Ghosts of Monsters
Artist Paola Poletto set out to photograph postwar homes for sale in a one kilometre square section of north Toronto known as Willowdale with the intention of returning to re-photograph the various sites after they were sold. Her goal was to combine the images of the older homes before their demolition (a.k.a. the “Ghost”) with the newer and much larger multi-level Neo-Eclectic replacement house (a.k.a. the “Monster”) that would inevitably assert their position on the various sites explored. This resulted in a series of 6 composite images overlaying the two types of homes on top of one another.
ParkHome
For the ParkHome series and bookwork, a street composition of 56 homes along Park Home Avenue combines the diverse front façades as viewed from the street with a backyard view of their collective landscape taken from the perspective of the adjoining cemetery. The conceptual narrative begins and ends with a military tank pointed toward City Hall, Queens Park, Lake Ontario, Tarontha, Taronto, Toranto, Torento, Toronto, Toronton, Tkaronto – “where there are trees standing in the water.”
The project set out to reflect the diversity of settlers, represented by their domestic architecture. The absence of bodies in these photographs avoids documentary as an endpoint. It is impossible to see neither ghosts nor monsters when viewing the source images independently. But when they are superimposed as a photocollage, we enable our imaginative eye to see into fluctuating and impermanent worlds that surround us every day. Indeed, a narrative that disrupts the idea of the colonial “heritage home” is also implied. And Willowdale’s most commonly used languages —English, Chinese, Farsi and Korean—are preset alongside the photo collages within the bookwork, considering multiple voices through the process of translation.
