Arts and Culture

This Exhibition of Seawall Photos Captures Just How It’s Changed Over the Past 30 Years

Photographer Goran Basarić has been capturing panoramas of Vancouver's Seawall for three decades. Eleven of his best shots showcase just how the city has changed over the years.

By Stacey McLachlan /

You’ve definitely taken a picture on the Seawall. But you probably haven’t taken pictures like Goran Basarić.

His new City Pastoral: Leisure Time in the Liminal City exhibition at Gallery 881, opening October 1, is the culmination of 30 years of walks along this iconic oceanside route, wide-angle Soviet panorama camera in hand. The results are a chronology of a landscape that is changed in so many ways, and unchanged in so many others. The skyline has evolved; the mountain range stays the same. Some pictures are a window into a moment lost in time; other 20-year-old shots look like the could have been taken yesterday.

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Photo: Goran Basarić. Courtesy of Gallery 881.

“There’s a poetic aspect to what he’s doing around the idea of Vancouver being on the edge of the Pacific, and the edge of Canada,” says gallerist and 881 owner John Goldsmith. “We’re on the end of the continent here, and what we experience is different from what a lot of other Canadians experience.”

Though Vancouver is known as “Terminal City,” Basarić views it also as a Liminal City—somewhere between the land and the ocean—hence the subtitle of the show. Eleven pieces will be on display as part of the exhibition, printed in black and white, with some of the panoramas spanning several feet. All are for sale.

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Photo: Goran Basarić. Courtesy of Gallery 881.

The decades-long project joins a long history of Vancouver photography—Fred Herzog, Jeff Wall, Annie Briars—that Gallery 881 is working to celebrate. “What we’re trying to do as the only photo gallery in Vancouver is to establish that photography has both a history and a future here,” says Goldsmith. “We want to give lens-based artists a voice.”

City Pastoral opens October 1, with an official reception on October 2 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Admission is free. Tag along on the photo walk October 11 to try your hand at capturing your own Vancouver landscape—a moment to frame, right from the edge of the world.

Gallery 881
881 E Hastings
gallery881.com

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