Under Vancouver 1972-1982 by Greg Girard
Under Vancouver 1972-1982 by Greg Girard
Under Vancouver 1972-1982 by Greg Girard
Under Vancouver 1972-1982 by Greg Girard
Under Vancouver 1972-1982 by Greg Girard
Under Vancouver 1972-1982 by Greg Girard
Special Edition Boxset
Special Edition Boxset

Under Vancouver: 1972–1982
Greg Girard

Interviews by David Campany
with William Gibson

Format & Features

Book
Hardcover, 7″ × 9.75″, 184 pages
90+ colour and black & white photographs
ISBN 978-1-926856-10-0

Special Edition
Book encased in an archival photo box
Includes a set of 5 × art prints, in a glassine envelope

Please Note
The Special Edition is limited to 100

Released

First Edition: 2017

List prices

Book
Out of Print

Special Edition
on sale $250 (originally $400)

About Under Vancouver: 1972–1982

Greg Girard’s photographs of Vancouver from the 1970s and early 1980s show us the city’s final days as a port town at the end of the railway line. Soon after Vancouver began to be noticed by the wider world (Expo 86 is generally agreed on as the pivotal moment), the city began refashioning itself as an urban resort on nature’s doorstep and attracting attention as a destination for real estate investment. At that time, long before post-9/11 security concerns sealed off the working waterfront from the city, many of Vancouver’s downtown and east side streets ended at the waterfront, an area filled with commercial fishing docks, cargo terminals, and bars and cafés for waterfront workers and sailors. Pawn-shop windows downtown displayed outboard motors, chainsaws and fishing gear. Wandering these streets, living in cheap hotels, Girard photographed the workaday (and night) world of the city where he grew up.

The photographs in Under Vancouver 1972–1982 were made before Girard began earning a living as a magazine photographer, later establishing a formal practice as an artist. They reveal an early interest in the hidden and the overlooked, the use of colour film at night, and the extended photographic inquiry of a specific place, all of which became signature features of later books such as City of Darkness and City of Darkness Revisited (about the infamous Kowloon Walled City), Phantom Shanghai and Hanoi Calling.

Under Vancouver 1972–1982 is the first comprehensive collection of Girard’s early photographs of Vancouver. Made in and of the moment, a young photographer’s earliest engagements (often featuring the underside of the city), the pictures now form an unintended photographic record of a Vancouver that has all but disappeared.

April 22, 2017–May 27, 2017

Join us for the book launch

22Apr

Opening Reception
2:00–4:00 pm

Monte Clark Gallery
105–525 Great Northern Way
Vancouver, BC V5T 1E1
monteclarkgallery.com

Meet the Artist
Greg Girard

Greg Girard is a Canadian photographer whose work has examined the social and physical transformations in Asia’s largest cities for more than three decades. City of Darkness Revisited,released in 2014, revives an early collaboration with co-author Ian Lambot, and updates their seminal book, City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City (Watermark, 1993).

Based in Shanghai between 1998 and 2011, his photographic monograph, Phantom Shanghai(Magenta, Toronto, 2007), with a foreword by novelist William Gibson, looks at the rapid and at times violent transition of Shanghai as the city raced to make itself “modern again” at the beginning of the 21st Century.

Other titles include Hanoi Calling (Magenta, Toronto, 2010) and In the Near Distance (Kominek, Berlin, 2010), a book of early photographs made in Asia and North America between 1973 and 1986.

Girard’s work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, The Art Gallery of Ontario, the Vancouver Art Gallery and other public and private collections. He is represented in Canada by Monte Clark Gallery. In addition to book projects and gallery work, Girard is a contributing photographer to National Geographic magazine. “How the DNA Revolution is Changing Us” appeared in the August 2016 issue. Other stories include “Can China Go Green?”, “The Kingdom of David and Solomon”, and “Bitter Waters: China’s Water Crisis.”

Press

Lenscratch

Greg Girard: Under Vancouver

The Georgia Straight

Photographer Greg Girard returns to Vancouver's vanished streetscapes

CBC BC

'They are pictures of a different time': Exhibit showcases pre-Expo Vancouver

National Post

Haunting images of pre-Expo 86 Vancouver, before the 'Glass City' and million-dollar teardowns

The Globe and Mail

Emily Carr, sure, but something new, too