 Hello, everyone, and good evening. My name is Taryn Urquhart, and I am the Arts and Special Events Programmer here at the West Vancouver Memorial Library. On behalf of the library and the West Vancouver Art Museum, I would like to welcome you to tonight's art talk. While I recognize that we are all in different places this evening, I would like to acknowledge that the West Vancouver Memorial Library and the Art Museum reside within the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Squamish Nation, Slewa Tooth Nation, and Musqueam Nation. We recognize and respect them as nations in this territory, as well as their historic connection to the lands and waters around us since time immemorial. I am personally grateful to call the Pacific Northwest my home, and am thankful to the Coast Salish communities that continue to protect the natural beauty and animal diversity that surround me every day. It has been my great pleasure to work with curator Alison Powell and her guest for tonight to bring this event to your screens. And now I'd like to pass things over to Alison, who is waiting for us over at the museum. Alison. Thank you very much, Taryn, and thank you to everyone joining us this evening. I'm thrilled to be here with Emma Peter to discuss our current exhibition, The Decisive Moment, which is on until June 3rd. Thank you for being with us today, Emma. This is such a wonderful opportunity to discuss your unique life story and how this influenced your photographic approach, as well as the architectural innovation in the projects you shoot. Let's start by talking a bit about your background because I think it's so key to your photographic approach. You grew up in a very creative household, and your father was a film cameraman who gave you your first camera and taught you how to develop photos. Can you tell us specifically about the social circle your family was a part of and how this influenced your work today? Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Alison. So my parents were surrounded by some of the most significant Bulgarian filmmakers of their time, and our house is always full of actors, directors, cameramen, writers. We often traveled the summer months with the film productions and watched them create incredible movies. They really created some of the key movies of their time, and it was such a unique bubble, especially in Communist Bulgaria, where the reality of people was very different from that. Freethinking was just not an option. I was surrounded by free thinkers, people that did not want to follow the rules, people that saw the bigger picture. They had ideas. They lived not for the money or the glory, but for the art in so many ways. This is what was important for them. And this is, I think, what is left for me. I always want to just capture the light and follow my dreams and follow my ideas and kind of see that bigger picture because they had ideals. They really had ideals. And I want to follow my ideals and my principles. And my head is always full of ideas of what comes next. And I try to somehow live the way they did and surround myself with people that are creative, creative minds that always look to see the world from a different perspective, because the biggest influence that they had was this. Your perspective is not the only one. Other minds, other people matter. Their ideas matter. They enrich you. You can always look at life from a different perspective if you actually let the person actually tell you about their perspective. So collaboration is very important. This is what they made me. Honestly, this is the biggest influence of my work is I always try not to only look at it from my perspective. I'm trying to look at the world from a more colorful way and this comes from exactly that background of free thinkers and of really creative people that saw the world as if they're seeing it for the first time. So this is kind of my biggest thing. It's seeing the world for the first time over and over again. And your interest in the human experience it sounds like began at a very kind of early age. And even though you're an architectural photographer now, you really bring that into the work that you do today. So I just want to ask you kind of what was it like for you living through a time of political upheaval taking place in Bulgaria and how did that influence your photography? Absolutely. The events in Bulgaria pre and post communist times during the communist times and post communist times in many ways were exceptional times to witness. I was 11, 12 years old. My parents took me to all of the protests against the regime on the streets. It was very turbulent time in entire Eastern Europe. And the whole country was pouring on the streets. And for me it was exciting to watch but I know how hard it was for everyone. Especially when the regime fell, we just realized that utopian society was based on debts. So the country had $45 billion of debt and suddenly we ended up in post war times. Coupon system, I used to wait and all of my generation used to wait for one bread, Russian breads for four hours on a queue. I remember times when we really didn't have anything, no electricity, no hot water. I studied on candles very often. So you end up in a situation where you start to appreciate life afterwards when life actually normalize and really this kind of led me to the photojournalism and to actually wanting to do more photojournalism and those turbulent times continued for a while. I remember the Bulgarian film industry collapsed. My mom was the only one who was earning any sort of money and there were enough for a piece of cheese really a month, her salary. So I know what it is to live through complete, almost like poverty times for us, especially for my family was really, really hard. We didn't have any other income. And in many ways, I wanted to just walk around and record what was happening in Bulgarian. I had a camera in my hands from a very early age. So when I ended up in the National Academy of Theater in Vilmar, disturbance continued and as students we were on the streets fighting against like not the regime anymore but the communist party at that time or the socialist party. And it was pretty exceptional. This was a time to be a photojournalist because you were in front of burning