This project was inspired by a colleague who noted that Vancouver's Downtown East Side is like a kind of flypaper that attracts endless instances of student projects that stick to it. This notion of Hastings Street as a length of flypaper was intriguing for several reasons. For like flypaper it is a "strip" (a major urban artery) which organizes "sticky" social problems (addiction, homelessness, prostitution, poverty, unemployment). At the same time, as a photographer I have avoided this section of the city because of it's "obviousness" as a photography subject (having noted all of the other — not just student — cultural production that "sticks" to Hastings Street). This series accepts this designation of Hastings Street as an invitation to "fly-on-the-wall" photography. The telephoto lens allows me to (mostly, usually, not perfectly) keep my distance so that the camera's presence does not alter the situation. In this case the telephoto lens is also a kind of wing-mechanism, since I can of course (rather easily) fly away or towards this sticky social strip. So perhaps the photographs do not ultimately "stick" to Hastings St. (say, through indexicality), but in their own way, hover.

Work in progress