Ryerson’s Special Collections is filled with all kinds of unique and unusual material. Here is our list of the top 8 odd and outstanding artist’s books you can find in our collection!

8. Scratch by Christian Boltanski

This thin artist’s book allegedly contains ten duotones of forbidden images. However, what the reader will see when browsing this book is a stiff book with five silver coloured pages. That’s because Boltanski has coated each image in a scratch-card like opaque substance. So, the only way to view the hidden images is to physically scratch off the surface of each page. In this way, the artist is making a statement about the responsibility of viewing images of disaster, forcing the reader to make a decision – either peek and look, or stare and wonder at what lies beneath the surface.

7. Cock Fight Dance by Sol LeWitt

Sol LeWitt was one of the artists spearheading the Conceptual movement in the 1960s. While he was most well-known for his painting, drawing and sculpture works, LeWitt also published multiple photographic artist’s books. This odd little book contains a photographic narrative of two roosters fighting. With a simple layout and premise, this book of photographs light-heartedly hints at dance and performance. Because the whole event is not completely recorded, LeWitt’s book suggests multiple readings and multiple endings.

6. See by Marcia Resnick

See by Marcia Resnick contains 34 black and white portraits. Each portrait shows the subject in the center of the frame in front of various landscapes. However, instead of looking at the camera, each subject has their back to us. This simple little book from 1975 can actually be read as a deeper exploration of looking and being look at, of seeing and being seen.

5. Rainbow in Your Hand by Masashi Kawamura

It won’t take long for you to read this book cover-to-cover, and it’s definitely one you’ll want to peruse again! At first, this artist’s book seems a bit underwhelming – each of its pages are completely identical with small coloured squares on each side of a black page. However, everything changes once the reader realizes it is actually a flipbook – and not a conventional flipbook either. Instead of creating an illusion of movement on the pages, this book creates a three-dimensional illusion. When this clever little book is flipped though, a rainbow appears in the space between the pages!

4. Hide by Fred Escher

This book is a great example of the type of unconventional book that was published by conceptual artists in the 1970s. The book contains black and white photographs, each of the artist hiding in plain sight. Part-performance, part-photography, the work Escher creates in this book shows the landscape and artist as merged, and can be seen to the reader as a sort of grown-up version of Where’s Waldo.

3. Mountain Dream Tarot by Bea Nettles

This collection of images firmly resides outside of the traditional form of artist’s book. Instead of bound pages, this work consists of 78 individual tarot cards. The deck from 1975 is the first known photographic tarot deck, and is one of the most collectible tarot card decks in the world. Using herself, as well as family and friends as models, the artist created the multicoloured photographic cards over the span of 5 years. A lot of skill and technique went into each image. There was no Photoshop at the time, so Nettles used darkroom tricks to create special effects in the images – collaged photographs, multi-layered images and hand-drawn symbols are some of the processes she employed.

2. Octogonal Houses of Maine by Carol-Lynn Rössel Waugh

This curious book is by far the smallest in the collection – in fact it measures just 2 centimeters by 2.5 centimeters! The book chronicles the history of the eight-sided homes in the state of Maine. The author appears to have also written multiple books on the subject of teddy bears, and is a self-proclaimed “teddy bear artist”. In addition to being the smallest book in our collection, we consider it to be one of the oddest little gems in the stacks!

1. Every Building on the Sunset Strip by Ed Ruscha

This rare and fragile artist’s book is one of the most iconic to come out of the 1970s. For Every Building on the Sunset Strip, the artist mounted a motorized camera to the back of a truck, photographing every building he passed. Ruscha then created a bound accordion-style book from one continuous folding strip that extends approximately 25 feet. Though now the book might make us think of Google Street View, the book revealed at the time a new form of topographical map-making study. Ruscha is known for spearheading a new genre of artist’s book, favouring a cheap and conceptual approach over the typical livre d’artiste of the day. Ryerson’s Special Collections is also home to various other original seminal Ruscha books, including Business Cards, Royal Road Test and Crackers.

