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The Surreal Beauty of BC Government Photographs

The province has its own Flickr pool documenting official doings. It’s propaganda that sometimes verges on high art.

David Beers 30 Dec 2021TheTyee.ca

David Beers is founding editor of The Tyee.

The government of British Columbia assigns its own photographers to document its public activities, posting the images to a Flickr site called BC Gov Photos. It’s a handy, free-of-charge resource for an editor facing a deadline. We at The Tyee have often made use of its offerings, each time with the credit: Photo via BC Government.

There are no names to cite. The photographers of BC Gov Photos toil anonymously. It would be easy to see their work as banal documentation. Are these photos propaganda? Of course they are at one level. Those who govern would not pay to have them made and distributed if they did not believe the images enhance their ability to govern by telling citizens, yes, we are on the job.

But if you spend enough time scrolling BC Gov Photos, you begin to see intriguing subtexts, and even surreal beauty. In some you can find a bit of the whimsy of a Berenice Abbott; in others, some of the bleak awe of an Edward Burtynsky.

Many of the frames are generous in the detail they afford, pulling way back to show the officials interacting only with a few tech-laden media workers or just staring into a black void. They seem to say: This is what it would be like if Sisyphus ran for office, won, and had to deliver briefings day after day.

Other photo portrayals of the latest highway repair or mega-project unveiling provide arresting tableaus of people versus nature. They capture the human compulsion to endlessly chip away at this province’s landscapes.

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From top: 1. Minister Mike Farnworth gives an update on record floods. 2. Internet transmission equipment due for upgrading. 3. Ministers Ravi Kahlon and Lisa Beare and MLAs Pam Alexis, Bob D’Eith and Megan Dykeman visit the CubicFarms Innovation Centre in Pitt Meadows. 4. The Thompson Okanagan region will receive $9 million in transportation investments during the COVID-19 pandemic, said the announcement accompanying this photo.

Because there are no names attached to the images, it’s easy to forget each one was shaped by deliberate imagination. Can we really assume the minds behind the lenses were going for anything “meta”? Well why not? The great nature photographer Ansel Adams started out shooting industrial and advertising commissions. Consider the photo of provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry speaking in Prince George. She is rendered small in a yellow floral dress, defying, it seems, the black bug-like videographers ready to pounce, the carpet itself evoking sprouting soil. Why include such content when a close-up of Henry’s reassuring face would have sufficed?

Indeed, there was method to this composition. I know because I managed to locate its maker, Don Craig, who worked as a photographer for the provincial government for 11 years before ending his run in October to freelance. Craig was a big contributor to BC Gov Photos.

“Over the course of the pandemic, I don’t think that I have photographed anyone more than Dr. Henry,” Craig says. “In this image, I pulled back to show the location of the press conference and to give a ‘behind-the-scenes’ look at the proceedings. Dr. Henry’s patterned dress worked well with the foliage behind her and the carpet design. The combination of all of these elements is a result of shooting with a wide-angle lens and from a distance. A tightly-framed podium shot wouldn’t have given the same amount of information.”

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From top: 1. Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry provides an update on COVID-19 in Prince George. 2. BC would establish a lab for testing and validating PPE said the announcement with this photo. 3. The Ten Mile Slide stabilization project on Highway 99 nearing completion. 4. Premier John Horgan and Minister Josie Osborne announce an upgrade to the Sooke wastewater treatment plant. 5. Premier Horgan speaks with community leaders about registering eligible people for COVID-19 vaccines.

Craig also took the photo, just above, of Premier Horgan conversing with community leaders on multiple screens. Meetings used to be held face-to-face in the room before it was converted into a kind of livestreaming television studio. “While the studio worked well in this way, it was a very sterile environment in which to make images. Without interactions between people in the same room, it was sometimes difficult to find an interesting way to photograph the event,” Craig notes.

“At the time, I wasn’t consciously trying to convey more than what had become the norm for our time, that we were all living, meeting and connecting with others virtually,” he says. Asked if he thinks the scene evokes the uncanny geometry of an M.C. Escher lithograph, Craig agrees. “Given the endless nature of the pandemic and that we continue to work this way, it is appropriate to see this scene as a contemporary Escher image.”

Craig worked for Government Communications and Public Engagement and reported to the director of digital communications. The Premier’s Office was a primary client and he also worked with various ministry offices, the Intergovernmental Relations Secretariat, and other arms of the government. His day would start with instructions for where to be and when.

“I saw my job as part documentary and part commercial or promotional photographer. I had a lot of autonomy in the role. When I was assigned to photograph an event, press conference, marketing campaign or premier’s tour, direction was minimal, when given. I was never told not to shoot something and I used personal discretion to guide what and how I shot.”

One of Craig’s favourite photographers is Elliot Erwitt, now 93, noted on Wikipedia for “his black and white candid photos of ironic and absurd situations within everyday settings.”

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From top: 1. Construction at the West Beach concrete fish ladder at the Big Bar landslide site. 2. Premier Horgan tours the food production facility for Nana’s Kitchen. 3. An intersection in Ladysmith slated for improvement. 4. Premier Horgan visits the Az Zahraa Islamic Academy in Richmond with local MLAs Aman Singh and Henry Yao. 5. The province will spend $16.7 on 45 projects for safety and access on provincial rights of way said the announcement accompanying this photo.

Governing is a mix of strained artifice and authentic striving in the best of times. Most of the 15 images selected for this piece were taken during the pandemic, which adds a dollop more surrealism — the social distancing, the masks, all those screens flattening life to two dimensions. And throughout it all, the exploding of rocks, the pouring of concrete, the connecting of pipes, the surveying of disasters small and large continues apace.

The government’s photographers rise each day to give us scenes from wastewater treatment facilities, landslide stabilization projects, food processing factories, wildfire briefings, flood briefings, coronavirus variant mutation briefings. They record everyone trying to put on brave faces and go on with the show. Sometime in the future, when archivists wish to revisit the queasy resolve all of us are now trying summon, a good place to look will be BC Gov Photos.

Happy holidays, readers. Our comment threads will be closed until Jan. 3 to give our moderators a break. See you in 2022!  [Tyee]

Read more: BC Politics, Media

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