parliaments or you were sleeping on the streets for two months in the cold and I remember all people coming and giving us hot chocolates because we barricaded the main streets of the city. So really, really strong times to be a photojournalist and that's why I wanted to tell the story. I wanted to showcase the story to the world we didn't have Instagram or social media to present what was happening but like we were using film at that point. So I still have all of those negatives. I still have those memories. Those times teach you and influence you as a photographer tremendously. And can you tell us a bit more about the specifics of some of those protests? I know that there was kind of, there was some staged kind of theatrical sort of events and that you were there through the winter. Yeah, absolutely. Like we, because the National Academy of Theater and Film Art had actors and directors, producers so of course a lot of imagination. So there was always something coming out of our school. We would do the funeral of the socialist party like people will be dressed in specific ways going through the streets of Sofia. So like it was honestly, as much as I wanna say it was extremely hard. It was also such an incredible feeling of community. We were all together. We were all together doing things that were important for us politically. And a lot of people that are my generation haven't experienced anything like this, especially here in Canada when I'm telling the stories about this time. Nobody can actually understand that it is an exceptional thing to experience. Yeah. And at the time you were the only girl in your year to have been in that program where you're learning about journalism. And it was quite an important time in history to be doing that. Yeah. So, but after when you left Bulgaria you ended up in an internship in Paris and it was with quite an amazing agency that's world renowned for its photojournalistic archives. And I just, I hope that you can tell us a little bit about your experience actually living with your uncle there who happened to be an architect. And he was quite a creative person. And it seemed like quite a creative milieu. And if you could just speak to that whole experience of being in Paris and how that influenced your work today. Paris was one of my opening of doors. I always call them opening of doors because you end up in situations where somehow your life changes and changes very dramatically. And a new, almost like new life emerges. And I feel this was the moment in Paris where I kind of found myself a little bit. And I spent four years in university and honestly those months in Magnum when I was in Magnum taught me so much about photography and together combined with living in a very artistic family. My aunt is an artist and my uncle is an architect. He was a Canadian architect. He won quite a few awards here as well. So their world was extremely artistic as well. So the first thing he did because he was a very, he still is a big fan of Corbusier. He's took me to one of the Corbusier projects in Paris. And I remember just walking around and thinking, wow, the people walking through this beautiful minimalistic building. It was such a symbiosis between architecture and photojournalism that I thought, okay, maybe this is what I wanna do. This is kind of visionary understanding more about the work, Corbusier's work was very kind of key for me because I saw somebody who in times when the architects were doing the same work, very ornate work, he saw somehow the future. He did this beautiful minimalistic buildings. And I wanna see the future. Like I wanna have a glimpse of what our future will be. And that's why for me, this was really a special moment because I thought, okay, wow, he saw the future. I wanna learn how the other architects, progressive architects are seeing the world, what they can do with the world and with form. And this is kind of where the love with architecture really started. I was thinking I need to find those negatives, actually those first photos I did there and have a look at them properly. But Maglum taught me one thing, you can't take for granted photographing. Like you need to really think about what you're photographing. When you're pressing the button, it has to be an experience. You can't just press it for the sake of trying to capture something or the luck of it. You really need to feel something. And that's why the whole exhibition and my whole life is kind of based around that decisive moments of around Curitiba-Bresson and all of the people in Maglum because Bresson was alive, but he was quite old. His wife, Margin Frank, she was around us. She looked at our photos as we were working. And like at the Abbas-Curil, because some of the most significant photojournalists in Maglum, they really were showing us their perspective of life and how they'll approach the objects. But looking at their photos over and over and over again, because this is what we did, we were stuck in the archives selecting, like selections of images for different publications for stories that were ordered. Your eye gets so used to looking at beautiful photography that when you go outside in the street, you can see it, you know? Like how I get so, I always say it's a muscle and it gets used to seeing these beautiful images if you actually can see them. So that's why I always advise students to always try to look at beautiful photography because this is the way to learn. We're visuals. We need to learn through a visual language. So in many ways, this was very, it was important, like the whole experience was important both from the love of architecture and kind of the love of photojournalism and them combined. And you had to be very selective of the images that you would take because there's only a very limited amount of film that you had, right? So how, just kind of following from that question, how would you see a shot and choose it? What was your kind of process there when you're learning? It's a feeling, you have to feel it. Like you have to somehow look at the light, the person that is coming through. And I think that this is what I loved about the photojournalism in general with the Magnum photographers. They actually found a scene. I remember looking at some of their contact sheets. They found