Frank Pimentel Dunlands Restaurant

Curator by Leah Taylor

“A portrait is a lesson on how one human being should approach another.”– Dorothea Lange, 1965

During the period from 1960 to 1980 photographers became increasingly interested in documenting the social landscape through the growing trend of street photography and the snapshot, capturing moments that made the invisible visible. The subject of the marginalized gained significance, reflecting the civil rights movement, a rise in feminism and the social and cultural diversity of urban centers.

Frank Pimentel's 1987 photo series, Dunlands Restaurant,documented the patrons, employees and sights of the Dunlands café, formerly located in East end Toronto. Pimentel's artistic oeuvre focused on social documentary photographs that explored issues of immigration, social marginalization, and the decay of urban North America. Pimentel’s vernacular subjects and banal restaurant moments have been captured through his camera lens with insight and empathy, creating a visual history of the everyday at the Dunlands Restaurant.