Contact us to come have a look at these odd and outstanding artist’s books!

The Kodak Corporate Archives and Heritage Collection, acquired by Ryerson Library in 2005, includes many insights into the unique corporate culture of Eastman Kodak and its affiliates. One of these is a group of employee suggestion books, used by the company to record suggestions submitted by employees from 1915-1959.

Along with the suggestions and the name of the employee responsible, is a record of the amount of money awarded for suggestions that were implemented. The highest award during this time was in 1923, to W. Coldwell for suggesting a change the Japanning process on box camera components, as well as adding a safety feature to punch presses in the factory.

Kodak Canada valued employee input quite highly; the $500.00 bonus awarded to Coldwell in 1923 would be worth about $6,900.00 today.

If you would like to view these artifacts in person or do other research in our collections, make an appointment or drop by the 4th floor of the library building. To search our collection online, check out our newly launched collections database.

If you’re been up to the 4th floor of the library and peered into Special Collections, you may have seen this funny creature sitting in the corner and wondered: “What the heck is that?”

Well, that’s Max, a larger version of the plush Kodak Kolorkins toys, produced by Kodak from 1988 until the later 1990’s. Beginning in 1988, Kodak Canada began giving away the tiny, stuffed promotional toys away in exchange for mailed-in points that customers collected from film and batteries. The promotion was wildly popular, and by the time the first promotion was over, they had given away 225,000 toys and were recognized as runner up in the Council of Sales Promotion Agencies’ first “Awards of Excellent”.

There were three series of Kolorkins, and our friend Max (along with his friends Click, Zoom, Check and Digit) was part of the last series, produced in 1999 as part of Kodak Canada’s centennial.

If you’d like to visit Max, or explore more of our collections, please drop by Special Collections, located on the 4th floor of the library building, or make an appointment by emailing asc@ryerson.ca.

Sources:

“The Awards for Excellence.” Adweek’s Marketing Week 12 June 1989: p12+. Academic OneFile. Web. 30 July 2015. URL http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA7694025&v=2.1&u=rpu_main&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&asid=c3942ee28e69dc4ec3ca77e9effae9a0

“Kodak unveils promo series.” Chain Drug Review 17 June 1991: 158. Academic OneFile. Web. 30 July 2015. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA10958413&v=2.1&u=rpu_main&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&asid=d90584f76f2719b2adfdc837671b8318

“MARCH OF THE KOLORKINS.” Toronto Star, Feb 20, 1989. http://ezproxy.lib.ryerson.ca/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/435873367?accountid=13631.

With the first day of summer quickly approaching, the people of Toronto are flocking outdoors to enjoy the many events and activities taking place across the city. And although there are endless ways to take advantage of such a lively time of year, the pages of a Toronto family scrapbook may help to determine how best to enjoy the season.

The following is a list of activities to consider this year, recommended by Torontonians circa 1913:

Enjoy a promenade through Allan Gardens, one of Toronto’s oldest parks founded in 1858. While you’re there you may want to drop into Allan Gardens Conservatory, built in 1910, just a few years before these photographs were taken.

Visit one of North America’s largest fairs, taking place annually at Exhibition Place.

Venture out to the Scarborough Bluffs and explore a unique geological feature of the city’s landscape.

Gather some friends and head to one of Toronto’s many parks and beaches.

The waterfront is at its best this time of year. Venture out on the Toronto Harbour and hop aboard a boat cruise, or take out a canoe. Maybe pay a visit to the Island.

Bike along a trail or through your favourite neighbourhood.

Wander over to your favourite store or market.

Embrace local history and check out how the city has evolved.

If the city has become too overwhelming, maybe it’s time to get away and take a weekend or day trip to the surrounding area.

So long as there are friends and family, there are no shortage of ways to appreciate summer in and around Toronto.

This blog features items from the Historical Collection, the Robert MacIntosh Collection on the History of Toronto, and the Rare Books Collection held at Ryerson’s Special Collections on the 4th floor of the library. Drop-in and see what else these collections have to offer. Call 416-979-5000 ext. 4996 or email asc@ryerson.ca to make an appointment.

