Photographer
Homelessness continues to be an issue, mainly for urban areas and Victoria is no exception. Over the past decade a number of tent cities have sprung up, established by the homeless and transient street folk, usually in city parks. The city created a bylaw to address the issue, one that allows camping in parks overnight, but creates time boundaries, when tents can be pitched and …
The wreckage of the ship Pacific Sun King lies on the beach in Gyro Park at Cadboro Bay. The 55 foot, 44-tonne live aboard ship washed ashore during a heavy windstorm on December 5. The wreckage has gotten more and more worn out as the owner saved what he could from the ship and subsequent storms have worn away the ship. A more complete story …
The light was just right, highlighting the old water tower and the two beached boats that bookend the image during a brief road trip out to Sooke. This area has lots of overlooked and hidden corners for visual imagery that highlights local history and the British Columbia coastal and Vancouver Island lifestyle.
University of Victoria field hockey players take part in an evening practice in front of the then under construction new recreational complex. The complex opened this year and features a climbing wall in the tower.
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
An oversize, somewhat decrepit, pink pig piggy bank sits on the grounds of the Saanich fairgrounds. An image any visitor to the fairgrounds will remember. The grounds are host to the annual Saanich Fall Fair.
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 …
Currently the home of the the Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre, the Roxy was formerly the Roxy Cinegogue movie theatre. It looks more like an industrial or farm building than an arts centre.
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 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 …
The Pointed Sticks, came out of the Vancouver punk scene in the late seventies. I photographed them quite often, perhaps only second to DOA, back then. They haven’t played a lot in the intervening years although they have been performing and recording. I last saw them perform at the Rio Theatre in Vancouver in 2009 . This Victoria gig was their first in the island …
Old school garages and auto wreckers are almost as appealing a subject as neighbourhood corner stores. They are disappearing just as fast too. Coaltown is a reference to Nanaimo’s past as a coal mining town.
I like seeing texts in photographs, signs, billboards, posters, they all add information about a scene or time. Street signs can locate a photograph. Grocery store signs and cafe menus can show us familiar or unusual food and/or how much prices have changed since the image was created. This photograph of entertainment posters in the window of a guitar shop on Blanshard Street in Victoria …
Pedestrians use an protective covered walkway to walk in front of the historic Janion building (not seen) on Store Street in downtown Victoria, British Columbia on Vancouver Island. The Janion, a long empty and decrepit former hotel, is being converted into micro-loft condominiums. To the left is Swans Hotels and Brewpub and across Johnson Street on the left is Market Square.
Almost everyone living in Victoria knows that Robert Service, the writer who became known as the Bard of the Yukon for his poems such as The Cremation of Sam McGee and The Shooting of Dan McGrew after moving to Whitehorse, worked as a bank clerk for the Bank of British Columbia on Government Street before that move. The bank building opened in 1862 and operated …
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 …