Leaning Tower (rear view of Alberni S. towers & 745 Thurlow), Vancouver, 2015

At the beginning of last summer’s smoky photo tour of British Columbia, I spent some time back in my old West End Vancouver neighbourhood.

As described in that post, lodging was at a premium, due to the Women’s World Cup tournament taking place in the city. The first night, my wife and I paid a premium to grab a room at the Robsonstrasse Hotel. Luckily, the following day we snapped up a much better room at a much better price at the Blue Horizon Hotel, on Robson Street, directly across from the old apartment I lived in 38-years-ago — which has somehow survived the wholesale gentrification of the area.

The ninth-floor suite, situated on the southeast corner of the tower, provided a superb view of the surrounding downtown core. From the balcony, where I set up my tripod, I could aim the Nikon D-800, southeast toward Thurlow Street, at the rear aspects of buildings on Alberni Street, to the bustling intersection of Robson and Bute, and beyond. In the other direction, I could photograph my old stomping grounds, towards Stanley Park and Burrard Inlet. Facing Robson straight-on, I could point the camera over lower buildings, towards English Bay or right down at my old apartment window!

But it was the newly-erected towers to the northeast that first caught my attention. Consisting of addresses (1166, 1128) on Alberni and the most recent addition at 754 Thurlow, with its distinctive, precarious-looking tilt to the south, this wall of glass has replaced the view I once had from the roof of my Robson Street apartment (see the last image on that post).

Since last summer, I’ve been caught up in printing and producing my last show, so most of the images made on that trip have sat unedited on my hard drive, aside from the gallery associated with the trip blog (first link above).

Last week, between a spring studio purge, I finally sat down to assess and edit some more. In the interim, I’d occasionally meditated on the raw file that made the image above, refining my visualization. Having spent so much time over the last six months with the Eighties Vancouver portfolio, little wonder that I recognized in this recent shot from the city a certain continuity with that earlier work.

In fact, my intention during that last visit was to reconnect to that deep intention and clear motif that informed my work all those years ago — I can still  feel it in my bones — but concluded it had eluded me.

Often, an image takes time to “ripen” … sometimes years. I ignored many of my vintage Vancouver photos, passing them over for more popular images, until just recently, when I or colleagues recognized something — perhaps a quiet subtext — that demanded another look. This case, though it only took 8-months to resolve, was no exception.

But it wasn’t until I began to see it in monotone and 1×1 ratio, like those older images made with my Mamiyaflex 6X6 camera and black and white film, that it really clicked for me, if you’ll excuse the pun.

On that balcony, assailed by all the memories that lay on the street and in my old garret below, I had found that consciousness and inspiration, informed by the documentary tradition, to examine the new geometry of my old neighbourhood.