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Elizabeth and College

Posted by Damon Schreiber (Toronto, Canada) on 3 August 2007 in Cityscape & Urban and Portfolio.

Sakamoto/Schreiber - Toronto 1977-2007 series starts here.

Continued from yesterday

So with the new camera in hand, I resurrected the project and set out to retake those photos. Luckily most of the construction from 2004 was completed and the city didn't look too bad this year. Also 2007 seemed like an apt year to tackle it since it was almost exactly 30 years since the original photos were taken.

I set out to take a few shots but came back rather disappointed with the results (this was to become a pattern as trial and error evolved into something like a method). It turns out that reverse-engineering someone else's photos is trickier than it looks. It was somewhere around this point that I made one last attempt to try reconnecting with Mr. Sakamoto. Using all my Google skills, I finally hit upon the winning combination of kewords 'Shige', 'Toronto', and 'Yokohama'. Amazingly, 'Shige's wallpaper images' was the first of 250 pages found by Google. I was so happy, let me tell you! I went through the site and even found a few more photos that I hadn't noticed last time. And I sent an email, and we're (obviously) back in touch, and all is good. One of the side-benefits of reconnecting was confirming a few details to help recompose these photos: they were indeed taken with a 28mm lens (and an Olympus OM-2), and Sakamoto-san is about 2 cm taller than me.

Tomorrow: something like a method.

Note: While the scene looks almost identical, three years ago, the building across the street was undergoing some major renovations so the scene was nothing like it appears here - it was messy. And I'm gratified that the 'Hospital Quiet' sign is still there after all these years. It's the little bits of continuity like that which make this so much fun.

Also, this is one of the images where I came closest to duplicating the exact view. I could imagine I had found the exact spot on the sidewalk where Sakamoto-san had taken his photo 30 years ago. It's fun when things work out like that (and frustrating when they don't).


Top image copyright Shige Sakamoto - 坂本政恵

High-res here (my image) and here (1977 image). The entire 1977 series can be viewed in context starting here.

[College & Elizabeth, Toronto]
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