Empty City
Words & Photographs by Daniel Skwarna
One evening late in February, as coronavirus began to flood our news cycle, I sat browsing Japanese Ebay ads. I was looking for a used large format film camera (ideally a mid-century field model I could carry
around). I hoped its weight and technique might help to slow my photographic practice, making it a more immersive, meditative experience. I also hoped to challenge and confront my traditional digital approach and foster a new mode of seeing, working in, and engaging the world during an unprecedented health crisis.
A late model Toyo 45A field camera shipped from Japan in early March, right before Toronto shut down. It proved a prescient choice and fitting partner to wander our increasingly deserted streets with. It also turned my world upside down.
The large format camera lacks a conventional SLR camera mirror. I see people and places upside down and backward, a deeply unsettling experience if you prefer life ordered and predictable. Without a Toronto-based lab to develop the film it had to be shipped to Vancouver. Much of my CERB support went to pay for this.
I was shooting blindly (but still upside down and backward), with no idea if the camera was capturing faithfully, or at all. Most often I was not able to see my negatives for weeks as our overwhelmed postal service stopped tracking packages, leaving my film floating somewhere over western Canada.
I soon felt utterly helpless with my new camera, which served to only reinforce what I imagine so many of us were feeling at the time. I avoid planning too much as I move around the city. I am not particularly familiar with Toronto even after living here my whole life. Carrying a cumbersome camera in this newness proved additionally unnerving. Approaching strangers makes me anxious, especially with our collective health so tenuous and fragile. I have also lived with Type 1 Diabetes for nearly thirty-nine years (I am thirty-nine years old), leaving me squarely in the high-risk category. My dark hood became a plague mask, blocking out the larger world, allowing me to focus on manageable four-by-five inch portions of it.
Much to my surprise and delight, the fashionably old camera proved a draw. I did not have to nervously approach passersby to explain what I was doing. They want to talk about the camera (is it real or a prop? How does it work?), and they want to talk around it, like a water cooler sitting plump on a tripod.
A man in Parkdale I will call Allan crossed the street to tell me about his life (and living with a disability) and to share his photographs, which he keeps in a small plastic protective case tucked away in his pocket, of the homeless and disadvantaged people he encounters around the city.
He pressed a computer printed business card on me with his contact information and Youtube channel. I promised to watch his video and message him with him an honest opinion (as requested), and I did.
I soon felt utterly helpless with my new camera, which served to only reinforce what I imagine so many of us were feeling at the time. I avoid planning too much as I move around the city. I am not particularly familiar with Toronto even after living here my whole life. Carrying a cumbersome camera in this newness proved additionally unnerving. Approaching strangers makes me anxious, especially with our collective health so tenuous and fragile. I have also lived with Type 1 Diabetes for nearly thirty-nine years (I am thirty-nine years old), leaving me squarely in the high-risk category. My dark hood became a plague mask, blocking out the larger world, allowing me to focus on manageable four-by-five inch portions of it.