Eye Weekly - Best Bet

Photographs From the Bridle Path

Andrea Miller

Scott Johnston's montage of eerie, dilapidated properties documents a hidden trove of tension and decay in an unexpected locale: the Bridle Path, one of Toronto's wealthiest haunts, known for its equestrian tradition and curiously wide street. Johnston, a local painter and photographer, discovered the empty lots while biking along the picturesque street, documenting them for his series "Photographs From the Bridle Path." In some cases, he enen broke into the homes to capture their barren, gutted interiors. The stillness of deserted tennis courts, forgotten gasebos and bone-dry pools grants an intimate beauty to these scenes. A symmetrical shot of three windows looking outside, green foliage peeking through the mustard-coloured frames, looks simultaneously postcard-perfect and heart-breaking when you take in the discarded floorboards in the foreground (pictured). The demolished rooms appear so empty that nothingness seems to take up space, filling the houses with energy borne of destruction and making it easy to see the motivation behind Johnston's ode to wreckage.