In this his newest book, Peter MacCallum has assembled collections of his documentary photographs of the last decade that examine the particularities of the vernacular spaces of human labour, commerce, and habitation.
Conceived as series, these documentary photographs juxtapose the miscellany of the commercial architecture of Toronto’s Yonge Street with the uniform elegance of rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis in Paris; an aging zinc foundry in Montreal with a venerable independent garage in Toronto; the functional Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto with the tiny, lushly decorated Théâtre du Tambour Royal in Paris.
Shifting from the industrial to the moumental to the domestic, MacCallum’s roving eye lands upon the gritty morphology of the coal-fired Lakeview Generating Station, the restoration of Walter Alward’s great limestone monument at Vimy Ridge, and the classical Greek spirit expressed in the front porches of ordinary Toronto houses dating from the early decades of the 20th century.
The result is an engrossing collection of photographs that reveal a disarming beauty in sites that both embody and encompass a rich history of industry, commerce, and human habitation.
