Gary Chapman, Trevor Martin, and Brian Wood’s black and white images and Fred Herzog’s colour images function as paused and preserved visual records. Within the choices they make to capture their individual images and the range of images in their collections, their relationship with the photographic medium and “place” is offered.

Out of their refined and entrenched personal interest in photography, they have documented dynamic narratives—giving an index to the existence and occurrence of varying social, economical, and architectural spaces.

Through twelve images from each of the photographer’s extensive oeuvres the subjects of communal activity, personalized places, transforming urban landscapes, and vanishing prairie icons are highlighted. Although each photographer’s selected images are more firmly grounded within one of these themes, there are striking intersections and crossovers.

Considering the continuous pulses in urban growth, PLACE gives us a glimpse of four photographers’ archives of these changes over the past fifty years. Their images allow entry into and contact with the continuum of “place”—in its past, present, and possible future transformations.

Written by Alison Rajah, SFU Summer Coop Student, Evergreen Cultural Centre, 2006