Marshland revival: a narrative rephotography essay on the False Creek Flats neighbourhood in Vancouver

Abstract

This article proposes to expand current thinking about rephotography and how it might focus on a specific geographic terrain, thereby validating research conducted from 2018 to 2020 in Vancouver, Canada. The research site is located in the False Creek Flats post-industrial district, a district currently undergoing urban regeneration while pursuing a major restructuring programme (to be completed in 2037). The programme is being undertaken by the City of Vancouver. This paper attempts to identify the transformational dynamics that characterise the urban area by drawing primarily on two visual sources: photographs taken in situ and research conducted in Vancouver’s visual archives. After taking composition into account, these sources will play a key role in mounting a proposal that highlights narrative rephotography. The montages produced will then make it feasible to construct a narrative that runs counter to the official version: a city which has no past. The montages strive both to reintroduce a temporal arc that will subsume the almost-forgotten millennial history of the area and to depict one of its likely futures. Indeed, in contrast to the promising future set forth in the urban regeneration plan, another uchronia is, paradoxically, reconnecting with its aquatic past, as global heating accelerates rising water levels.