Remember when the news broke about our Mayor being, um, a sketchbag, and those slick, cheesy blogs popped up about how great certain Toronto celebrities were? While it gave us a chance to bask in the flawlessness that is a Drake press pic, photographer Colin Boyd Shafer of Cosmopolis Toronto was creating something much more meaningful in his own little corner of the internet.
Shafer is on a simple mission: shoot portraits of Torontonians, one by one. The hook? Each Toronto citizen he shoots was born outside of Canada. Portrait subjects -- recent posts include Bernice (Ghana), Marina (Kazakhstan), and Milan (Czech Republic) -- are photographed twice: once in a place they feel comfortable in Toronto, and once holding an item from their birthplace. The concept is perfected through Shafer's lens, and the results are stunning. If you need a pick-me-up of Toronto pride (and who doesn't lately), this is one to bookmark.
You can browse Cosmopolis Toronto here, post by post or using a world map. If you'd like to be a part of the project, check out this page.