Greg Girard (born 1955) is a Canadian photographer whose work has examined the social and physical transformation in Asia’s largest cities for more than three decades.
His most recent book, Under Vancouver 1972-1982, published in 2017, looks at the city where he was born, especially the waterfront and other unglamorous parts of the port city, before making Asia his home for the next thirty years.
Girard’s work is in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, The Art Gallery of Ontario, the Vancouver Art Gallery.
About ‘Under Vancouver‘:
These photographs, taken over a period of ten years, were unpublished, except for some close friends, until now. Greg Girard began photographing at night from the beginning.The first roll of film he put in his first camera was color transparency film and the first pictures he made were at night.
Looking at these early Vancouver pictures now, there’s something unguarded about them. I had no idea at the time that they would ever get seen, or that I would ever figure out how to have some sort of life as a photographer. But beginnings are like that I suppose. You have no idea what you’re doing, and you just plunge ahead, trying to distill everything around you and everything within you, while avoiding thinking too much about the seeming impossibility of it going anywhere.
I find that these images reveal a sense of solitude and sadness to show an unusual charm of the night, a different way of looking at things. Our photographer was able to create a whole new atmosphere, almost dreamlike, enabling us to immerse ourselves in his shots. It almost seems to live them!
