About this site

Portrait photo of Kendall Anderson

This site is run by Kendall Anderson, seen in the self-portrait above practicing his “Would you like fries with that?” pose. (Taken at the Lakeview Generating Station prior to demolition in 2006.)

Contact Us

We're always interested in hearing from you. Use the form below to send us a message.

Other work

I've also got a few projects unrelated to the photography here.

  • The Get Down Sound is the 4-piece rock/funk band I'm in (I'm the drummer).
  • Mose is an aggressive card game I enjoy playing with friends when I can find the time.

Powered by… Drupal

At its core, this site uses the Drupal framework. On top of this runs a suite of custom code, modules and javascript that I've developed over time. These run the website and enable my own publishing process.

Drupal's what I do in the ‘real world.’ If I'm not taking photographs, I'm probably developing an application or large-scale website in Drupal.

If you're looking for a custom website, application development, or just general Drupal consulting, please use the contact form above.

InvisibleThreads is located in Toronto, Canada and owned by Kendall Anderson: a programmer formally trained as an architect who spends most of his time playing with a camera. He's been developing computer applications for more than 2 decades and working with photography since the mid-1990s.

We focus on 2 things: photography and interactive media. This site is about the photography. It's an on-going experiment — an excuse to take photos and get better at the craft of image-making.

The Photography

There are two sections:

  1. The photoblog is where you'll find random shots of any subject matter.
  2. The galleries are photo collections of abandoned or discarded environments.

Use the archives to get an overview of what's available.

Some of the popular galleries are:

And finally, here are some of my favourites.

Prints and Licensing

Most photos here are available as prints or for licensed use. If available, you'll see links titled “Buy a print” and “License this image” below each photo. These will indicate available sizes and prices. If you have other questions, please contact us.

Beyond the Website

Before we took an almost 5-year break in 2006, some of this work made its way from the website into the ‘real’ world.

Selected Exhibitions

Sharing Our Places
2006, Edmonton, AB
Memories from the Day Shift
2006, Newmarket, ON
In Transit
2006, Toronto, ON
Picture the Cure
2005, Toronto, ON
Enemies of the Ordinary
2005, Toronto, ON
Diamond & Schmitt Retrospective
2004, Toronto, ON
Figure Studies & Daily Photography
2004, Unionville, ON

Selected Publications

2008 Calendar: Green Arts Barns
Toronto Artscape, Nov 2007
Life in the Decay: Per Contra Interviews Kendall Anderson
Per Contra Magazine, Spring 2006
L'exploration urbaine, Ça vaut le detour
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, air date: Feb 4 2006
Shipbreaking… Bad News Good News
Lake Erie Beacon, Dec 23 2005 & Jan 6 2006
The Brick Works — The Place That Built Toronto
Eye Magazine, Oct 27 2005
New DVD A Trespasser's Delight
The Globe and Mail, Sep 16 2005
Echoes of Forgotten Places
(documentary film), Jun 2005
Empty Endeavours — Kendall Anderson
CBC Radio 3, Oct 29 2004 issue

History

In 2003 a friend told me about a website where the owner was posting a new photo each day. It was a photoblog, although that term wasn't familiar at the time.

I'd recently bought a digital point-and-shoot camera: the Canon G2. The challenge of a photoblog — a forced posting on a regular basis — seemed like a great way to gain experience with the camera and hopefully get better at making images.

This led to many photographs, numerous adventures, and a bunch of web development. The website's timeline sort of looks like this:

Version 1 Dec 2003 to Feb 2004
Anyone can post a photo each day, right? Let's just whip up some HTML and photograph something around the apartment…
Version 2 Mar 2004 to Dec 2005
This isn't manageable. It's time for a template-based database-driven site. And, I'm running out of things to photograph in the neighbourhood.
Version 3 Dec 2005 to May 2006
A 4-hour drive to photograph something crumbling is entirely reasonable. Things are looking stale so it's time for a site redesign.
Version 4 Jan 2011 and onwards
Two kids and 5 years later… Let's try this again. Now where were we?