Kowloon Walled City, Children on Rooftop, 1989 | Photo by Greg Girard
To some extent, photographer Greg Girard is drawn to the contradiction between the surface of a city and what the underlying reality might be. He explores this idea in his exhibit Richmond/Kowloon featured at explorASIAN at the Richmond Art Gallery.
“A reality might reveal itself through various cracks that might appear, both figuratively and literally, in less guarded moments or places,” he says.
He is attracted to situations or places that present a world that is hidden in plain sight.
“A hidden place might be overlooked because it has fallen out of favour, or it could be so commonplace as to be almost invisible, or it could be an embarrassment and a willful blindness behind it,” says Girard, whose work has been published in numerous magazines, including Asiaweek, TIME and Newsweek.
Featured exhibit at explorASIAN
Between assignments, from 1987 to 1992, Girard photographed in Hong Kong, particularly Kowloon Walled City.
“It is one of Hong Kong’s most extraordinary communities: over 33,000 people living in 300 interconnected high-rise buildings built entirely without the contribution of a single architect,” he says.
In collaboration with architect and photographer Ian Lambot, Girard published “City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City,” which documented the final years of the Walled City in photographs, interviews and essays. Kowloon was demolished in 1993.
“Our book became the only comprehensive record of what life was in that very compromised, but fascinating place,” he says.
In 2014, Girard and Lambot updated and expanded the book with more historical material, new essays and previously unseen photographs. This latest book is titled “City of Darkness Revisited.”
Girard says he chose to pair photographs of Richmond and Kowloon together in his exhibit because they are lesser known places with a better known whole – Vancouver, in Richmond’s case, and Hong Kong, for Kowloon. He points out that the links between Vancouver and Hong Kong are ongoing in terms of family, trade, social and cultural ties.
Hong Kong was the first foreign place Girard visited in 1974, and he lived there for nearly 15 years.
“I wanted to bring together some of my earliest work, especially that which looked at the Kowloon Walled City, with the City of Richmond, which I had been invited to photograph for a project sponsored by the Richmond Art Gallery,” he says.
He notes that on the surface Richmond and Kowloon appear to have little in common, but both were shaped by migration (the Walled City was made up of immigrants from southern China) and were known more by reputation than by the people who actually spent time there.
“The Walled City was a place where outsiders never ventured,” he says. “It was considered a dangerous and threatening place. Richmond, on the other hand, is a place many people simply drive through on their way to and from the airport. So, although the reasons were completely different, each place was more or less avoided unless you had special interest, knowledge or other reasons to visit.”
Themes
Girard says that migration and the reproduction of the familiar are two themes that he addresses in his work. He has noticed the way outsiders or newcomers create – intentionally or unintentionally – physical and social spaces in their new home countries.
Another theme he deals with is how rapid change causes disruptions.
“There is always going to be a certain tension in any community going through rapid change, whether the changes are physical or social or both,” he says.
He points out that in recent decades this has been the case for Chinese cities because of an increased pace of migration from rural areas to urban centres, higher living standards and a newly affluent class.
“What we see in Richmond is connected to these changes in China. We see it in many other places in the world as well, and will continue to,” Girard says.
Until June 28
For more info: www.explorasian.org
