photography

There are many ways to tell a story, and part of curating an exhibit is making the decision as to how to present it to people with the finite space, time and resources you have available. In the case of Home Grown, the partnership between MOV and FarmFolkCityFolk had a huge impact on how the exhibit took form and eventually came to feature the photography of Brian Harris.

These photographs introduce you to people and places that you might not otherwise have access to. They provide brief glimpses into several different kinds of activities relating to agriculture around Metro Vancouver, both urban and rural, community-based and private. The images themselves are very beautiful to look at.

But as with any medium, photography has it’s limits. There is only so much information that can be presented in a single photograph. Certain things are included in the frame while others are not.

As an exhibit, Home Grown provides a broad overview of many things that are currently happening in agriculture around Metro Vancouver, but no one story is explored in any particular depth.

Over the summer Kaylin Pearce and I traveled around to various locations to meet some of the people and places in the photographs. We wanted to talk to them about what they do, how they got into producing food and what they get out of it.

The project had it’s setbacks at times. There were equipment and transit mishaps. Scheduling interviews was a hassle. The summer is a busy season for many farmers, and understandably, many have little time to donate to talking to summer students. Others declined to be interviewed for other reasons. Some of the exhibit images were taken in locations that we were not able to visit within the time that we were allotted.

But over the course of the summer we were able to visit and speak to several individuals who were kind enough to take the time to share their thoughts and spaces with us.

Over the next several weeks I will be sharing a bit about the experience and what we talked about through film, blog posts and photographs. I hope you’ll follow along.

Image credit: E. Brown-John

Yesterday, I posted about the work of John Allison, a fine-art photographer who has taken thousands of images of the city in an effort to track its ongoing transformation (read it here). In this interview, he describes why he does it, the buildings he wishes were still standing—and the one that may not be long for this world.

How much time would you say you spend on photographing Vancouver? I’m out and about pretty much every weekend. And I have my compact camera with me all the time.

Why do you do it?
I began to see the city changing in 2004-2005. Saw lots of those Development Application signs around and then places would soon be gone. So, I started to think it was really worthwhile, trying to document aspects of the city that were beginning to disappear—old houses, buildings, corner stores, that kind of thing. Things really came to a head in 2006 and 2007; there were so many buildings being demolished it was hard to keep track. During that time you could pass by almost any part of the city and something was being torn down.

What does your collection look like?
I have thousands of digital images to keep track of. In the last five years or so I’ve been shooting around 7,000 to 8,000 images a year. So, I have quite a collection of backup DVDs and a few hard drives! I’ve made some prints but have chosen to print mostly 4×6-inch proofs just to have a hard copy of images I’m happy with. I’ve decided that right now it’s important to just get images captured, as once something in the city disappears it’s gone forever. I can always look after the printing later!

What is your take on Vancouver’s development story? When an old building comes down is it a tragedy or progress? Both? 
Back in 2006-2007, there was a big rush on development so the city lost a lot of great old buildings. The old Colliers building at Richards and Georgia comes to mind. Recently, there have been some great developments and renovations of some very old buildings. The Ralph Block across from the Woodward’s development on Hastings Street is just finished. I never thought I’d see that building restored so someone should get an award for that one! But of course you have to be realistic too, some buildings are well past their prime and are just too costly to renovate.

Thinking about the “Just a Memory Now” set in particular, which buildings do you wish had been saved?
Places like Molly’s Coffee Shop and some of the old heritage houses on Richards Street. Also, a lot of little corner stores have disappeared, like Henry’s on Hastings Street. There was also a strip of houses on Guelph Street near East 12th that were all torn down to build condos. That could almost be Vancouver’s credo: “If it’s old, tear it down and build condos!”

What are your favourite Vancouver buildings, demolished or otherwise?
That’s a tough one. I’m a fan of the little, old, abandoned building that not too many people take notice of. An example of this would be something like the Blue Eagle Cafe. One of my faves, even though it’s almost falling down, is the Opsal Steel building. It’s really a shame what has happened to it.

A slideshow of Allison’s work is now on the Multimedia section of our website here.

Image credit: John Allison

Tonight the Museum hosts a members-only reception for our ongoing exhibit “My Heroes in the Streets,” a series of 10 images taken by Ian Wallace in 1986. (One of the images is pictured left.)

Over the past three decades, Vancouver has emerged as a important centre for contemporary photographic art, with local artists such as Jeff Wall, Rodney Graham, Stan Douglas, Roy Arden, and Wallace pushing traditional notions of photography, art, cinematography, and documentary. The modern city is a recurring subject: the contents of landfills are presented; rows of Vancouver Specials—that loved and loathed housing type that dominates Vancouver’s eastside neighbourhoods—have appeared in backgrounds.

Several local institutions have figured prominently in this movement, notably: TheVancouver Art Gallery, which has hosted numerous exhibitions of this work and published an incredible library of related books and catalogues (see: Roy Arden: Against the Day and Jeff Wall: Vancouver Art Gallery Collection for recent examples). The lesser-known Canadian Photographic Portfolio Society has also played a key role, publishing limited-edition photographic portfolios, boxed in elegant archival cases. “My Heroes in the Streets” was their first commissioned work, and a slideshow of the images is on their website, linked here. The photographs show individuals navigating a generic and mundane urban landscape, localized by Vancouver locations and symbols, like street addresses and overhead trolley wires. Wallace describes the street as the site “metaphorically as well as in actuality, of all the forces of society and economics imploded upon the individual.”

The Museum’s interest here leans toward the documentary aspect of these works. Wallace’s intentions notwithstanding, it’s hard to ignore how the downtown core has changed since the images were taken, transitioning from a bland western outpost searching for its best side pre-Expo 86, to a post-industrial, international city. Still, Vancouver’s preoccupation with how it’s viewed by the outside world persists, intensifying in the lead up to another massive international event. What will the world find when they get here in February?

Image credit: CPPS