Kathy Toth

KToth.ca

Detroit has something almost no other large city does: a sense of urban space unparalleled in North America. Detroit requires more quiet introspection as I believe many more cities, especially mono-industry-driven ones will die off across this continent in the next 50 years.

Infrared photography is an industrial photography medium that was not used by the public in film or digital form. It was primary used by the military for reconnaissance missions to find hidden targets that could not be found via traditional photography, and also used in laboratories for different applications. It is not photoshop trickery but rather a spectrum of light that is not visible to the human eye.

I find IR images to be the most pure as all sorts of visual pollution we have in the landscape drops off. Signs are no longer visible or polarized in the frame. Billboards and other forms of advertising also drop off. Images are cooler, contain less distracting elements and require more technical knowledge and planning to execute.

I find these images invoke more visceral reactions from viewers and tend to polarize them more vs. a conventional color photograph.

— Kathy Toth, Toronto, Canada