During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when lockdowns reshaped daily life in Toronto, photographer Francisco Riquelme-Montecinos found himself creatively stalled. Accustomed to documenting people and the cultural nuances that shape urban life, he suddenly had to rethink his subjects as streets lost their usual hustle and bustle. But Riquelme-Montecinos kept documenting. On his regular walks through the city, he began noticing something he had long overlooked: neighbourhood convenience stores.
Their facades, crowded with signage, colours and improvised design choices, stood out against the relative uniformity of Toronto’s streets. “If you look at their architecture, they are beautiful in a way,” Riquelme-Montecinos says. “They are funky, eclectic, a bit ugly, a bit kitsch.” The layered storefronts, often visually chaotic, became for him distinct architectural portraits.
Since 2020, he has photographed more than a hundred variety stores across the city. Working in a minimalist style, he isolates each storefront, transforming them into carefully composed, poster-like images. For Riquelme-Montecinos, minimalism is not just an esthetic preference but a way to impose order and clarity on spaces that might otherwise feel visually overwhelming. “For me, it’s a way to create simplicity in a world that is often chaotic,” he explains.
Beyond their visual appeal, the stores carry social weight. For decades, they have served as informal gathering points embedded in the fabric of Toronto’s neighbourhoods. Yet many are disappearing. Several of the locations he documented have already closed or changed ownership. What began as a creative response to isolation has evolved into a quiet act of preservation.
“I’m trying to create a very local image; Something that Torontonians can relate to,” he says. After 16 years living in the city, the project has become a way of giving something back: an archive of everyday spaces that, while often overlooked, help define Toronto’s character.
