Vancouver’s Downtown East Side is considered to be the poorest place in Canada, and at times the poorest in North America. It has a dynamic history as the oldest neighbourhood in the city, changing from a working class area serving ports and mills to a thriving entertainment hub, then reshaped through forced development to being what it is today: a collage of slums, new construction, restorations and dereliction.
The DTES is currently being ravaged by the Fentanyl epidemic, with an average of 135 reports of overdoses each week*. At the same time there is a push to turn one of the city’s major thoroughfares into a park, resulting in massive rent increases for the whole surrounding area as it transforms into an attractive area to live.
My ongoing project, tentatively titled “There is No Nothingness in History”, aims to document these changes as they happen. I hope to capture elements of the neighbourhood’s history and character, show some positive changes, but also show the costs of actions past, present and future.
I have been shooting images for the project in the area and at my studio for the past six years. I’m drawn to contrasts between the old and the new, the sense of community but also the sense of abandonment as Vancouver has become one of the most expensive cities to live in while hosting Canada’s largest homeless population.
The images are a combination of street and documentary, as well as still-lifes inspired by observations and conversations with people in the neighbourhood. My goal is to publish this work as a book, with an accompanying exhibition with image sized from 4x6 to 18x24 depending on the subject matter.
* “More than 400 overdose deaths anticipated in Vancouver by end of 2017, city says” Globe and Mail, August 21 2017”
