in-between places

toronto & collingwood, march 2003

These pictures are in a sense a continuation of the state of independence pictures you can see elsewhere on the site. I have been trying to figure out how to depict the mundane Canadian landscape for almost three years now, with much experiment and little success. I think this is the closest I've got so far, and is thanks in no small part to my new Canon 1Ds, which has finally allowed me to take pictures which have something of the texture and formality of large format, without the impedimenta or the attrition of expense, or indeed the tediousness of the scanning workflow.

The picture that really opened this way of looking up for me was this one, which I took more than a year ago. There was something about the delicacy of the balance in which everything seemed to be held that really worked for me.

These pictures are absolutely open to the accusation that they're boring. I personally don't think they are but that's because I'm fascinated by the task of depicting this place.

The first few pictures are of Collingwood, a small town a hundred miles North-West of Toronto on the shores of a corner of Lake Huron known as Georgian Bay. Collingwood was once a major shipbuilding town for the Great Lakes: there is little of that left now except for a grain elevator that dominates the skyline. It's now a resort town for the nearby Ski Hills in the Blue Mountains, but you don't have to scratch very hard before you find the old town.

The rest is Toronto. I guess if there's one thing that links most of these pictures it's a sense of impermanance or change: I would hate them to be read as a criticism of that. Things change. It's their natural state. If anything, I celebrate that.