When I came back to Toronto in 2022 I thought the answer to my problems was at hand. I thought the isolation and loneliness I had been feeling in Winnipeg would be fixed by having my friends and family around me.
I was wrong.
In many ways those feelings were amplified by being back. Here was I was surrounded again by loved ones and I felt just as empty and alone as I did before. Clearly, something was wrong with me but I just didn’t fully understand what.
I tried to pour myself back into my photography, into what made me feel connected to people and places. But moving from landscape photography to street photography was a big change. It wasn’t the same thing where I would set up and wait, find those spots and let nature unfold. I had to be faster, I had to be willing to photograph people in place, and I don’t like doing that.
Eventually, after a year of hating my photos, I tried to settle into a mix. Not landscape but not street.
It was around this time that I really started to talk to my therapist more about the isolation I was feeling.
“Coming back to Toronto feels like that favourite sweater of yours that you’ve washed one too many times. It fits, but it doesn’t fit right.”
While thinking through my place, I continued to work on my photography. I am not a street photographer, but, I decided, I was a scenic photographer. And I would define what that meant to me and to my work.
I purchased a wide angle lens with the intent of getting back out to do astrophotography, but it turned into a tool to express my language of loneliness just a little more.
Out for a wander I saw this person sitting alone. A sunny day, and warm enough, there still wasn’t a lot of people in this normally tourist area. Isolated in wide open urban space. It became the perfect space for the new wide angle lens.
Everyone else was out of reach, not part of the world this person inhabited. In that moment I felt a kinship to the space. Filled with people going places but not stopping, not talking to each other, just alone.
All these years later and I can’t say too much has changed in my feelings about the city. What has changed is my feelings about myself. I accept that this city isn’t really home anymore. It’s a stop on a bigger ride. Those feelings of isolation and loneliness are not going to go away forever, but they also won’t go away if I just sit here and wait. The next step is actually facing the unknown head-on and moving towards it.