About Us

Invisible Threads is located in Toronto, Canada and run by Kendall Anderson: a programmer formally trained as an architect who spends too much time playing with a camera.

He's been developing computer applications for over 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.

Portrait of Kendall Anderson, inside an abandoned coal-fired power station

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.)

The Photography

There are two main sections:

The Galleries contain photo collections of abandoned or discarded environments.
The Archives let you search for gallery and other photos by keyword.

Some Of My Favourites

Photography Prints and Licensing

Some of the photos on this site are available for purchase through our Redbubble.com store portfolio. Photos available this way will have a “Buy print” link below the image. All prints and products are fulfilled and shipped by Redbubble.com.

Otherwise, most photos are available as custom prints or for licensed use.

Pricing will vary depending on the request but as a general guideline, custom prints and licensing start around $100 (CAD). To discuss details about acquiring a print or licensing an image, you can send us an email.

Beyond the Website

Before we took an indefinite 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, November 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: February 4 2006
Shipbreaking… Bad News Good News Lake Erie Beacon, December 23 2005 & January 6 2006
The Brick Works — The Place That Built Toronto Eye Magazine, October 27 2005
New DVD A Trespasser's Delight The Globe and Mail, September 16 2005
Echoes of Forgotten Places documentary film, June 2005
Empty Endeavours — Kendall Anderson CBC Radio 3, October 29 2004 issue

Site 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 December 2003 Anyone can post a photo each day, right? Let's just whip up some HTML and photograph something around the apartment…
Version 2 March 2004 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 December 2005 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 January 2011 Two kids and 5 years later… Life is a little more complicated now. There'll be a photo every once in awhile, but we're no longer a photoblog!
Version 5 November 2014 Yet another site redesign, treating it primarily about the abandoned/industrial photo galleries.
Version 6 January 2019 Well it's been about 5 years, time to redesign again right? This time it's a static site build using NodeJS, mobile-first and accessible.

Contact Us

We're always interested in hearing from you. You can reach us via our email address.

Other Work

I'm also involved in a few other projects.

Ecuador Travel Photos documents a school-building trip to a remote area of Ecuador, through stories and photographs.
Twin Beaks is a group of Toronto area musicians who get together to perform completely improvised instrumental prog-rock jams. (I'm one of the drummers.)
rs9.ca is where I post "random stuff" whether it's about Generative AI, Minecraft or anything else.
Mose is an aggressive card game I enjoy playing with friends when I can find the time.
The Get Down Sound is the 4-piece rock/funk band I'm in (I'm the drummer). Unfortunately, we've stopped playing gigs over the past few years. We're all too busy with life now!

Powered by…

Earlier versions of this site were built entirely with the Drupal framework. Over time that evolved to be a headless Drupal instance.

The current incarnation is a static site generated offline via NodeJS, with custom tools written myself. No database, no server side code. Faster, and more secure.

Maybe one day I'll get around to writing a technical overview but these days (2019) you can find everything you need on the web anyways so it's likely not needed. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me.