Greg Girard

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JAL 76-88 (Book)

Arriving in Tokyo in the spring of 1976 and, intending to stay only a few days, I spent the first night walking and photographing all over the city. By morning I knew I had to stay. The photographs in JAL 76-88 are artefacts of a pre-bubble Japan, and particularly Tokyo, before the term “BladeRunner-esque” became the default for a neon-soaked, urban Asia-influenced near future.

Tokyo-Yokosuka 1976-1983 (Book)

The photographs in Tokyo-Yokosuka 1976-1983 started with an early visit to Tokyo on a stopover on my way to Southeast Asia in 1976. After wandering through the city until dawn I decided then and there to try and live in Tokyo. Like many young western visitors at the time I ended up finding a job teaching English, no credentials required. To allow time for taking photographs I kept the work hours to a minimum and explored Tokyo and nearby Yokosuka in my free time. Some of these pictures appeared in the book “In the Near Distance”, published by Kominek, Berlin, 2010, though for the most part this is the first dedicated collection of these early Japan photographs. Published by Magenta Publishing for the Arts.

Hotel Okinawa (Book)

Japan’s southernmost prefecture, Okinawa, hosts a concentration of US military bases unlike anywhere outside the continental US. More than half the 50,000 US troops stationed in Japan are based here. On the main island of Okinawa nearly 20% of the land is occupied by these bases. Until 1972 Okinawa was administered by the United States, and the legacy of those years, plus the continued large footprint of the bases, has created a unique social and physical landscape.

Under Vancouver 1972-1982 (Book)

“Under Vancouver 1972-1982” is a collection of my earliest photographs, published in 2017 by Magenta Publishing for the Arts. These pictures were made before and after my first trips to Japan, Hong Kong and SE Asia, and show Vancouver as a port town at the end of the rail line, before the city became an urban resort and real estate investment destination.

HK:PM 1974-1989 (Book)

Newly released book about Hong Kong in the 1970s and 1980s, published by AsiaOne Publishing, with an introduction by HK film-maker Ann Hui.

I first visited Hong Kong in 1974, and made several later visits in the 1970s and early 1908s, before moving to the city in 1982. Most of the photographs in this book were made before I became a professional photographer, and show the Hong Kong I explored without any thought to how the pictures might be seen or where they might end up.

City of Darkness Revisited (Book)

Updated and expanded new volume, picking up where “City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City”, published in 1993, left off.

The Kowloon Walled City was a singular Hong Kong phenomenon: 33,000 people living in over 300 interconnected high-rise buildings, built without the contributions of a single architect, ungoverned by Hong Kong’s safety and health regulations, covering one square city block in a densely populated neighborhood near the end of the runway at Kai Tak airport….

In collaboration with Ian Lambot, I spent five years photographing and becoming familiar with the Walled City, its residents, and how it was organized. So seemingly compromised and anarchic on its surface, it actually worked -and to a large extent, worked well. The Walled City was torn down in 1992 but the photographs, oral histories, maps and essays in our updated new book, released in 2014, provide the most thorough record of daily life in that extraordinary place.

In collaboration with Ian Lambot, I spent five years photographing and becoming familiar with the Walled City, its residents, and how it was organized. So seemingly compromised and anarchic on its surface, it actually worked -and to a large extent, worked well. The Walled City was torn down in 1992 but the photographs, oral histories, maps and essays in our updated new book, released in 2014, provide the most thorough record of daily life in that extraordinary place.

Phantom Shanghai (Book)

Phantom Shanghai, with a foreword by William Gibson, is a portrait of Shanghai as the city transformed itself in the first years of the 21st Century. Preserved by a kind of benign neglect in the decades following Mao’s victory in 1949, Shanghai was directed to “catch up” in the 1990s. Phantom Shanghai is the record of the unique moment when the early 20th Century city was being demolished while the new Shanghai was being built in its rubble.

Published by Magenta Publishing for the Arts, 2007.

Hanoi Calling (Book)

In 2009 I was invited to make a record of the Vietnamese capital to commemorate its millennium anniversary in October 2010. The book Hanoi Calling , published by Magenta Publishing for the Arts, is the result. I tried to avoid the city’s better-known landmarks and instead explored the often overlooked features that define daily life for its residents. 

Time has flowed hard through Hanoi. Until recently the city’s architectural heritage was regarded as an inventory of decaying buildings awaiting a centrally-planned fate. This is changing as the economy liberalizes, the pace of development accelerates, and at the same time an appreciation of the city’s heritage evolves. For now Hanoi remains that rare SE Asian city where much of its architectural heritage still lines the workaday world of its narrow streets.

Published by Magenta Publishing for the Arts, 2010

In The Near Distance (Book)

In the Near Distance, published by Kominek Books in 2010, brings together early photographs, taken between 1973 and 1986, in Vancouver, Hong Kong, Tokyo and other places on both sides of the Pacific. I first visited Asia in 1974, later lived in Tokyo in the late 1970s, and moved to Hong Kong in 1982, living there for more than a decade. My “amateur” status was officially surrendered when I started photographing for magazines in 1987. So these are the photographs of an amateur, unschooled except by early exposure to the films of the late 60s and early 70s, and the novels of writers like Graham Green, Peter Handke and Paul Bowles.

Half the Surface of the world

These photographs were made on and around US military bases in Japan, Korea and on Guam, a part of the world designated by the Pentagon as the US Indo-Pacific Command. The Pentagon divides the world into six separate regional commands and INDOPACOM is the largest, covering half the surface of the world. The military component of US influence in the region is mainly anchored in these bases established more than sixty years ago, at the end of WW II and the Korean War. I first encountered this network of overseas US bases when I lived and travelled in Japan in the 1970s. More recently, on visits to more than a dozen bases in Japan, Korea and Guam, I was able to see something of the workings of these American outposts. The physical setting of the bases shares many of the features of small town or suburban American life. Except that in these communities an attack jet or nuclear submarine might be found at the end of the block.

Half the Surface of the World  was featured in the “Perspectives” exhibition at the International Centre of Photography, New York, Jan 23-May 6, 2012.

Cherry Blossoms and Sodium Vapour

As city dwellers, artificial light is as natural to us as daylight. And in our built environment nature is often the transplanted reality.  These are photographs of man-made light in the natural world: sodium vapour on cherry blossoms, metal halide on grass, florescent on bamboo, and so forth. The tension between what is natural and what is artificial, in material and in perception, forms the basis of this series made in Japan, China, Korea and Thailand.

Popular River

Poplar River is a small First Nation community on the east shore of Lake Winnipeg, 400 km north of Winnipeg. I was fortunate to be able to spend some time there on assignment for National Geographic Magazine, with writer Ed Dobb, looking at the community and their efforts to protect their ancestral land, a part of the vast Boreal forest, continuously inhabited by their ancestors for over 6000 years.

Accessible only by air for most of the year, the community will eventually be linked via a new all-weather road to population centres further south. Polar River’s isolation had a cost, as will its new connection to the wider world.