Ghost Stories
PHOTOGRAPHY MONOGRAPHGhost Stories explores the concrete impact of one family’s settlement in Toronto, in an effort to question and face an immigrant’s role in colonization. This project comes at a time when I consider my place as a child of Latvian war refugees living as a guest in what we now call Canada. I was born in Toronto and grew up in Weston, located at the edge of the Toronto Carrying-Place Trail along the Humber River. Toronto is not my ancestral land, yet my ancestors have played a part in altering it, for better or for worse, impacting physical spaces through their activities. Ancestral trauma, layered footprints, physical modifications to buildings and spaces, and the indescribable feeling that “something happened here” are at the core of this project. My family history is personal, but also universal to Canadian identity. By facing our families’ past with a critical eye and sharing our immigration stories we gain insight on how we have each shaped this land today and can begin to take responsibility for our role.
Made possible with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.
