New exhibition at Vaughan city hall captures 'spirit' of Toronto's subway system
Subway Culture features 29 photographs by Kleinburg's Frank Mazzuca

Yorkregion.com
Sept. 15, 2016
By Adam Martin-Robbins

Frank Mazzuca spent a day trekking around Toronto’s subway system capturing images of speeding trains, radiating lights, colourful commuters and gritty graffiti.

But of all the captivating places, objects and scenes the longtime Kleinburg resident encountered during his 18-hour underground odyssey, it was people’s feet he was drawn to shoot over and over again.

“Yes we’re all entering this missile, this tunnel, taking us in a controlled way somewhere. So, yes, there’s wheels and a track, but there’s also feet getting us there,” said Mazzuca, a professional photographer and graphic artist. “I did a whole series on feet, just on feet.”  

A couple of images from that series made the cut for his latest solo exhibition, Subway Culture, on display at city hall’s On the Slate gallery until Oct. 5.

The exhibition features 29 photos out of the hundreds he shot while riding four TTC train lines and visiting 69 stations between 6 a.m. and midnight in May.

Mazzuca was also drawn to photograph some of the people he encountered.

A few of those images are in the exhibition including one titled Red Head, which shows a woman with brightly dyed red hair sitting with a suitcase in front of her.

“People were really engaging,” Mazzuca said. “Musicians were engaging...I found out a lot about musicians that, actually, we usually walk by and either toss a loonie or not, but they’re pro musicians.”  

Mazzuca was commissioned by the city to photograph the images for Subway Culture, which is part of Vaughan’s Urban Spaces exhibition series launched earlier this year.

“Frank is a storyteller. This is a narrative of the subway and that’s his genius,” said curator Sharon Gaum-Kuchar. “(He captures) the spirit of the subway system and you’ll see it through the people, through his isolation of individuals, of motifs.”

The exhibition’s centerpiece is a diptych joined together into an eight-foot by eight-foot panel to create a full-scale image of commuters standing behind closed subway doors.

Mounted at the same level as actual subway doors, you feel as though you’re standing on a subway platform waiting to step aboard once the doors slide open.

The images in the show are purposely displayed in a long sweeping line to invoke the feeling of being in a subway tunnel looking at a train, Gaum-Kuchar explained.

And the photographs were printed on steel, rather than paper, to “convey the spirit“ of the subject matter, she said.

The show’s final four photos, called VMC Landed, were captured in June inside the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre station, the last stop along the Spadina Subway extension slated to open in December 2017.

Mazzuca said shooting his hometown’s new subway station was the highlight of the entire project.

“It looks like some kind of armadillo space station,” he said.  

The exhibit can be viewed at city hall, 2141 Major Mackenzie Dr., Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

If you want to meet the artist, Mazzuca will be at an opening reception Wednesday, Sept. 28 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.