In May 2007 I created an outdoor photo show in reaction to the large photography show Contact taking place in Toronto at the time.
Down the block from our apartment near Queen and Dufferin was a brownfield site with a tall chain link fence along the sidewalk.
I snuck in a back gate and made my way down a rough slope into the tangled brush behind the fence and arranged 36 photos I had printed at 2×3″ and mounted on popsicle sticks.
The size and the placement of the photos where less about people seeing my photos and more about people passing by and engaging with the non-space parts of the city that go unnoticed.
Those parts of the city were the subject of many of my photos from that time. The in-between and behind areas and the worn and broken elements. I was drawn to the suggested stories of things left behind but also simply to the beauty of texture and light in the city.
I watched in the weeks afterwards as the photos faded and fell off their sticks blowing away and mixing with the trash that always collected behind the fence.
