Picturing Toronto

An innovative study on photography's role in the liberal reform of early twentieth-century Toronto.

In 1911, when Arthur Goss was hired as Toronto’s first official photographer, the city was at a critical juncture. Industry expansion and population growth produced pressing concerns about housing shortages, sanitation, and the health and welfare of citizens. Dispelling popular misconceptions, Picturing Toronto demonstrates that Goss and other photographers did not simply document the changing conditions of urban life – their photography contributed to the development of modern Toronto and shaped its inhabitants. Drawing on archival sources from the early twentieth century, Sarah Bassnett investigates how a range of groups, including the municipal government, social reformers, and the press, used photography to reconfigure the urban environment and constitute liberal subjects. Through a series of case studies, including the construction of the Bloor Viaduct, civic beautification plans, urban reform in “the Ward,” immigration and citizenship, and Goss’s portrait photography, Bassnett exposes how photographs were at the heart of debates over what the city should look like, how it should operate, and under what conditions it was appropriate for people to live. This lavishly illustrated book is the first study to treat images as vital elements that shaped Toronto’s social and political history. Interdisciplinary in its approach, Picturing Toronto displays the complex entanglements between photography and urban modernity.

The study of children's illustrated books is located within the broad histories of print culture, publishing, the book trade, and concepts of childhood. An interdisciplinary history, Picturing Canada provides a critical understanding of the changing geographical, historical, and cultural aspects of Canadian identity, as seen through the lens of children's publishing over two centuries. Gail Edwards and Judith Saltman illuminate the connection between children's publishing and Canadian nationalism, analyse the gendered history of children's librarianship, identify changes and continuities in narrative themes and artistic styles, and explore recent changes in the creation and consumption of children's illustrated books. Over 130 interviews with Canadian authors, illustrators, editors, librarians, booksellers, critics, and other contributors to Canadian children's book publishing, document the experiences of those who worked in the industry. An important and wholly original work, Picturing Canada is fundamental to our understanding of publishing history and the history of childhood itself in Canada.

Twenty-five fascinating images that offer a 360º panorama of the Toronto's downtown in 1856-57 mark the beginning of the use of photographs to document Toronto's growth, its achievements, its great civic works, and its citizenry. Since 1856, the City of Toronto has been commissioning photographs to document and to promote it. This book, published to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the city's incorporation, brings together more than 100 of these images, selected by city archivists from their collection of hundreds of thousands. Waterworks, roads, and bridges, many of them familiar landmarks today, are seen as they are being built. The Bloor Street Viaduct, the R. C. Harris water filtration plant, and the old and new city halls are all celebrated in these images. Toronto's citizens are also captured in these photographs, going about their affairs on the street, as proud workers, or as spectators at public events. At times, in an effort to raise public concern about poverty and poor housing conditions, city photographers have documented conditions for residents in low-income neighbourhoods. Some of these photographs are included here, in an impressive series of poignant images. In the past fifty years, as Toronto has grown into the cosmopolitan metropolis it is now, city photographers have recorded the construction of key projects like the Yonge Street subway, the new City Hall and the CN Tower while documenting major public events and celebrations. This book offers a visual overview of Toronto's history and at the same time documents attitudes and values expressed by City officials, from 1857 to the present.

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