TBE2023: Portraits of Queen West: Spadina to Bathurst

Portraits of Queen West: Spadina to Bathurst (2023) by Kevin Steele

Huh, is this book about Mondrian?

Oh, it’s a map of a bit of Toronto.

Steele explains the concept — over a number of years, he’s taken pictures of streets in Toronto, and this book collects images of one part of one particular street. I’m going like “uhm?”

So we move along the street. Some pages have a lot of images…

… and some pages have these stitched-together panorama views.

And on some of the pages, we have the same buildings over a number of years, so that we can see how things change.

The images are mostly straight-on, and all taken during daytime, but there’s a handful that are askew.

And the thing is — while I was sceptical about the project, I was finding myself growing more and more interested while reading the book. This micro attention to things lends itself to playing detective, going “oh, that changed” or “oh, that’s that thing”, and it’s kinda engrossing? It’s weird! I didn’t expect that at all.

There’s very little text in the book, but there’s some.

At the halfway point, things flip around (and we flip the book upside down)…

… and we follow this section of the street back again towards the west (I guess).

I really like this book, I have to say. People who live around here would probably enjoy it even more.

So we continue towards the end…

… which is another cover, of course.

It’s really well done — it follows through its concept completely.

You can buy it from Black Eye.

Heh:

Steele describes his technique: he waits for breaks in the traffic, then darts out to snap an image when storefronts are unobstructed; he edits his images in Lightroom, adjusting the perspective to make the buildings vertical; and, finally, he stitches the photos in Photoshop.

Seems like a dangerous thing to do.

Right:

Steele’s beautiful photodocumentary of one slice of that old, good city doesn’t just memorialize the world we lost – it is inspiration for a world that is ours to win.

Right:

I’m just setting out to let you hold the whole street in your hands.

This blog post is part of the Total Black Eye series.