Talking about the fantastic pictures he took in Vancouver over the course of a decade, between 1972 and 1982, Greg Girard described the period as "before the money arrived". And yet Vancouver Chromes, the latest zine by fellow photographer Marc Davenant, underlines that even when it did, the old city was not entirely swept away.
Arriving in Vancouver himself after the money, Davenant refused to be seduced by its glossy, wealthy self-image, instead finding himself drawn to depict Downtown Eastside in muted colour: a scuzzy area of down-at-heel shops and cafes, single room occupancy hotels and street art that is physically within walking distance of the modern city's heart and yet metaphorically a world away. It's a place where once-grand public buildings such as the Carnegie Public Library have been repurposed, still standing but poorly maintained. It comes as little surprise to spot a road sign and realise that Godspeed You! Black Emperor named the early track 'East Hastings' after one of the area's most prominent streets, home to many who have been forgotten or actively ignored amid the neoliberal boom.
Particularly striking are the alleyways: long, graffitied, with pipes and cables criss-crossing overhead like an imprisoning web. Davenant suggests that these alleys - often arenas for illicit transactions and transgression - "look like scenes from a 1970s American crime drama". He's right, though, having recently rewatched The Wire, these pictures remind me most strongly of the series' second season, which presents a gritty depiction of Baltimore's port in the late 1990s. Intriguingly, Girard appears to have made the same connection between the two cities: "When Nina Simone did her rendition of 'Baltimore', singing about a 'hard town by the sea' where it was 'hard just to live', I felt she was singing about the place I was living."
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