Perched on a dangling scaffold constructed of only three boards — two for standing on and one at waist height to prevent them from falling off — the overall-clad workers concentrate intensely on the task in front of their noses. The detailed work is a talisman, perhaps, to protect against sudden gusts of wind that could send them on a 130-foot freefall to the valley floor and their deaths.
At a new exhibit at the Toronto Archives — A Visual Legacy: The City of Toronto's Use of Photography, 1856-1997 — fans of Michael Ondaatje's 1987 novel In the Skin of a Lion can study this and a few of the other photographs that inspired the creation of the character Nicholas Temelcoff, a worker on the Prince Edward Viaduct. It's one of dozens in the exhibit that document construction projects, events and other municipal initiatives.
Many photos, like those of the viaduct's construction from 1915 to 1919, are the work of William Arthur Scott Goss. Although the city had been using photographers regularly since the 1870s, Mr. Goss was the first appointed as "chief photographer" in 1911, a position in the works department he held until 1940.
A bony man with a piercing gaze, wax-tipped moustache and round ears holding up round spectacles, he aimed his lens at "road, bridge and sewer construction; city parks and related programs; street-cleaning activities and the efforts of the Department of Public Health," according to the exhibit's text.
As such, they provide "an invaluable record of the evolving landscape of a rapidly growing city."
Curator Steve MacKinnon, a Toronto Archives employee since 1983 and a photographer himself, wanted to gather Mr. Goss's work with that of his predecessors — freelance professionals such as Frank Micklethwaite, commissioned by the city from 1891 and 1895 — and the successors to the position of chief photographer, such as Howard Macdonald.
"It's nice to put them together in this way, where there's a continuum that really shows the city's official use of photography," Mr. MacKinnon says.
Today, with hundreds of citizens with digital cameras sharing photographs on the Internet of everything from manhole covers and bridges to street furniture, the exhibit is also a nice reminder that the city has been documenting such things since photography's infancy.
Speaking of which, the exhibition begins with the oldest known photographs of the city, taken in 1856 by Armstrong Beere & Hime to accompany a submission to the colonial office in Britain. The panoramic shots, taken from the roof of the five-storey Rossin House Hotel at King and York streets, were in support of the failed attempt to make Toronto the permanent capital of the Province of Canada. Following those are shots of the municipal water system starting about 1875, when the city engineer's office took control of the operation and began to document its many improvements for the department's annual reports.
When Mr. Goss was appointed, he offered his services to all civic departments. Dr. Charles Hastings, a "reform-minded social activist" and the city's medical officer of health from 1910 to 1929, asked him to document slum-housing conditions.
Particularly striking is a 1913 image of a young girl standing in a backyard strewn with scrap wood in "The Ward," which stood where Nathan Phillips Square does today. Her house and oversized coat are shabby, yet her smile is as bright as the Credit Valley stone of E.J. Lennox's city hall behind her, then just slightly more than a decade old.
In a 1912 photo, the pained expression of a young boy with tuberculosis under an umbrella is juxtaposed with its jaunty message: "Made in Canada/In bottles/Jersey-Creme/The perfect drink/At founts." To prevent the spread of tuberculosis, TB patients who refused to enter sanatoriums were given "tents, cots and umbrellas" and encouraged to "live out of doors where they would receive fresh air and protect their families from infection," according to the exhibit's text.
Mr. Goss also captured the positive effects of Dr. Hastings's programs — baby clinics, health education, milk distribution, home nurse visits and medical and dental inspection in schools — on the lower classes.
Unfortunately, just as the city was kicking into high gear in the mid-1950s with construction of superhighways and suburbia, the chief photographer was being used less and less, and the post would completely disappear by the end of the decade.
By 1955, members of the fire department were taking most of the photographs for the city and would continue to do so until the chief photographer was reinstated in 1982. Mr. MacKinnon estimates, however, that 60 per cent of the 12,000 fire department photographs document civic and political events rather than city building initiatives. The same holds true for Peter Goodwin's years in the position, 1982—90.
"It wasn't done in an organized fashion in the same way it was before," Mr. Mackinnon says. "You could say their mandate was different."
Perhaps, a hundred years from now, today's private digital camera documentarians will fill that void and provide content for a similar exhibit.
Already, Mr. Mackinnon says, there is newfound appreciation among the public for the work that goes on at 255 Spadina Rd.
"When I came to the archives, I didn't even know what an archives was," he says, chuckling. " 'Archives' wasn't part of one's everyday language whereas today almost everyone knows what an archives is.
"It's like we're part of everyday society now."
A Visual Legacy runs until Sept. 22 at the Toronto Archives, 255 Spadina Rd. Admission is free.
Dave LeBlanc hosts The Architourist on CFRB Wednesdays during Toronto at Noon and Sunday mornings. Send inquiries to dave.leblanc@globeandmail.com.
