About
Duncan McLaren is a photographer and former microfilm publisher. Since 1971, he has documented graffiti, storefronts, billboards, and posters: especially those with a political edge. As a micropublisher (1973-2003), he was responsible for the preservation of numerous ethnic newspapers, and his Ontario-Ethnocultural Newspapers, 1835-1972, was published by the University of Toronto Press.
His work has been shown at the Pollock Gallery, the Gallery at the University of Waterloo, Jet Fuel, This Ain't the Rosedale Library, the Gallery at University of Toronto, Scarborough, the Multicultural History Society of Ontario, the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, and Photorama at Gallery TPW. He is a member of Gallery 44, an artist-run exhibition space in Toronto. In 2011 he exhibited at Propeller Gallery, The Black & White Ball, and at AWOL Gallery, Missed, a solo show of photocollages based on Craiglist’s “Missed Connections" classifieds.
He has an MLS from the University of Toronto, and studied visual art at Queen’s University and the Ontario College of Art and Design (now OCAD University). His work has been featured on CITY TV (Toronto), and his photographs published in Xtra!, Art Libraries Journal, Canadian Geographical Journal, and The Globe and Mail.
The Logo
I found the early twentieth century graphic for my logo in F.H. Ehmcke, Graphic Trade Symbols by German Designers, a Dover reprint of the Klingspor Brothers Tye Foundry catalogue (Offenbach am Main, 1907). The view camera, a tripod, the black cloth over the ground glass: these were the standard tools of such turn-of-the-century street photographers as Eugene Atget. My tools are technically less daunting: 35mm and medium format cameras and, more recently, a full-frame digital SLR. The street as subject is the one thing I have in common with the photographer in the German graphic. And, on occasion, I do use a tripod.
Prints from Gallery Images
Archival quality high resolution prints are available for all images on this site. Those from the “Missed” series, first shown at Toronto’s AWOL Gallery in 2011, are $200 for each 10”x15” print. Those in the Montreal and other galleries are $250 for each A3 (11.7" x 16.5") print; please inquire about prices for other sizes. Shipping charges and taxes (if any) are additional; PayPal is accepted for payment.