Acclaimed Surrey photographer Greg Girard is finally getting a career retrospective show, though he is not quite sure how it happened. The survey of his work, running July 10 to Oct. 25 at North Vancouver's Polygon Gallery, offers more than 160 photographs from his five-plus decades of taking photos. The retrospective will also mark the release of a new book titled Greg Girard: Photographs 1972-2026.
Girard's surprise at the retrospective
“It’s exciting to get invited to do it. I mean how do you respond to these things that you have no control over?” said Girard. “In terms of institutional interest, I mean, how does it arrive? I don’t really know. I just do what I do.” When it came time to put the new show together, Girard said he was glad to entertain outside opinions. “That’s a conversation I totally welcome, another set of eyes and another sensibility considering the work,” said Girard. “It’s interesting to see how it hits other people. What they like, what they think matters, and not being bound to necessarily showing, let’s call it, the greatest hits. But adding unknown stuff as well. It’s been exciting and super-interesting to put it together.”
Career highlights and global recognition
During his career, Girard spent a few decades as a magazine photographer with work appearing in top publications including National Geographic Magazine, New York Times Magazine, Time, The New Yorker, and Newsweek. His work has been exhibited around the world, including at Beijing's UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, The International Center for Photography in New York, London's PM Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, and the Monte Clark Gallery in Vancouver. He has also produced a number of award-winning photo books, including Under Vancouver, 1972-82 (2017); Phantom Shanghai (2007); and City of Darkness (1993), which he did in collaboration with Ian Lambot.
Iconic Kowloon Walled City and its cultural impact
Fun fact: City of Darkness — which offers an iconic record of Hong Kong's Kowloon Walled City, a densely populated, ungoverned and unregulated labyrinth of 350 DIY buildings that reached up to 14 storeys high before it was demolished in 1993 — has, over the years, inspired both video-game designers (Call of Duty: Black Ops) and film production designers (Batman Begins).
Girard's journey from Surrey to Asia
Girard has spent most of his adult life overseas living in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai. He moved back to B.C. in 2012. “I’d seen this photograph of Hong Kong that basically made me want to go there. I was a teenager, and I wanted to travel and wanted to be as far away as possible. And in those days, Hong Kong was a long way away,” said Girard about his early wanderlust that began at age 18 in 1974. “I booked passage on a Philippines freighter on its final trip from San Francisco to Manila via Hong Kong.”
