Tag: Documentary Photography

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Photography Writing

Tecumseth & Niagara, Toronto, 2023

Tecumseth & Niagara, Toronto, 2023

Toronto is a city of destruction and construction: destruction of the previous era’s architecture (and often industrial buildings) and the construction of housing or glass office towers in their stead. This image by Tecumseth & Niagara shows the destruction of an abattoir that was removed to make room for condos, and the buildings in the background are new rentals in Toronto’s Liberty Village. When I landed in Toronto, in Liberty Village over a decade ago, the land those rentals are on were home to a few artist spaces where the big Toronto samba schools practiced and massive parade puppets were made. Nothing has replaced those artist spaces, to the detriment of artists across the city.

Weirdly I have very intimate memories of the abattoir. Toronto hosts an annual sunset-to-sunrise art festival, Nuit Blanche, and a couple interesting art exhibits were hosted at the abattoir over the years, and I have photos of them that I regularly return to re-experience. After the buildings were designated for destruction a number of community vegetable gardens were maintained on the outside lots. It was always a striking place to come and make images, and was a reminder of the Toronto-that-once-was and was yet-to-become.

For many street photographers, we take images and it is decades later that ‘difference’ is registered because many cities take a long time for major changes to become visible. It’s part of why the habits of the population —what people are wearing, holding, or driving — resonate so strongly with viewers; people and culture change while the built environment persists.

Toronto, by way of contrast, is in a moment of hyper-growth and so an attentive and active street photographer can document things today that may literally be different tomorrow. It turns the street photographer, almost by default, into an urban documentarian. And, also, is one of the many reasons why I think that Toronto offers a subset of street photographers a real opportunity to do novel and rapidly impactful work, as compared to those working in cities that aren’t undergoing the same tempo of destruction and re-construction.

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Links Photography

A Century Caught on Camera

The Globe and Mail has a terrific photographic series entitled "A century caught on camera." As a Toronto resident I was struck by just how many traditions, rituals, and grievances have stuck with the city–or in the city–for over a century.

Further, the way in which the images have been captured has changed substantially over time as a result of the technical capacity of camera equipment, along with the interests or preferences of the photographers at different times. Images in the past decade or two, as an example, clearly draw more commonly from celebrity or artistic portraiture than 50 years ago. Moreover, it’s pretty impressive just how much photographers have done with their equipment over the past century and this, generally, speaks to how easy street and documentary photographers have it today as compared to when our compatriots were using slow lenses and film.

It may take you quite a while to get through all the images but I found the process to be exceedingly worthwhile. Though I admit that the first decade during which the Globe used colour images probably ranks as my least favourite period in the galleries that the paper has published.

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Aside Links

What is Documentary Photography?

Black Tap Magazine has a helpful article that distinguishes between photojournalism, documentary photography, and street photography. I found it particularly helpful to see the author grapple with the differences (and commonalities) between documentary and street photography, with the former focusing more on projects and potentially posed/non-urban photography, and the latter being cast as more spontaneous and less project-driven. While I think good street photography should be emotive and tell a story over time, I appreciate that the core assertion is that documentary photography must tell (or try to tell) some story, often as a photo set, whereas street photography is not similarly bound by these conditions.