May is photography month in Toronto. It is the month when there are numerous exhibits in public spaces and in galleries, all part of the CONTACT Photography Festival. Over the next few weeks I hope to visit many of the exhibits and blog about some of them. From past experience I have discovered that a lot of the public installations appear before May 1st so I went exploring yesterday.
below: Looking south from Spadina and Adelaide…. Partially obscured by a building, on the right in this photo, is the first large black and white photo that I saw.
below: Up close, ‘Drape’ by Eva Stenram. Stenram has taken a 1960’s pin-up photograph of a woman and manipulated it. She has brought the background, the drapery, forward and has covered up the original subject in the picture.
below: Looking west on Wellington from Spadina. The light grey building is the Old Press Hall (Globe and Mail) which will be demolished in the near future.
below: Up close, ‘Stopping Point’ by an unknown photographer. The original title and description was: ‘Along the new Highway, which runs from Smooth Rock Falls to Fraserdale, Ontario, there’s no sign of human habitation apart from one empty lumber camp, c.1966.
The above photograph is one of 750,000 photos in the Globe and Mail’s picture library. 100,000 of their old photos are being digitized to create a new historical archive. From these, a collection of 20,000 prints will be donated to the newly formed Canadian Photography Institute at the National Gallery of Canada.
More of the photos from the Globe and Mail’s collection are on view inside the Old Press Hall.
as I walk Toronto 