Fact Check: Old Images Of Art Installation In Toronto Shared With Misleading Claim

A collage of a few pictures showing a street full of books is being circulated online with a claim that the photographs were clicked during an annual festival in Toronto where the road is transformed into a ‘river of donated books’ and anyone can pick up books they want.

The post is being shared with the caption, “Dyk? In Toronto, Canada, there is a festival where the street is transformed into a river of donated books and anyone gets any books that they want.”

Here’s the link to the above post.

FACT CHECK 

NewsMobile fact-checked the post and found it to be misleading.

We put the images through a Reverse Image Search and found some of the images in an article by Metro UK, published in 2016.

According to the article, the ‘10,000 glowing books flooded the streets of Toronto’ as part of an art installation.

A 2016 article published by Cosmopolitan mentioned that ‘it was actually the work of Luzinterruptus, a group of anonymous artists from Spain, who installed it as part of the Nuit Blanche Toronto 2016 art festival’.

The same images were uploaded on the Facebook page of Luzinterruptus in October 2016 with the caption, “Updated documentation. http://www.luzinterruptus.com/?p=4073
Literature vs Traffic. Nuit Blanche Toronto 2016. Pictures: Lola Martinez.”

Some more pictures and videos of the art installation were also uploaded on their website under the title, “Literature vs. Traffic in Toronto / Literatura vs tráfico en Toronto.”