All posts tagged: Archive

Dowler Grocery, Victoria, BC 2012

Dowler Grocery is yet another of those unique neighbourhood corner stores that has closed. I’m not sure if it’s a coincidence that a 7-11 opened up across the street. I’m not sure when Dowler Grocery actually closed, I don’t actually remember it being open. The unusual thing is that even though this photo was taken in 2012 the storefront still looks the same. It hasn’t …

Grave Site of Albert “Ginger” Goodwin, Cumberland, British Columbia 2011

Even today, coal miner, union activist and conscientious objector during World War I,  Albert ‘Ginger’ Goodwin remains a controversial figure in British Columbia history. The native of Yorkshire, England came to Canada to work in the coal mines and later became involved in union activities in response to terrible working conditions. He ended up becoming the vice-president of the British Columbia Federation of Labour as …

Salmon Spawning, Vancouver Island British Columbia 2015

Every fall since I returned to British Columbia twelve years ago I’ve photographed the spectacle and aftermath of  the salmon returning to spawn in Vancouver Island rivers. When I started photographing the autumn event I was using black and white film. I shoot mainly digital now, although still shooting some B/W film when out on the rivers, but feel this particular project looks better in …

Architecture and Landscape Changes Vancouver Island 2015

  Two photographs taken a week apart. In the first a heritage house, sporting some unique architectural detail, sits on supports and a trailer, in the second, the vacant lot after the house was removed and view of the previously hidden seascape. The third, yet to be taken, will show the new structure built on the lot. Change is inevitable and at least in this …

BC Almanac and Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver British Columbia

A while back I posted on a 1970’s publication featuring the work of a group of Vancouver photographers called the BC Almanac. That post is here. The publication was unique as it consisted of a series of mini-books/magazines, each one dedicated to one photographer’s work with the whole collection housed in a folder/cover. The one copy I was able to source and look over was …

Local Bands Live, Victoria, BC 2015

Recently I’ve managed to get out and photograph a few local bands playing live, something that at the beginning of my career I did a lot. It’s still fun and there’s nothing like a live performance in a small venue. I’d never photographed any of the three bands, pictured below, before and they were photographed on different nights. What I found most interesting was how …

British Columbia Photography – Art and Archive 2015

I get asked the question, what do you?,  regarding my photography a lot. It’s easy to answer when I talk about the photography that pays my rent. I am an editorial photographer who supplies images to accompany articles, illustrate stories and/or provide news, sports, entertainment coverage for newspapers and magazines. People get that. It is much harder to explain the project work. I often use …

Music Archivist Jason Flower and Supreme Echo, Victoria British Columbia

Jason Flower is a music archivist who issues collections of forgotten, lost and hard to find music as well as being a collector and seller of new and old music LPs, 45s, tapes and CD’s.  His Victoria store and archival reissue record label bear the same name, Supreme Echo. He’s passionate about his music and that has led to collections of early punk music from …

Summer Fog, Oak Bay, British Columbia 2015

I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and I was freezing in the fog that had rolled in off the Pacific and over Willows Beach. Bus loads of tourists were sitting on blankets on the sand, unable to see beyond the first waves and pretending to enjoy their picnic lunch while shivering. At the end of the beach a man was wading through the shallow …

Parksville Beach Resort, Parksville, British Columbia 2015

The beaches were crowded during a recent visit to Parksville on Vancouver Island. Crowds were watching and participating in a big interprovincial beach volleyball tournament and lots of people were taking in the sandcastle sculpture competition. Then there was the Parksville Beach Resort, all boarded up, just above the beach and crowds and next to new towers of other hotels. I don’t know the history …

BC Transit Bus And Metal Scrap Yard, Victoria British Columbia 2015

A BC Transit bus lies at the bottom of a heap of scrap metal waiting to be torn apart and added to the pile in Victoria, British Columbia. The business sits on Victoria’s waterfront just on the edge of the city core. The city has voiced support for keeping industry on the waterfront but one wonders how long a recycling plant will stay (be allowed …

The end of the Old Oak Bay High School, Oak Bay, British Columbia 2015

The old Oak Bay High School buildings will come down now that the new school building is constructed and will be finished for the 2015-16 school year. The new building will be new, certainly brighter and bigger and up-to-date certainly nicer for students and staff alike. What will be lost will be the collective memories of the old buildings added to each year by by …

Queen Street West, Toronto 2015

  A vacation in Ontario provided the time for a stroll down Toronto’s Queen Street West and the incredible variety of small businesses along the street. I’d meant, during previous visits to document the street, but didn’t get the chance until now. Many of the stores are short lived so the streetscape is constantly changing.

Portraits of British Columbia writers

I spent over a decade photographing Canadian writers, a project that resulted in a few exhibitions and two books published by the Banff Centre Press (the second one here). That project petered out after the second book, pushed to the side by the usual  reasons, making a living etc. Two years ago I thought I might start creating portraits of writers again but while I did …

Old Car Ruin, Nanaimo, British Columbia 2013

The wreckage of an old car lies along along a creek bed in the Richard’s Marsh Park area in Nanaimo, British Columbia. You can see enough of the vehicle still to tell it is 1920/30’s range of vehicle so has been there quite a while. It’s impossible to tell if it was just dumped there or whether it was placed there in a haphazard manner …

British Columbia Photography Archives

Looking for inspiration for my own work I’ll look at the work of contemporaries but I also like to look through collections of the work of documentary photographers who photographed in earlier eras. The British Columbia Archives is the largest collection in the province (and the most diverse) but the Vancouver Library has some interesting holdings including images from the collective the Leonard Frank Memorial …

The Travellers Hotel, Ladysmith, British Columbia 2012

The Travellers Hotel on the main street in Ladysmith on Vancouver Island has seen better days. The construction of the hotel was completed in 1913 when the town was an important coal shipping port. although a miner’s strike in 1912 had halted the economic boom that had been underway.

Former Victoria Public Library Victoria, BC 2015

The former Victoria public library building, constructed for $53,000, was financed by American Andrew Carnegie. The neo-Classical stone building was completed in 1905. A four storey addition was added later, that construction was finished in 1951. The structure which served as a library  for over 75 years, and now known as the Carnegie building is used for office space. Businessman Andrew Carnegie donated money to build …

Kamloops Daily News Kamloops, BC 2014

This is the Kamloops Daily News building on Seymour Street in Kamloops, British Columbia. The News ceased publication on January 11, 2014, another victim of the declining fortunes of the newspaper industry. The man in the suit pictured on the wall is long time editor and former Mayor Mel Rothenburger. The News survived when the Daily Sentinel newspaper folded and is itself  survived by Kamloops …

Alpine Motel, Hope, British Columbia 2014

The thing about older hotel/motels, much like independent corner grocery stores, is that they have a uniqueness and really do tie in to their surroundings, history and place. This photo was taken while standing in the parking lot of  the ultimate in generic commercial property, a McDonalds but the view from there was very much a local one.

British Columbia Photography Archive

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.