This photograph, showing a worker descending a scaffolding staircase from the Granville Street Bridge to Granville Island in Vancouver, was taken in the fall of 2013. As a photographer you always hope that your images have an immediate visual impact for viewers but for photographers who work in a documentary mode you also hope that your photographs have a historical value. I enjoy looking at the photos of Curt Lang or Fred Herzog and observing the differences in the locations they photographed in the 1950’s or 60’s and seeing how they’ve changed. I wonder if a viewer looks at this Granville Island view 30 years from now and compares it with this photograph what will be the differences. Likely the bridge will look the same but I’m sure that at the very least the background skyline will be more crowded. Will the same roofline be there r will another building block this view.
We’re lucky to have images held in a variety of archives (the BC Archives in Victoria, the Vancouver Public Library’s holdings etc.) although they are general archives holding documents, objects as well as photographs. It is too bad there is no one British Columbia Photographic Archive or BC Photography Archive, whatever you’d call it, where one could view all the images held in collections.