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Toronto Architecture From The 1960's and 70's

Of course--"Trekkie-scifi-geek-style futurism" wasn't a slur directed at you; but it is a fact that melodramatic futurism (or melodramatic *anything*) is an eye-grabber that cinematographers and the like adore. Whereas MCH is too "difficult" to be cinematographer-friendly, being a particularly, well..."intellectualized"?--specimen of PoMo.

Another case in point re architectural melodrama.
 
adma said:
Of course--"Trekkie-scifi-geek-style futurism" wasn't a slur directed at you; but it is a fact that melodramatic futurism (or melodramatic *anything*) is an eye-grabber that cinematographers and the like adore. Whereas MCH is too "difficult" to be cinematographer-friendly, being a particularly, well..."intellectualized"?--specimen of PoMo.
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Well, I don't know. I don't mean to suggest Mississauga's City Hall has no aesthetic merit. Like I said; these things are subjective; I was just saying I personally never liked it. But just as Toronto City Hall caught the eye of creative people making Star Trek, I don't see why Mississauga City Hall couldn't have its moment in the spotlight on, say, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. :)
 
Conrad Black said:
I look at these pictures and wonder about Ed Provan (for example). Who he was, his life and where he might be today.
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i find my mind goes into similar terrain when i study these old photos. knowing that every photo ever taken was taken on a specific time on a particular day, in a particular place, of a particular place and/or person. photographs are defined by their exquisite specificity and their transience. A moment later, and all the those people in the picture were gone, to move further down the block, to eventually make their way home...its all rather heady...

and for that reason its great we have people like Susan Sontag to help us:

"Photographs state the innocence, the vulnerability of lives heading toward their own destruction, and this link between photography and death haunts all photographs of peopleâ€

“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.â€

“The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world 'picturesque.â€

“Life is not about significant details, illuminated a flash, fixed forever. Photographs are.â€

“Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality...One can't possess reality, one can possess images--one can't possess the present but one can possess the past.â€

"to photograph is to confer importance"


and Robert Frank' credo: "There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment."
 
thedeepend:

OT: Interesting that you quoted Susan Sontag - I've just read her son's memoir Swimming in a Sea of Death and it's rather ironic that someone with such a keen sense of temporality of life seem to have been living...and fighting almost in denial of it.

AoD
 
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AlvinofDiaspar said:
thedeepend:

OT: Interesting that you quoted Susan Sontag - I've just read her son's memoir Swimming in a Sea of Death and it's rather ironic that someone with such a keen sense of temporality of life seem to have been living...and fighting almost in denial of it.

AoD
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yes from the reviews i read made it sound like an incredibly intense and even uncomfortable read, she seems in deep deep denial that she is dying, almost forbidding other people to even think about her death, and raging obsessively against the dying of the light....i suppose it is hard to predict how any one individual will respond in those cases.
for quite a while after being diagnosed, Christopher Hitchens was manifesting a deeply optimistic perspective on his cancer, talking about living for at least 5 more years etc, and then he went very very quickly, in a matter of just a few months.
 
The camera is a "time machine."

Whether it is the name of Ed Provan or an image of Susan Sontag, they come to us magically, as if they had travelled from the past.
 
Lone Primate said:
But just as Toronto City Hall caught the eye of creative people making Star Trek, I don't see why Mississauga City Hall couldn't have its moment in the spotlight on, say, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. :)
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Given my framework for MCH, it's far more Gordon Gekko than Honey Boo Boo. Or if, just as with Gatsby, someone, someday, tries to do Bonfire Of The Vanities...right.
 
"I believe that this is a case that calls for JT Cunningham's expertise..... "
QUOTE: Thecharioteer.

Thank you Sire!

The latest MIGHT'S TORONTO CITY DIRECTORY (1950) in my possession:

PROVAN, C Ed(ward)
(Provan -Crone & Co)
47 Coldstream Ave. - res.

Provan, Crone & Co. (Ed Provan & Douglas Crone.)
sales agents,
No 204 Toronto Arcade.

PROVAN, ED LTD
Chas E , President, men's wear.
275 Yonge Street.

ALSO OF INTEREST:

PROVAN, Jas C, slamn, Harcourts Ltd
(Different home address.)


Regards,
J T
 
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adma said:
Given my framework for MCH, it's far more Gordon Gekko than Honey Boo Boo. Or if, just as with Gatsby, someone, someday, tries to do Bonfire Of The Vanities...right.
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I can't vouch for the exterior, but I guess we can all take some pride in the fact that the council chambres caught the eye of the folks doing Robocop. It was kind of a kick seeing names like "Port Credit" and "Malton" carved near the ceiling in the up shots. :)
 
Don Valley Village, "Four Corners". Shots taken on or near Esterbrooke Ave, Shaughnessy Blvd, Forest Manor Rd, and Nymark Ave. Architects unknown, N.D.




















 
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