In Focus: The Built Landscape

Statement and Photos by Sean Orr

I’m not a photographer who readily predetermines defined areas of focus or themes, however since I always have my camera with me, those areas tend to reveal themselves with any change in my daily routine. Ergo, after getting a new job in the downtown core, my focus has shifted away from the back alley bricks of Gastown and towards the curious spaces found in the CBD. Those places where rigorous landscaping mirrors the city’s frontier with nature, where office workers are channeled through terraced concrete zones, forced to smoke their cigarettes on the periphery of massive structures. I very rarely take photographs of people, but something about the menacing wide open spaces created by the built landscape create a tension I am drawn to. I recently discovered the work of Anthony Hernandez at the VAG and his aesthetic has informed my own.

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Sean Orr is perhaps most widely known for his outspoken views expressed on the local bog Beyond Robson, where he deconstructs the daily news in a column called Morning Brew. He’s also active in the local music scene as a singer in the bands Taxes and Kidnapping. But it is photography where his passion lies as his 6000+ photo stream on the popular photo sharing site Flickr attests to. Orr’s recent show at Hotel Gallery saw the release of a self-published photo-book called Pretty Drifted. His previous solo outings were at Antisocial and Dadabase, and has shown in group shows at Misanthropy, Midtown, Butchershop, Little Mountain, The Peanut Gallery, Access, and at the Cheaper Show. Sean has been wandering this city for a decade now after dropping out of third year geography, and has been using photography mainly as a means of understanding how the city affects his psyche, and conversely how the psyche affects the city. He describes his recent photograpghy as, “the semiotics of the city of Vancouver; its materials and built environment, speak in a hidden language, readable to those who drift around, camera often in hand, ducking in and out of back alleys and brick buildings”.