In a black and white photograph, six workers stand with shovels and picks in hand, hamming it up for the camera. They’re building a streetcar line in 1923 along Dundas St. W., decked out in caps and suspenders instead of modern hard hats and neon vests.

But there, coming down the tracks — all thanks to the handiwork of a Toronto photographer — is a 2011-era streetcar, a glimpse of the future they’d never see.

“Little do they know, coming down the track 80 or 90 years later, is a new form of infrastructure,” said Harry Enchin .

Enchin has been creating this kind of historical collage photography for more than five years, showcasing the passage of time in Toronto. On Oct. 4, he’s doing his first multimedia installation for Nuit Blanche .

(Old photography courtesy of City of Toronto Archives)

The immersive display will showcase large-scale versions of the collages, accompanied by music from their respective historical time periods.

“I’m really extending the experience along the theme of being memory-provoking and evocative for the viewer,” Enchin said.

The 54-year-old Toronto resident was first inspired to start the photography project over a decade ago. He was out for a drive with his mother through the Junction neighbourhood where she grew up in the 1930s, but her family home was long gone.

“That got me thinking about the changes in the city — the changes in architecture, the changes in streetscapes over time,” Enchin said.

As his mother began developing memory loss, Enchin felt compelled to start producing his time-travelling collages as a way to “bring back memories” and link the old and the new.

He’s created almost a hundred collages since then, featuring areas of Toronto, Boston and New York City. He hopes to produce some in Montreal and Chicago as well.

The process to create each collage is time consuming. Enchin has looked through tens of thousands of archival photographs, trying to find ones that tell a potential story and are high-resolution enough to mash up with modern photographs. He scans archives for interesting elements, like an old jalopy or bygone fashions, along with anything that could spark social commentary.

One popular collage features a modern woman in a short blue dress — surrounded by Toronto suffragettes.

Even Enchin’s approach is a combination of old and new: hours spent perusing vintage photos, followed by time-mapping the locations online.

To snap the new photos, he has to figure out the exact spot and angle that another photographer used decades earlier. That can mean getting down on hands and knees in the middle of a much busier Toronto street.

The result, according to the award-winning photographer, is worth the effort.

“I’m looking forward to getting people’s reactions,” he said.

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(Collages copyright Harry Enchin 2010-2014)