Arthur Goss

Arthur Scott Goss
Arthur Scott Goss, Toronto′s first official photographer
Born	1881 London, Ontario
Died	1940 (aged 58–59)
Nationality	Canadian
Other names	Arthur S. Goss
Occupation	photographer

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Arthur S. Goss urban poverty photos.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Arthur S. Goss.

Arthur S. Goss was the City of Toronto′s first official photographer.^[1]

Early life

William Arthur Scott Goss was born in London, Ontario on 4 March 1881. He moved to Toronto in 1883, where his father, John Goss, worked in the newspaper and publishing industries. 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’s first official photographer. ^{[2] [3]}

Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje relied on Goss′s photograph when researching his novel In the Skin of a Lion about the immigrant and working class experience in early 20th Century Toronto. Ondaatje decided to include Goss as a character in this novel.^[4] Following the interest in Goss, following the publication of Ondaatje′s novel, the City of Toronto Archives developed a special lecture and tour, tailored for students, addressing the role of Goss′s photos in Ondaatje's book.^[5]

Goss's duties included providing a visual record of the health and social problems posed by urban poverty.^[6] Scholars have compared Goss's photographs of urban poverty to those of Jacob A. Riis and Lewis W. Hine.

Decades after his death, his work is celebrated, in several books collecting his photographs, and in magazine profiles.^[7][8][9]

References

1. ↑ Dennis Duffy (Summer 2001). "Furnishing the Pictures: Arthur S. Goss, Michael Ondaatje and the Imag(in)ing of Toronto". Journal of Canadian Studies. Retrieved 2013-01-26. 
2. ↑ 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.
3. ↑ City of Toronto Archives, Arthur Goss Employment Records, Arthur Goss information file.
4. ↑ Michael Ondaatje (1987). In the Skin of a Lion. McClelland and Stewart. ISBN 9780307776631. Retrieved 2013-01-26. In the tunnel under Lake Ontario two men shake hands on an incline of mud. Beside them a pickaxe and a lamp, their dirt-streaked faces pivoting to look towards the camera. For a moment, while the film receives the image, everything is still, the other tunnel workers silent. Then Arthur Goss, the city photographer, packs up his tripod and glass plates, unhooks the cord of lights that creates a vista of open tunnel behind the two men, walks with his equipment the fifty yards to the ladder, and climbs out into sunlight. 
5. ↑ "In the Skin of a Lion". City of Toronto Archives. Retrieved 2013-01-26. On a visit to the City of Toronto Archives, students will see archival photographs recording the construction of the Bloor Street Viaduct and the R. C. Harris filtration plant, the two major settings in In the Skin of a Lion. 
6. ↑ Justin D. Edwards, Douglas Ivison (2005). "Downtown Canada: Writing Canadian Cities". University of Toronto Press. pp. 130–131. ISBN 9780802086686. Retrieved 2013-03-06. According to Ralph Greenhill and Andrew Birrell, the photographs of Jacob A. Riis in the slums of New York, and Lewis W. Hine's pictures of child labour in the United States are well known, but work of Goss in Toronto has received little recognition'. 
7. ↑ Arthur Scott Goss, Alfred Joseph Casson (1980). "Arthur S. Goss, City Photographer: Works by Toronto's Official Photographer, 1911-1940". City of Toronto Archives. Retrieved 2013-01-26. 
8. ↑ Derek Flack (2012-01-10). "The Toronto photographs of Arthur Goss". Blogto. Archived from the original on 2013-01-29. In fact, Goss was pretty much everywhere during the early 20th century in Toronto, having produced over 35,000 images over his 37-year career as City Photographer. Along with the construction of the filtration plant and various pumping stations, other noteworthy projects he documented included the Bloor Viaduct, the Municipal Abattoir, and TTC trackwork across the city. 
9. ↑ Peter MacCallum, Rebecca Diederichs (2004). "Peter MacCallum: Material World : Photographs: Interiors, 1986-2004, Concrete Industries, 1998-2004". YYZ Books. pp. 137–140, 142, 144, 157. ISBN 9780920397824.