Brian Condron's 1970s Toronto Photographs Published in New Book

A new book from Figure 1 Publishing collects previously unpublished black-and-white photographs that Brian Condron made on Toronto's streets in the 1970s. Titled Toronto in the Seventies: Photographs by Brian Condron, the volume is priced at $35 or $40 CAD and carries a foreword by Toronto writer and musician Dave Bidini. Condron began photographing in the late 1960s, roaming the city with a Leica to record office workers, children, subway commuters, lunching strangers and brief moments of connection that others passed by. The negatives survived decades of neglect, including moves between Toronto houses, two home renovations and a six-week journey by shipping container to Australia, before Condron revisited them and found a record of a population in flux, shaped by immigration, social change and gender politics as the city grew. Born in Toronto in 1949, Condron took up photography at eighteen after seeing the National Film Board touring exhibition Call Them Canadians. He studied photographic arts at Sheridan College and York University, exhibited black-and-white social landscape work, and later shot for newspapers and magazines including The Financial Post. He moved to Australia in 1990, working for The Australian and BRW magazine, and now lives outside Brisbane with his wife, Desley, still making pictures and recently returning to exhibiting.