Finding art in abandoned buildings, beauty in decay - it's more than just a hobby for the group of photographers that make up DK Photo Group, it is the subject of a new reality television program.
A fast-paced show with stunning scenery, photoXplorers, features the group of five photographers with a common interest in society's architectural cast-offs. The show documents the men as they plan out and execute their photographic adventures.
The DK Photo Group consists of Russell Brohier, Sean Galbraith, Steve Jacobs, Laurin Jeffrey and Mathew Merrett. They call themselves urban archeologists or urban adventurers. The collective owns galleryDK, a photographic gallery in Parkdale.
"These are not your typical photographs," said Jeffrey, a Pickering resident. "There are a lot of people who wonder if it is a photograph or a painting...some are surreal scenes. This is not something your average person is used to seeing on a regular basis."
The photographers started shooting together in 2005 with the intention of putting a show together. Out of that grew galleryDK, located at 1332 Queen St. W. The men now regularly venture out together to shoot.
In essence they are trespassing, but the men don't break into buildings. They operate under the Sierra Club motto - leave only footprints and take only pictures.
"In many cases the door will be open, you may have to jump a fence, or ignore a sign that says no trespassing," said Merrett, a Parkdale resident. "But, I am not going in with a pry bar or anything like that."
They gain access and then fan out and each shoot their individual photos.
"We are not going in these places to destroy them or wreck them, we are going in there to actually show the beauty of them," Merrell said.
They usually make trips early in the morning on weekends when there is less activity and sometimes situations warrant they go under the cover of night.
"You don't go into these places by yourself generally and it's always good to have someone else around because the places are a little bit dangerous," said Brohier who lives in Cabbagetown. "You could fall through the floor, step on a nail, someone could attack you, all those sorts of things."
They don't normally shoot in Toronto because there aren't a lot of places to explore. There were a number of buildings in Liberty Village once upon a time, but they've since been converted to lofts or torn down.
"We have to go to less opportune communities like Buffalo or Detroit," Merrett said.
The six episodes of the photoXplorer show were shot over the course of 10 days in Belgium, France, Germany and Luxembourg.
"It's almost a new genre of television, I call it art adventure," said the series creator and executive producer of Keep It In The Family Productions, Claude Barnes. "It's not a reality series, but it is not just a photography series either."
Barnes, whose studio is located in the Dupont St. and Lansdowne Ave. area of Toronto, had previously worked with Merrett and Galbraith for the television series Behind the Camera, which is where he got the idea for this new show.
"I really got a rush out of being in an abandoned building and visually how amazing it was so I thought it would be good to pitch a series and Bravo took it," Barnes explained. "We drive past these abandoned boarded up buildings everyday and always wonder what's inside. Now we are showing you what is inside these places."
photoXplorers premiers on Bravo on Thursday, Nov. 5 at 7:30 p.m. The collective shows the photos they created while filming the show at galleryDK, at individual shows and at various outdoor art shows in Toronto.