The Wonderfully Atmospheric Urban Landscapes of Greg Girard

Canadian photographer Greg Girard left Vancouver in the 1970s to explore Southeast Asia with his camera. His colorful, atmospheric landscapes showed us a very different and unfamiliar part of the world that, for Westerners at that time, was much less traveled and even less well known.

Photography had always been Greg Girard’s calling, and as a teenager photographing the streets of Vancouver, he developed a yearning to travel and explore new and unfamiliar lands with his camera. His wanderlust would eventually take him to Southeast Asia, which in the 1970s was a region much less traveled by Western tourists than it is now. Working with his film camera in places like Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, Greg built a portfolio of beautiful, atmospheric urban landscapes that are as striking today as they were when they first captured a world that was still relatively unfamiliar to Westerners.

The genres of street and urban photography are most often associated with gritty black-and-white images shot on film. But a number of photographers have bucked this trend, choosing instead to capture the urban experience in vibrant color. In his choice to use color instead of black and white, Greg Girard followed in the auspicious footsteps of photographers like Fred Herzog (incidentally also from Vancouver), William Eggleston, and Saul Leiter.

Willem Verbeeck is a big fan of film photography and atmospheric landscapes, and his YouTube channel is an excellent place to hang out if you’re a photographer. In the video presented here, Willem essentially gives the floor to Greg Girard to describe, in his own words, his career journey—traveling widely throughout Southeast Asia from the 1970s to the present day to build his amazing portfolio of urban landscapes. In the course of the interview, Willem showcases an inspiring selection of spectacular images from Girard’s collection.

As Girard himself notes, at the time these images were created, their color palette was pretty much the standard for their time—a period in which film photography was the only game in town. With the passage of time, however, and with the advent of digital photography, these images have come to acquire something of a retro charm that was absent when they were first captured. There’s no denying Girard’s artistry, though, and his wonderful photographic sensibility shines through the vibrant colors of these amazing, atmospheric landscapes.