Greg Girard Photographs 1972-2026

Pre-Order
The Book will be shipped in late October.


THE MAGENTA FOUNDATION / THE POLYGON GALLERY
356 pages, Hardcover with jacket
292 x 229 mm
9781926856209
2026

The first career survey of Greg Girard, one of Canada's most important contemporary photographers. Published alongside his 2026 retrospective at The Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver, it brings together more than 200 photographs.

The book opens with his early work from 1970s and 1980s Vancouver. He photographed the city's streets, neighbourhoods and shifting social fabric, paying close attention to both people and the changing buildings around them. These photographs were also collected in Under Vancouver, 1972–1982 (2017).

Girard then moved to Asia and spent decades in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai. There he recorded the dramatic changes these cities went through at the end of the 20th century and into the 21st. His best-known work documents daily life in Hong Kong's Kowloon Walled City, published in City of Darkness with Ian Lambot. These images shaped the dystopian, Asia-influenced vision of the urban near future, and they have influenced countless films and video games. Together with the photographs in Phantom Shanghai (2007), they show the tension between memory and redevelopment, and between buildings and the lives lived in them. The work has earned him international acclaim.

His work has also appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine and TIME. This book follows nearly fifty years of his career, from Vancouver to Asia's largest cities, photographing cities as they change.