Living in an image saturated world, it is easy to forget that photography is still a relatively new invention. Less than two hundred years ago, people saw extremely detailed and realistic images of the world captured in a permanent photograph for the first time. Needless to say, the invention of our favourite past-time, the motion picture, is even newer still. It is human nature to seek entertainment, yet we rarely consider what our great-great grandparents did for leisure. There has always been a desire to learn and discover new parts of the world, but long-distance travel was much less feasible during the 1800s, thus substitutes were made in a variety of forms of amusement. Before film and television, at a time that was full of innovation and creativity, there existed a number of forgotten optical spectacles involving the use of light and movement that have since disappeared from our generation.

Magic Lanterns

The magic lantern existed in many different formats for thousands of years and was based on the idea of projecting images with light onto a wall or surface. In fact, this idea is still one that is in popular demand, most familiarly with the projectors that are used for PowerPoint and other presentations in many classes here at Ryerson. However, this is by no means a new idea. The fascination with projection dates back to drawings made by Da Vinci that look similar to a Bull’s Eye lantern. First described in 1646 by Anthanasius Kircher, a German scholar, for use in science and philosophy, the magic lantern was quick to become a form of public entertainment.

Although first limited to small audiences because of the strength of its illuminants, throughout the nineteenth century significant improvements were made to the technology, such as advances in lenses, illuminants and the use of mirrors that allowed for bigger, indoor shows and more fanciful and detailed slides. Magic lanterns were eagerly adopted as a form of entertainment and were used for shadow puppet shows, to illuminate engravings and create apparitions, and with hand-painted and photographic slides.

Especially during the nineteen hundreds, new types of magic lanterns began to appear. There were projecting microscopes, which were used in the field of biology, and magic lanterns that were used in pairs or sets of 3 that, with the aid of a fan-like device, were capable of creating dissolving views and other special effects. With the advent of photography and cinema, magic lanterns began to appear on the mass market under numerous names in a variety of formats. The Lumière Brothers used the technology for their first film screening in 1895. The 1950s saw the opto-mechanical advancements that began the popular trend of the slide projector, which was often used as a form of entertainment to show photographs to family and friends.

The idea behind them all was the same and they were actively used to tell stories, to educate, and to show audiences views of faraway places. Here in Special Collections we have a number of more recent examples of both slide and motion picture projectors, as well as photographic and hand-painted slides in a variety of formats.

Panoramas

Today when we hear the word “panorama” a 180 to 360-degree photograph is likely what comes to mind. However, the first patent for a panorama was issued in 1787 to Robert Barker, over 50 years before the invention of photography around 1839. It was one of the most popular forms of entertainment during the nineteenth century, yet something we rarely hear about today. Translated from Greek, the term panorama means ‘see all’ and that is exactly what they aimed to do. To really understand what the term panorama meant during the late 18^th and 19^th centuries, try to imagine walking through a dark corridor into a large, circular, naturally lit room in which, constructed from floor to ceiling, is a continuous representation of a distant land, a battle scene, or an escape from the industrializing city landscape that completely surrounds you. The painting has been made to appear as realistic as possible: the top edge has been masked by a veil or roof, and the bottom edge is concealed by a fence which you can walk up to. The average size of a panorama was 15 by 20 metres and took an immense amount of teamwork to build, but the results always attracted a crowd.

As the popularity of the panorama took off in the late 1700s and early 1800s, the term began to take on other meanings, and new formats of the medium began to be created. Any sort of large or oversized painting began to be considered a ‘panorama’ as well as huge paintings that would only cover a semi-circle rather than 360-degrees.  Another popular format of the panorama was the moving panorama. Spectators of the moving panorama were seated in an auditorium and instead of being surrounded by the panorama a long roll painting was moved across a window, often set up with curtains similar to a typical theatre stage. A mechanical cranking system was used to pull the painting across the audience’s view. Often, music, lecturers or sound and light effects would accompany the presentation of the work. Unlike the circular panorama, the moving panorama used a transportable format that could tour to new cities and towns, saving on the costly operation of construction and making it more accessible. The panorama, in any sense of the word, was truly a spectacle that gave viewers a chance to experience the world without having to travel far from home, some of which still exist and can be viewed today.

