Greg Girard
To Oct 25
This long overdue survey features more than 160 photographs captured between 1972 and 2026. Unlike the Vancouver Art Gallery’s phenomenal 2007 exhibition Fred Herzog: Vancouver Photographs, which focused largely on Vancouver’s eastern neighbourhoods between the 1950s and the early 1980s, here Polygon curators Reid Shier and Elliott Ramsey have taken a propositional approach, with an emphasis on Greg Girard’s artistic development in relation to the accelerated and often violent growth of Asian cities from the 1980s to the present—in addition to Vancouver’s own uneven emergence from resource port to international resort.
Born in Vancouver, Girard, now 70, spent his teenage years roaming a circuit that extended from downtown Vancouver to Mission’s Raceway Park, shooting black-and-white film in the documentary style, often checking himself in to the region’s crusty hotels to gain better access to his subjects. After high school he travelled down the coast and eventually to Thailand and Japan, where he began to work in colour and at night. His penchant for colour and darkness continued upon his return to Vancouver, where he drove taxi to earn enough money to return to Asia in the 1980s, contributing pictures to publications such as Time and Asiaweek. He returned to Vancouver for a final time in 2011.
“Working on this project has been an eye-opening experience,” says Girard. “Knowing that you’ve had a 50-plus-year career is one thing. Trying to make sense of it, and in particular dealing with such an immense physical archive of film, is another. Revisiting all the places I’ve travelled, lived and explored through the exhibition and the publication has been exciting and a bit overwhelming, in a good way.”
