Strait Goods
Strait Goods is a collection of images made while crossing the Strait of Georgia by ferry from the mainland to Vancouver Island on Canada’s West Coast. If the photographs are portraits, they are oblique portraits. Viewed from above, the subjects do not reveal themselves through their eyes but, instead, through their physical forms, gestures, clothing, and the personal belongings that surround them. In the images passengers sun, smoke, and sleep through the seasons while the set remains essentially the same: an industrial grey ship deck, an ashtray, a garbage bin, and a line of lifejacket trunks turned furniture. The minimal geometric stage provides the perfect common denominator for these strangers to reveal their character and acts a catalyst for imagining the stories each of them might occupy outside the frame. Strait Goods began in 2011 and is an ongoing series.