politics, ethnicity, religion, all rolled into a piece of temporary public art (the wall upon which this figure was painted has been gentrified into several very expensive restaurants).
Graffiti, DC Flag Design, 14th Street
The camera of record is a Rolleiflex 2.8E, and the films used are FP4+ for b/w and Kodak Ektar 100 and Portra 160 for color.
I found the shot I had taken of the NYC subway train oncoming. Again a bit impressionistic, but you can still feel the difference between it and the other city’s subways that I’ve photographed, even though the car isn’t at all visible in the exposure. I THINK this is the N/Q/R platform at 5th avenue and 59th street- it’s been a while since I took the shot.
NYC Subway Oncoming, 59th St
Here are a couple more of my subway shots as a comparison. Please pardon the repetition of the recent post:
Gallery Place Metro #2Oncoming MetroToronto SubwayMetro Train Arriving, Archives StationSpeeding Metro
All shots taken with my Rolleiflex 2.8E. Film used was either Ilford FP4+ for the b/w shots or either Kodak Portra 160 or Ektar 100 for the color.
This is part of a series I’ve been working on – photographing ordinary objects we pass by on the street every day but take for granted. They are things we see but don’t see, and they may well vanish, like pay phones, mailboxes, and newspaper vending machines, before we realize they’re gone. Pay phones are all but replaced by the cellphone. Newspapers as a physical object may cease to exist thanks to the internet, and along with them the newspaper box. Email has just about killed the personal letter – the only thing keeping the postal services alive these days are mass marketers with their junk mail, Ebay and Amazon with package deliveries. Not everything in the series is vanishing in a literal sense like pay phones, but some of them do vanish from our perception like the fire hydrant, the lamp post, and the traffic cone. We know they’re there because we don’t trip over them when walking on the streets, but they exist at the periphery. They each have their own beauty and form, however, and within their function there are a remarkable variety of forms – the hydrant in Chalon-sur-Saone, while as recognizable as a fire hydrant as the hydrant from Washington DC, has a very different form, as does the Siamese spigot.
PayphonesEveryday Objects – PayphoneLamppost, Riggs Bank, 14th StreetYellow Postbox, ParisMailboxHydrant, ChalonMueller Hydrant, K Street, DCSiamese SpigotTraffic Cone
I mentioned in my post about Toronto how the different transit systems look and feel, even when capturing them in a similar way. Here are four shots of the Toronto, Paris and Washington DC subways. All four are behaving similarly – long handheld exposures as the trains pull in to the station, yet all four look and feel quite different.
Toronto SubwaySpeeding Metro, ParisMetro Train Arriving, Archives StationOncoming Metro
I went to Toronto with some friends for the last weekend in June to attend World Pride. Unfortunately due to some awkward circumstances we had to leave early and never made it to the parade, which to hear tell was just as well because Toronto was a veritable oven that weekend and we would have suffered more than enjoying the festivities. I did take pictures, though (what, me go somewhere and NOT take pictures?). It whet my appetite for going back – there’s a lot going on there and I want to explore it more.
I’ve developed a “thing” for photographs of public transit. I started doing it here in DC, shooting Metro trains in motion at various stations. I’ve done it in New York and in Paris, and now Toronto as well. I think this was at the Spadina station, but I could be off. It’s funny how after doing this same shot in various places how different they look, despite the trains doing the exact same thing.
Toronto Subway
To stick with the public transit theme, here’s a streetcar in Toronto. They have LOTS of streetcars and unlike other cities, they seem to have kept them going instead of ripping them out/paving them over in favor of buses, only to have to put them back at obscene expense (ahem, Washington DC and Baltimore). This one is passing in front of the Art Gallery of Ontario, which looks like some kind of glass zeppelin.
Streetcar, Art Gallery of Ontario
The streetscape across from the art museum is quite the contrast. A row of 19th century rowhouses has been turned into galleries and restaurants. It’s a highlight of the contrasts of Toronto, as you can see the business district skyscrapers in the background.
Toronto Art Gallery Row
This railing fronted one of the galleries on Queen Street (the street that runs in front of the art museum). I just liked the layering of geometry happening here.
Railings, Queen Street
For lack of a better memory of the restaurant’s name, and in honor of Canada’s multilingual heritage, I’m titling this one “Oeufs Torontonnaise”. In reality it’s just a clever sign for a restaurant across from the art gallery. The pan must be really NOT non-stick for the egg to stay up there like that!
Oeufs Torontonnaise
You’ve gotta love a pub called “The Village Idiot”. I’ve been told that down the street from it there is another bar with the best beer selection in Toronto.
Village Idiot Pub
I spotted this place on my way back from Chinatown, through the streetcar window.
Silver Dollar Room
The art museum is just a couple blocks outside Toronto’s Chinatown, which is very busy and vibrant. I spotted this scene shortly after stepping off the streetcar. Passing by an hour later, half the pig was gone.
Chinese Restaurant Window, Toronto
Some very cool graffiti art on a wall near the art museum, at the edge of Chinatown.
Graffiti
In closing, another one of my ‘things’ – pay phones. I was shocked to see how many were still in service in Toronto.
Payphones
I was hanging out with my best friend since my college days, Steve. I snapped this one of him while we were staying cool in the Starbucks waiting for another friend of mine, Mirza, to join us.
The last acquisition from yesterday’s outing to Gettysburg – another possible occupational cdv of six men by Turner of Toronto. I’m guessing it’s an occupational although it doesn’t show tools of the trade, because all six men are wearing nearly identical outfits – three are definitely wearing the exact same shirts, and perhaps a fourth. Even with different shirts, the others’ attire is similar enough that they appear to be uniforms. The other possibility is that this is a family portrait of brothers and/or cousins – there is definite facial similarity amongst several pairs of the men.
Six Men, by Turner of Toronto
Note the rusticated furniture they’re sitting on – I can’t tell if it is a single bench seat or a grouping of chairs. Also, for the curious, since it’s hard to read in a vertical orientation, the photographer’s imprint on the verso reads: “Turner, Photographer, Southwest Corner, King & Yonge Sts, Toronto”. This is my first Canadian (that I’m aware of) CDV.
I’ve done some mild enhancement and cleanup in Photoshop on this one, as the original is definitely more faded than this. I generally don’t do much if any photomanipulative digital restoration to the images I post because I want them to be representative of the actual image in my possession, but sometimes, as in this case, I do a bit of tweaking in order to make the image more readable. I promise no albumen was harmed in the making of this digitization.
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