Arthur S. Goss, also known as William Arthurt Scott Goss (1881-1940) was the
City of Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most pop ...
's first official photographer.
[
]
Early life
William Arthur Scott Goss was born in London, Ontario on 4 March 1881, moving to Toronto in 1883, where his father, John Goss, worked in the newspaper and publishing industries.
[Bassnett, Sarah; Parsons, Sarah (2023). ]
Photography in Canada, 1839 - 1989: An Illustrated History.
' Art Canada Institute
Art Canada Institute is a bilingual, non-profit research organization based out of Massey College, at the University of Toronto. Through a variety of programs, such as the Massey Art Lecture Series and the Canadian Online Art Book Project, the Ins ...
. ISBN 978-1-4871-0309-5. When his father died, Goss, age 10, began work as an office boy in the city engineer's office. He was promoted to clerk of street repairs in 1899 and worked as a clerk and a draughtsman for nearly twenty years. Then, in 1911, he was promoted to head of the photography and blueprinting section and became the city of Toronto's first official photographer.
[Victor Russell and Linda Price. ''Arthur S. Goss City Photographer: Works by Toronto's Official Photographer, 1911–1940''. Toronto: City of Toronto Archives and the Market Gallery, 1980.]
Professional life
Working until his death in 1940, Goss made photographs for a range of municipal departments. Some of his best-known images were taken for the Works and Health Departments. For the Works Department, he photographed street cleaning, the construction of new roads, and major infrastructure projects, such as the city's new hydroelectric system and the
Bloor Viaduct. His photographs of street grading and widening, bridge, underpass, and sewer construction, street cleaning, and garbage disposal were used as records to assist with the routine business of the Works Department, which, at the time, was focused on improving the physical environment of the city.
[Sarah Bassnett, ''Picturing Toronto: Photography and the Making of a Modern City''. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016]
Medical Health Officer Dr.
Charles Hastings enlisted Goss's help in his crusade to improve public health. Goss photographed unsanitary and overcrowded conditions for the Health Department, and Hastings used Goss's photographs as evidence in his 1911 report on slum conditions. Many of Goss's photographs for the Health Department were never published, but were used internally to identify problems, to track the progress of particular projects, or to report on new technologies and methods for carrying out the Department's work. With Goss as the city photographer, photographs quickly became an important resource in many aspects of Toronto's municipal government.
Artistic interests
Goss was a member of the
Toronto Camera Club and active within the pictorialist movement.
The artist intended to help create a national network of photographers, and was also associated with the
Arts and Letters Club
The Arts and Letters Club of Toronto (usually just called ''The Arts and Letters Club'') is a private club in Toronto, Ontario, which brings together writers, architects, musicians, painters, graphic artists, actors and others working in or with a ...
, with which he staged a number of exhibitions in the 1910s.
Modeled after the
Group of Seven
The Group of Seven (G7) is an intergovernmental political forum consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States; additionally, the European Union (EU) is a "non-enumerated member". It is official ...
, Goss hoped to develop distinctly Canadian style within global photography.
Though the
Arts and Letters Club
The Arts and Letters Club of Toronto (usually just called ''The Arts and Letters Club'') is a private club in Toronto, Ontario, which brings together writers, architects, musicians, painters, graphic artists, actors and others working in or with a ...
was ultimately unable to achieve a similar level of fame, it managed to connect leading figures in Canadian Art including
A.Y. Jackson
Alexander Young Jackson LL. D. (October 3, 1882April 5, 1974) was a Canadian painter and a founding member of the Group of Seven. Jackson made a significant contribution to the development of art in Canada, and was instrumental in bringing toget ...
,
F.H. Varley, and
Harold Mortimer-Lamb.
He explored customary pictorialist subject matter, such as portraits and landscapes, and experimented with the characteristic soft-focus style of
pictorialism
Pictorialism is an international style and aesthetic movement that dominated photography during the later 19th and early 20th centuries. There is no standard definition of the term, but in general it refers to a style in which the photographer ha ...
.
Like others associated with the movement, Goss aimed to produce aesthetically pleasing images and viewed his artistic practice as a form of personal expression. He organized exhibitions of art photography and won awards for his own photographs, which were shown at exhibitions in Canada and England.
Legacy
There are approximately 26,000 negatives in the Arthur Goss collection at the
City of Toronto Archives
The City of Toronto Archives is the municipal archives for the City of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It holds records created by the municipal government and its amalgamated former municipalities from 1792 to the present day, as well as non-governme ...
. These negatives were found in the attic of old City Hall and were catalogued by city archivists in the 1960s.
Canadian writer
Michael Ondaatje
Philip Michael Ondaatje (; born 12 September 1943) is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, fiction writer, essayist, novelist, editor, and filmmaker. He is the recipient of multiple literary awards such as the Governor General's Award, the Giller P ...
relied on Goss′s photographs when researching his novel
In the Skin of a Lion
''In the Skin of a Lion'' is a novel by Canadian–Sri Lankan writer Michael Ondaatje. It was first published in 1987 by McClelland and Stewart. The novel fictionalizes the lives of the immigrants who played a large role in the building of the ci ...
about the immigrant and working class experience in early 20th Century Toronto.
Ondaatje decided to include Goss as a character in this novel.
[
]
Following the interest in Goss, following the publication of Ondaatje′s novel, the
City of Toronto Archives
The City of Toronto Archives is the municipal archives for the City of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It holds records created by the municipal government and its amalgamated former municipalities from 1792 to the present day, as well as non-governme ...
developed a special lecture and tour, tailored for students, addressing the role of Goss′s photos in Ondaatje's book.
[
]
Goss's duties included providing a visual record of the health and social problems posed by urban poverty.
Scholars have compared Goss's photographs of urban poverty to those of
Jacob A. Riis
Jacob August Riis ( ; May 3, 1849 – May 26, 1914) was a Danish-American social reformer, "muckraking" journalist and social documentary photographer. He contributed significantly to the cause of urban reform in America at the turn of the twen ...
and
Lewis W. Hine
Lewis Wickes Hine (September 26, 1874 – November 3, 1940) was an American sociologist and muckraker photographer. His photographs were instrumental in bringing about the passage of the first child labor laws in the United States.
Early life
...
.
Decades after his death, his work is celebrated, in several books collecting his photographs, and in magazine profiles.
[
][
]
External links
Photography in Canada, 1839 - 1989: An Illustrated Historyby Sarah Bassnett and Sarah Parsons from the
Art Canada Institute
Art Canada Institute is a bilingual, non-profit research organization based out of Massey College, at the University of Toronto. Through a variety of programs, such as the Massey Art Lecture Series and the Canadian Online Art Book Project, the Ins ...
.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goss, Arthur Scott
1881 births
1940 deaths
Canadian photographers
Artists from London, Ontario