One City, Two Views

A portrait of Toronto through the eyes of two photographers

and

Feb 19, 2025

One of the best things about being a part of the photographic community on Substack is the connections that are made with other Substackers. One of the connections I have made is with

søren k. harbel

, a fellow photography enthusiast. From our discussions we’ve discovered that we have a few things in common, one of which is Toronto. I’m originally from England but I am married to a Torontonian and this is where we have made our home. Søren also lived here for a while until 2004. We both have a mutual love for the city and appreciate its multiculturalism and diversity.

Anyway, it was a very nice surprise when Søren reached out to me recently and suggested we collaborate on a photo story of Toronto showing the city from our different perspectives. I jumped at the chance. I’ve been thinking about doing a collaboration with another photographer and this seemed like the perfect fit.

The plan was for each of us to submit six images and then the other would add six complementary images so we ended up with twelve diptychs. The only parameters were that the photos would be street images and they would be black and white. We worked on this over a couple of days and it was surprising how easy it seemed for each of us to come up with images that fit nicely with each other. They might not all be a direct match but they definitely work very well together and I’m very happy with the way it turned out.

Big thanks to Søren for asking me to participate in this little endeavour and for his help in putting the diptychs together. Much appreciated! The whole experience was a lot of fun and I highly recommend it to other photographers. It’s a great way to connect and create something different and interesting.

So, without further ado, here are six of the pairings. My photos are on the left and Søren’s are on the right.