No Name Creek by Zebulon Zang | Photo by Zebulon Zang

Years after his first exhibition at the Evergreen Cultural Centre in Coquitlam, photographer Zebulon Zang returns to the same site to display No Name Creek. His personal project examines his city at its earliest uninhabited form to give a sense of familiarity and the changes he witnessed.

Zang says the story behind the name of his exhibition comes from an old, folkish sign in front of a body of water on Lougheed Highway in Coquitlam, behind the Superstore.

“The sign is a funny, weird sort of Coquitlam culture,” says Zang, who adds that the wooden plaque indicates the ‘name’ of a Coquitlam creek.

An avid photographer since his teenage years, Zang who grew up in Maillardville, says taking pictures of his surroundings has always intrigued him.

“As I’ve gotten older, the actual landscape area and the culture of the area became very interesting to me,” says Zang.

A place of identity

Zang, 25, feels the idea of a ‘no name’ brand is actually a brand through its lack of identity-it is well known for being unknown.

“What is identity when nothing is imposed on it? How does it develop and how does it emblemize the suburban culture and development of a place if there’s nothing unique or special about that place?” says Zang.

These are the questions Zang pondered as he worked on No Name Creek, an exhibition that includes a large 8 x 10 photograph of the No Name Creek sign, applied as a wallpaper to the wall with a harvested blackberry bush. A box with a plant inside shows the interrelationship between plant growth and the role of light in photography. In another part of the exhibition, Zang placed fresh blackberries in a cast bronze bowl with a cast bronze berry on the top- the intention being to let the fresh blackberries rot against the bronzed one. The remaining part of the exhibition displays a series of photographs.

“Everything in [the exhibition] is 90 per cent harvested; it was found in the industrial park, the bench is a milled piece of wood from a tree… It’s all being sourced from there [Coquitlam],” says Zang.

Zang also drew inspiration from a 20th century film genre called City Symphony, used by European directors- the first long-form documentary used this to explore a city was as a modern space. Zang added a video component, City-Symphony style, to his exhibition, which runs roughly one hour. He says traditionally, there is no voiceover, only a live band or small audio track for sound. Zang says he stayed true to some of the traditional elements, but also integrated modern forms. For audio, he used a local band to perform Brad Allen’s musical score.

The nostalgia of forgotten places

In an essay by Oscar Wilde, Zang read that “Fog never existed in London until it was painted by the Impressionists.” These words became the driving force behind Zang’s work.

“Nobody notices parts of their world until it is reflected and depicted back to them,” Zang says, referring to his interpreted meaning of Wilde’s quotation and the message behind No Name Creek.

Zang’s main interest lies in the familiarity of a space and losing it – the forgetting of what was there before.

“I’m more interested in places that often are not looked at and forgotten within a city and is still part of the city itself,” says Zang.

Growing up in, and still a resident of, Coquitlam, Zang says the biggest change he has noticed is industrial.

“The big empty lots and spaces that used to exist down by the marshlands have now become big box stores,” says Zang.

Zang had a sense of nostalgia while working on the project, but has no negativity regarding the industrialization in his hometown – he says it’s just the way life is.

The photographer would like to see not only people from Coquitlam attend his show, but also for people from other cities to make the trek out to the suburbs.

“It’s closer than you think, and it’s the most unlikely art show about Coquitlam you would ever see in Coquitlam,” says Zang.

For more information, please visit www.evergreenculturalcentre.ca.