Repetition, or more specifically, revisiting, is a big part of how I process the world. Most of the things I photograph are a result of multiple visits to the same place.
This revisiting can take place over days, weeks, months, years or even decades. I’ll see something while traveling—by bus, bike, car or most of the time when walking—and then try to go back to visit that thing as soon as possible with a camera.
It’s usually a slow process. Repeated visits allow me to become familiar with a place or object, and that familiarity allows me to see it in different ways. In addition, this repetitive visiting allows for the light and weather to change around or within the object or setting and depending on how spaced out the return trips are, the subject itself will physically change. Erosion, aging, renovation, moving, painting, flooding, and hundreds of other alterations occur over time.
The fluorescent lighting fixtures shown above were shot on a walk in a Toronto neighbourhood know as the Stockyards. They are scattered underneath a concrete ceiling that protects a loading area for different companies.
This zebra patterning below was a marketing motif for a chain of stores that started calling itself Hobo Cannabis. Then, someone must have told them that was offensive, so they changed their branding to Dutch Love. None of that interests me, but I did like the black and white nylon stickering over top of the shop windows, doors and walls.
This tarp and scaffold structure envelopes an entire downtown Toronto city block. The Mowat Block, which houses the Ministry of Education and was built in the 1960s, is completed shrouded in this amazing white curtain, to hide the renovation work.
Below is a birch tree mural that’s been used as the hoarding around a Stockyards condominium development. I should go back soon, because I noticed in passing the other day, that these walls have now faded, fallen over, or been covered in graffiti.
