Nothing in Vancouver can be taken as permanent – the foreground or background in my pictures can attest to that. I have been photographing the unstable nature and exhausted landscape of the False Creek area of Vancouver since the late 1960s. Prior to the colonial encroachment of this waterfront inlet, which cuts and separates what is now the peninsular modern downtown, this site was traditionally occupied and extensively used by First Nation peoples as a fishing and hunting grounds. My extensive project from the early 1990s, “Sites and Place Names Vancouver,” deals with the dichotomy of place of the new metropolis, and of the aboriginal cultures that precede and overlap with it as in many cities across North America but especially in Vancouver. The panoramic photo of “sturgeon fishing” in the False Creek area (Figure 2) is overlaid with a sandblasted drawing on glass, originally drawn in the...

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