For examples of full panoramas still existing today:

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/52.184

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/artsandliving/interactives/cyclorama/

Dioramas

If you have taken a photography course at Ryerson, it is likely you have heard of L.J.M. Daguerre and his infamous diorama. The diorama often competed with the panorama and used a combination of ideas from both the panorama and the magic lantern to create a theatrical experience for the audience. The diorama consisted of an exhibition of enormous transparent paintings under changing lighting effects. With these effects, audiences could witness changes in mood and scenery, such as the weather. The illusions immediately got attention for their ability to transform paintings into three-dimensional renderings that many claimed could not be distinguished from large-scale models that used real objects. Similar to the panorama, the viewer was walked through a dark hallway into an auditorium that could hold close to 350 people, where they were kept stationary with the illuminations revolving slowly around them, only visible through screen tunnels that created depth and hid the edges of the paintings. The pictures measured close to 22 metres wide by 14 metres high and were situated 13 metres back from the front row. The viewer was kept in very dim lighting until the start of the show when the curtain was drawn up and the image was revealed. Effects were rendered through use of transparent and opaque painting techniques and coloured screens that altered the daylight passing through the back of the picture.

Information and images about Daguerre’s recently restored diorama at Bry-Sur-Marne can be found here:

Conclusion

Hence, our enjoyment of light, image and motion did not begin with the photograph or the motion picture. Multiple forms of entertainment experimenting with these elements existed from the 1400s through the 1800s and were very popular with audiences. Although here we have only discussed the panorama, the magic lantern, and the diorama, inventions for optical entertainment were not limited to these, and often shows would use a combination of each. If you are still curious about these forgotten forms of entertainment, visit Special Collections to find out what kinds of materials we have to facilitate further research into the subject, including books, slides and projectors. We are located on the 4^th floor of the Toronto Metropolitan University Library and Archives. Call us at 416-979-5000 ext. 4996 or send us an email at asc@ryerson.ca

References:

Balzer, Richard. Optical Amusements: Magic Lanterns and Other Transforming Images – A Catalog of Popular Entertainments. Watertown, MA: Richard Balzer, 1987.

Chadwick, W.J. The Magic Lantern Manual. London: Frederick Warne & Co., 1878.

Comment, Bernard. The Panorama. Translated by Anne-Marie Glasheen. London: Reaktion Books, 1999.

Daguerre, Louis Jacques Mandé. An Historical and Descriptive Account of the Various Processes of the Daguerreotype and the Diorama. Paris: Béthune et plon, 1839. Reprinted with illustrations and an introduction by Beaumont Newhall. New York: Winter House, 1971.

Greenacre, Derek. Magic Lanterns. Princes Risborough, Bucks, England: Shire, 1986.

Huhtamo, Erkki. Illusions in Motion: Media Archeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013.

Toronto Metropolitan University Library and Archives is pleased to announce the donation of the Robert MacIntosh Collection on the History of Toronto to the Special Collections department.

The collection of 141 books was carefully curated by collector, author, and longtime Toronto resident, Robert M. MacIntosh. Ranging in date from 1807 – 1988, topics include historical accounts, biographies of notable Torontonians (including John Toronto himself, Bishop Strachan), tourist keepsakes through the years, maps, centennial publications, and TTC brochures.  

An economist by trade, MacIntosh authored “Different Drummers, Banking and Politics in Canada” in 1992 before focusing his research on the early history and formation of the City of Toronto and publishing “Earliest Toronto” in 2006.

Browse all books in the collection.

To view this or any of our other collections, give us a call and make an appointment: 416-979-5000 ext. 4996. Or email us at asc@ryerson.ca.