Photographer
This amazing apartment building always catches my eye driving down Quadra just before Beacon Hill Park. The Athlone Apartments feature three stairwell towers on the front that open to outside curved stairs. The back side of the building faces out over large treed lawn to the park. The building apartments are now owned and the building is run as a co-op. It was designed by …
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 …
The Surf Hotel is an architectural fixture on Victoria’s Dallas Road waterfront. A visually appealing anomaly among the residential units lining the road. The motel was built in 1960 by a Saskatchewan farmer Peter Mangelson who had been spending his winters in Victoria. He spent $3500.00 for the lot. The building was designed by architect Bob Siddall, who designed other local projects including UVIC’s McPherson …
I find it interesting to look at other photographers who are working on similar projects, if only to see how they look at the world differently. Locally a number of us are photographing our immediate world, shooting land/street/environmental scapes of Vancouver Island. One surprising discovery was that all these photographers are men, the women I know shooting documentary tend to shoot people, not exclusively, of …
A good read from Mark Hume with photos by John Lehman in the Globe and Mail about ghost towns that still exist (for now) in British Columbia. Story can be found here. Another reminder about how our built landscape disappears from view, taking a part of our history with it.
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 …
A classic, corner grocery store, still open and serving the local neighbourhood.
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.
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 …
The photograph above has nothing to do with the post. It’s a street scene from downtown Victoria, where every year over the Christmas season, the owner puts up a inflatable snowman, often the closest we’ll come to snow in our west coast climate. If you are a reader, discovering a new writer whose words you enjoy is obviously always a treat. I tend to read …
This family corner grocery store closed right at the end of December 2014. It sits across from a small garage and hair stylist, a small pocket of neighbourhood commercial enterprises. When this photo was taken there was someone inside the premises cleaning and packing up. The details in the window already attest to a time in history especially the sign referring to the DVD sale …
The Bay Grocery is one of those neighbourhood establishments, the corner store, that get get harder and harder to find each year. I enjoy how they look front the street, at either dawn or dusk, lighting up the street for the residents.
The current bus depot, located behind the Fairmont Empress Hotel, is soon to be torn down and replaced with high end condo units. No replacement location has yet been announced for the depot. The current location is ideal for visitors as it is right downtown and a very short distance from most attractions and the Inner Harbour.
Duncan, on Vancouver island, is known for the totem poles displayed around the town. Duncan is actually nicknamed The City of Totems. The very walkable downtown is a nice mix of older small town architecture and this unusual circular office building next to the courthouse. I like this view of the one pole and the office tower.
The MV Uchuck III was built in Oregon in 1942 originally for use as a minesweeper. It now carries both passengers and freight along the west coast of Vancouver Island. Website at http://www.getwest.ca/the-uchuck
Artist Rachel Berman died in Victoria on May 28. I can’t claim to have known her very well but I had really liked her work and two years ago she agreed to let me photograph her. After that, we’d often run into each other on the street and have a chat. She would encourage me to photograph other artists, making suggestions about possibilities, and chiding …
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 …
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.
Cowboys on horses work among cattle along just off the highway between Kamloops and Merritt. A scene seemingly from the past but just another work day for cattlemen in British Columbia’s interior.
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.
A surfer walks past a van and board at Jordan River, British Columbia on Vancouver Island.
Even the Canadian flag hanging from the building seemed dejected by its current status
The North Park Bicycle Shop is a community fixture along Quadra Street in Victoria, in the North Park neighbourhood. The building always looks, to me, wonderfully scruffy and invitingly homely.
A traditional neighbourhood grocery store in Nanaimo, they are getting harder and harder to find, replaced by 7-11s and Mac’s style stores.
Canucks jerseys, protected from the rain in plastic, hang outside a shop in Coombs on Vancouver Island. An image from the ongoing Salt Water & Rain series and the British Columbia photographic archive.
An image from one of my ongoing projects, Salt Water & Rain, which looks at west coast life, in particular the small town urban landscape. This photograph was taken on the main street in Cumberland on Vancouver Island. The photograph is also part of the British Columbia photographic archive.
Photographer Wendell Phillips introduced me to this cafe when he met me here for breakfast one morning. The cafe’s street sign now reads Smile Diner rather than restaurant.
Wing Sang Building, Vancouver BC 2012 Don Denton photograph The Wing Sang building is the oldest in Vancouver’s Chinatown. The Pender Street heritage building was restored and now houses the Rennie Collection, the private art collection of Vancouver real estate mogul Bob Rennie.
I finally found a copy of the 1970 publication BC Almanac, a library copy. Quite unique for the time, it consists of 15 booklets printed on newsprint and inserted into a cardboard folder. On the negative side, this copy only has nine of the booklets. On the positive side the booklets by Roy Kiyooka and N. E. Thing Co. (Iain and Ingrid Baxter) are in …
I was at Coopers Cove last week. The derelict boat in long gone although, for now at least, the former naval ship seen in the background is still anchored in the cove. It’s a reminder how photographs, while they must stand on their own as visual images, also serve as historical records, a document of time passing. This was one of the first group of …