Buildings, when built right, can outlive us all. Toronto is full of buildings, old and new, tall and short, beautiful and not-so beautiful. Many of the city's original buildings have been demolished, in favour of more modern skyscrapers, but some still remain- withstanding time and city condo plans. For my series I wanted to map a little bit of history in Toronto, track the passing of time. I wanted to investigate what architecture has disappeared and what has remained over the last century or so. I decided to make this comparison by finding old photographs and reshooting them as close as possible to the original (same location, angle, etc) then combining the two in photoshop.

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As the heart of a city is its city centre, so I focussed my investigation primarily on the downtown core. I used the city archives and the Toronto Public Library archives for source material. The oldest and most populated archive photographs I found were mainly around Bay to Yonge Street and from Dundas to Wellington. The photos I chose range from 118 years to 63 years ago from today. The ever expanding skyline is often a point of contention for most Toronto citizens and with this assignment I wanted to draw attention to some of these old buildings that might, or already have been torn down. As I stood in the same spot another photographer stood several decades ago, I couldn’t help but wonder what it might look like in another 50, 100 years.