Dan Schaumann appreciates a good toilet.

In fact, he’s on a mission to photograph the most unique, absurd and downright beautiful bathrooms in the world.

“I go through this project thinking of toilets as being works of art,” said Schaumann, who runs a photography blog and Instagram account called Toilography.

“I’m trying to find something interesting or beautiful about a part of everyday life that people don’t normally see as beautiful.”

The 32-year-old Toronto resident has photographed hundreds of bathrooms over the past few years, everywhere from Ecuador to Antigonish, N.S.

Whether it’s a one-way mirror above the urinals, a “cheer squad” on the bathroom floor, or a washroom wallpapered with pigs, Schaumann has documented a bounty of captivating cans.









Toilography started out as a joke. When Schaumann first got on Instagram in 2011, he couldn’t believe how many banal or bad photos would still get hundreds of “likes.” In jest, he posted a picture of a toilet to see what kind of response it’d get.

But the more Schaumann captured toilets, the more he realized they could actually be quite photogenic — even beautiful.

He’s found gorgeous artwork on bathroom walls, urinals shaped like lips, and one loo with a ridiculous number of toilet paper rolls.

“When I started, a toilet was a toilet,” said Schaumann, sitting in the Poop Café at Bloor St. W. and Christie St. The washroom-themed restaurant, where patrons sit on toilets instead of chairs, is one of his favourite places in the city.

“Then when I started to discover people actually did interesting things with them, my attitude towards them changed.”

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In Toronto, there’s a bar called Swan Dive, which has a creepy doll head mounted next to the urinal. And in the bathroom at Otto’s Berlin Doner, a disco ball lights up and music starts playing.

Schaumann, who makes his living as a logistics specialist, makes a point of seeking out interesting toilets wherever he travels, usually by asking for suggestions on Reddit. He likes going on “toilet crawls” of new cities, where he’ll hop from place to place checking out the recommended loos.

He’s found a cafe in Massachusetts, where the bathroom doubles as a soothing zen garden, complete with lush plants and inspirational messages.

A large sculpture of a Viking encircles the toilet at a restaurant in Chile.

And a few weeks ago, Schaumann found the “holy grail of toilets” at the Guggenheim Museum in New York: it’s made of 18-karat solid gold and is fully functional.