Ontario Place Dieter Janssen
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Ontario Place Dieter Janssen
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Dieter Janssen
In the winter of 2014, I was given access to the Ontario Place grounds as part of the planning of an ‘alleycat race’ to follow in the spring. What follows are images from two visits: the first following an ice-storm that blanketed the Toronto shoreline with masses of ice, and the second on the evening of that cycle race later that spring. A third visit this past summer during the Covid-19 lock-down made explicit the value of the site to the public as a unique space of experimentation and leisure. The site has occupied a somewhat mythical place for those that grew up in Ontario in the 70s and 80s as it resembled few other manufactured places in Canada, aside from the grounds of Expo 67 in Montreal, for its strangeness. Its separation from the city by Lake Shore Boulevard (a multi-lane highway built in the late 50s) had placed the site and much of the shoreline outside Ontario Place 052-14 2014
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of any everyday experience—something that is now slowly being revisited with and emergence of nearby private (condos) and public (cultural and park) developments. The automobile is still for many the sole means of access, though with recent developments greater interest has brought more people to the site via pedestrain and cycle paths. The images that follow recast the site’s eccentricity with the circumstances of the weather, coloured pavilions, and Eberhard Zeidler’s fantastic, techno-metabolist architecture.
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Dieter Janssen www.dieterjanssenphotography.com
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