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1960s book on Toronto
by Pierre Berton
and Henri Rossier
by Sean Waisglass : : : : : : : Personal documentary-style photos are a different beast than snapshots, which are equally spontaneous but lack artifice and craft. And they have a different feel than the purposeful shot, those photos taken by pros for spot news or touristy-type books that have style, but lack the vitality of something taken on the spur of the moment for the simple pleasure of it. They are visual hidden treasures retrieved in a rectangular frame: photos that are earned by getting out on the pavement and cruising, or that come about as by-products of day-to-day travel like taking a shortcut home from work, or walking to the corner store to buy coffee filters. Wonderful is no doubt the right word to use, because that is what photographs of a city that hit the high-notes inspire: you wonder where the photo was taken, or wonder how you could have missed this subtle gem existing right under your nose, or wonder how many of these eyebrow-raising ephemeral moments you miss every day in the habitual rush of city living. You can find stellar examples of this style in both Toronto’s champion photoblog, Daily Dose of Imagery (found online at wvs.topleftpixel.com), and in that website’s long lost relative, The New City: A Prejudiced View of Toronto, a tragically out-of-print book of photos taken circa 1958-61. Sam Javanrouh’s popular Daily Dose of Imagery website, started in mid-2003, features daily posts of mostly digital photographs of the city; excellent pixelated snaps such as the peeling paint sandwiching the storefront windows of an aging furniture store, a spinning Esso sign in front of a criss-cross of streetcar wires, heads poking up from behind a white patio side-wall as a cyclist in pink passes by, or the comfortable-looking Q and A session after a documentary screening at the Bloor Cinema. Javanrouh turns the “forest for the trees” idiom on its head and comes to know the larger whole by looking at its smaller parts. He also knows that mundane is in the eye of the beholder, and that what might turn out as a pedestrian shot in other hands can be made sublime. The New City, published in 1961 by MacMillan, features the black and white photography of Henri Rossier capturing similar moments from another time, and is one of the great documents of Toronto (well worth scouring used bookstores or shelling out online for). It’s a testament to the quality of the photos in the book that Rossier gets top billing over the book’s author, Canadian literary icon Pierre Berton. As explained by Berton in the intro, Rossier was a young amateur shooter from Switzerland who walked into his office with a portfolio of photos taken during the two years he had been in the city, and asked for help creating a book. Described as “a newcomer who has been here long enough to know his way around but not too long to grow blasé,” Rossier’s photos won Berton over with their depiction of a new Toronto blossoming. It was the beginning of an immigration boom (in the next 30 years, non-Caucasians would rise from 3 to 30 percent of the population), and during an expansion period that would create new neighbourhoods and boroughs. It was the last days of Old Toronto, and the rise of said New City. And like any phase in life (even the awkward years of adolescence), it was worth snapping some shots of for posterity’s sake. Berton’s penchant for writing stuffy-sounding historical epics has often overshadowed the fact that he was a nimble scribe in the mold of journalism greats like Liebling or Mencken -- keen, witty, and aware that a good yarn is as important as presenting the facts. Discussed by Berton are the different sects and castes of the city and where they dwell (see “Italian Town” or “The Guilded Ghetto”), as is Toronto’s changing shape and size, it’s collective character, and the looming spectre of public transit. But the star of the show is Rossier, whose photos were inspired by the style of that era, when photojournalism had hit it’s high watermark in Life magazine’s photo essays and in the work of the legendary Magnum photography agency. Using his rangefinder Lieca (still the sharpest and quietest 35mm film cameras to date) to keep an eye on things, he is in the park when the local kids get a hockey game going, riding the Ferris Wheel at the Ex, peeking through the window of a Chinatown barbershop, or watching as folks ogle new-model cars shining in a lot. And craftily, Rossier also documents the changeover process and it’s fallout -- the fading of the old and the fertilizing and reaping of the new. His lens captures what he deems in the informative photo index as “the last of the organ grinders” at Rosedale Station. He ends a series of motor vehicle-related shots with that of a forlorn-looking horse and carriage on Spadina. There’s the full-wall advertisement for televisions painted over an older one for a tool and die company on Queen Street East (possibly now covered by a billboard for computers?), and in another photo, what we now call urban sprawl creeps towards an orchard near O’Connor Drive in the east end. Often grainy, and sometimes slightly out of focus, Rossier’s shots are more about capturing the zeitgeist of the city than making pretty pictures - they’re about people and spaces, the little things. These are the kinds of photos that stand as unofficial time capsules for future generations, frozen moments that often say more than filmed ones. Flipping through the pages of Rossier’s evocative journal of the past only reinforces the relevance of Javanrouh’s photoblog of the present. It can’t be co-incidence that Rossier’s worthy successor is correspondingly both a recent immigrant to Toronto (Javanrouh moved here from Iran in 1999), and not a photographer by profession. There is a kinship, a direct lineage of photo-junkies making a personal project out of their burgeoning relationship with their new home -- our city. With cameras in hand, they’ve paced Toronto with eyes wide open and noticed those little things that amalgamate to make the whole, prodding those of us who have grown too familiar to pause and take notice too. |
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When it comes to photographing cities, there’s something wonderful about pictures taken in the personal documentary style, or street photography, that middle ground between the snapshot of the non-photographer and the purposeful shot of the pro.
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