visit toronto

2016

6 Photographic Prints

11 in. x 17 in.

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An exercise in exploring a new and alien city, Visit Toronto is a photographic poster series consisting of six such posters, wherein I went out to explore the city’s graffiti culture in order to make an argument about high art versus low art by exploring questions such as, “What happens when one photographs an act of “vandalism”, manipulates it through careful composition, frames it, and puts it in a gallery? Does it make “low art,” “high art”?" The poster series also makes one question where the “real culture” of a city as massive and diverse as Toronto lies—in monuments such as the CN Tower, or public works of art such as Toronto’s graffiti culture, made and/or encountered by the average Torontonian on a daily basis? Furthermore, also interested in noting how time passes and leaves its mark, each graffiti photographed here marks time differently; either through a universal expression, such as through the addition of a year, or the "pop culture" of the time like in the addition of tattered posters from a time long gone, or a personal gesture in the life of an individual, such as "Happy Birthday Olivia".

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