By: Oscar Alfonso
This summer, the Vancouver Art Gallery presents Pictures From Here, a survey of photography in Vancouver from the 1950s to the present. Situated on the gallery’s second floor, the exhibit runs from May 19 until September 4. Pictures From Here features the work of some 22 artists and draws heavily from the photo-conceptualist tradition that is now widely associated with Vancouver.
The exhibit includes large-scale photographs and light boxes by such key figures as Jeff Wall, Rodney Graham, and Ian Wallace, alongside video works, street photographs, and photographic experiments by other artists that present a more extensive understanding of photography in Vancouver.
The earlier work from the ‘50s and ‘60s is that of Fred Herzog and N. E. Thing Co., who worked at a time when photography was not a respected artistic medium. Both artists are important figures in the eventual development of the photo-conceptualism tradition that has pushed Vancouver photography into the spotlight.
Pictures From Here features a number of works which haven’t been exhibited in Vancouver previously, and which together act as a portrait of a city and a province. The street photography of Fred Herzog and Greg Girard, for instance, captures different decades in a rapidly changing urban landscape. Meanwhile, Henri Robideau’s Four Directions of the Okanagan documents the interior of the province at the turn of the millennium. Other works point us towards our troubled social history. Paul Wong’s video work VIGIL 5.4 documents Rebecca Belmore’s 2002 work VIGIL, which addressed missing and murdered Indigenous women through a visceral performance in the Downtown East Side.
This portrait of a city is also turned in on itself through Roy Arden’s portraits of Vancouver artists, several of whom have work in Pictures From Here. This inward look hints at the interconnectedness of Vancouver’s art environment, where artists often work together, and where everyone knows one another.
This interconnectedness also extends to Simon Fraser University. Althea Thauberger, whose 2005 video work Northern is included in the exhibit, has recently taught as a sessional instructor with SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts. She is joined by Jeff Wall, Fred Herzog, and Christos Dikeakos who have taught at SFU at various points over the several past decades.
N. E. Thing & Co., formed of Iain and Ingrid Baxter, is another such case as Iain Baxter is one of the founders of SFU’s visual arts program. Baxter worked at the Centre for the Communications and the Arts — the predecessor to SFU Galleries and the School for the Contemporary Arts — until the 1970s. One work by N. E. Thing & Co. in particular brings SFU into the gallery. Paint into Earth consists of two photographs and a map that document a conceptual action at SFU in the 1960s. In it, N. E. Thing & Co. made a hole in the woods and filled it with paint, connecting the campus to land art and contemporary conceptual experiments elsewhere. It is perhaps still out there, somewhere.