a scene and then they knew what the scene is gonna look like if people are passing by or during an event. They knew what to look for, you know? So you start kind of somehow understanding what you're looking for or like kind of seeing those little angles that could be really magical and then wait for the right person or bird or anything to happen or a shadow. So I think that you need to see it first and then you need to realize the potential of the moment. And then from then on, everything kind of works and that's why we talk always about the eye, the heart and the lens being aligned. So this is really what it means to take a photo. It's not, it shouldn't be just an act. It should be a sensation. It should be a gut feeling. It should be all of it combined together and understanding of light. And this is what they told us with Darkroom. You need to understand exactly how everything works with film cameras as well. You need to understand you don't have the option to look at the shot at the back of the camera. I think so much is lost by people not using film. I think it's important. So this was, for me, those were the moments. Like this was the whole concept, the eye, the heart and the lens aligning. And it's all about the decisive moment, right? And that was actually a key kind of phrase for us in the title of the exhibition and that big influence from Blesson on your work, which we can clearly see in the photos in the exhibition. So but when you moved to Vancouver, actually, you had these plans to become a photojournalist and you had your portfolio filled with all these amazing images from Bulgaria and probably some from Paris. And you took to the streets of Vancouver to try to find work in that field, but it didn't quite pan out kind of the way you thought. And I was wondering what it was like for you as a woman, as a woman who had just moved to Canada, trying to make a career in photojournalism at that time, in that climate and kind of what your experience was at that time. I had big dreams. So of course, like I wanted to work for an agency or I wanted to work for a newspaper as I did back in Bulgaria. So I really came to Canada thinking, okay, this is the big opportunity. And I had my huge print portfolio, 30 by 40 centimeters black and white images of all sorts of events. And I did my resume and I knocked on every door. I literally walked. It was very typical to just be walking and knocking on people's doors and saying, hi, do you wanna hire me? I'm a good photojournalist. So unfortunately, nobody did. I didn't get a call back. Nobody was interested in someone so young. And especially like, I think that in many ways, those times, most of the photojournalists were guys. They were out on the field. So I was kind of left without the opportunity to do this, but there was an agency in Vancouver that did hospitality that actually three months after I applied, I went back and knocked on the door and I said, I need to do this. I think that this would be, I would be perfect for the job. And they ended up hiring me and giving me the chance. And I used every opportunity to showcase how grateful I was for the experience. As an immigrant, somebody giving you a chance is so important. I know people know it, but hear it from me. Like it is so important in your life at some point to give someone a chance because how grateful people are for receiving those chances and how much I particularly worked so much harder than anyone else there because I felt I need to. I need to prove them that they did the right thing by hiring me. And honestly, VRX shaped me in such an amazing way. The CEO, David McLaren, at that point, the business development, Tina Matur, like all of this group of people, they really shaped me to be who I am because they saw the potential but they also taught me how to do business. So to this day, I actually send them messages and say how grateful I am for this opportunity. You never should forget where you're coming from. So it was very hard in the first six months. I have to say I really struggled with not finding work but at the same time, when I was given the opportunity, I tried to make sure that I do the utmost best. Yeah, and you've mentioned before that it's just kind of working in photography in general. There's kind of been this expectation that the hours are a bit too long for a woman to work or it's a bit too, like the physicality of it. And can you speak to that a little bit and what sort of you'd say to someone or a woman in the field trying to get into the industry? So this is a conversation we're having quite often with females. In many ways, I don't look at it because I'm given so much the opportunities. I really fight for those opportunities. I kind of, I'm on the same level and the progressive architects are really giving females opportunities to be honest. So this is where we need to kind of empower the women because yes, it's so hard to be a mother and to be at a job, as I was telling you earlier, I just came back from California where I spent, I had two 16-hour days and then I had a 21-hour day. So, and all of this was done to be able to come back home. I tried to pack the trips. I tried to make sure I'm back for my children. And I think that this is one of the biggest dilemma with a lot of women is. And this is where we kind of, the issue lays, I feel is the fact that it is hard to be an architectural photographer that is on site from five o'clock or four o'clock in the morning until 11 o'clock at night and have all of the rest of the responsibilities. So I feel we need to empower women as much as possible to try to find ways to filter into this market, a special architectural photography especially, and kind of figure out ways to support them. So I try, I try with talking to support, but hopefully we can, one day we can take interns and try to help them as much as possible. Both Tina and I are very open to talking to females about what we are experiencing and we definitely don't give the pretty picture. We really explain what it truly means to be out there on the field. Because your work ethic is amazing and you're so dedicated to finding these moments on your shoes. So when you arrive on set, you're waiting for it kind of every moment of life or of light to happen and to cross through the windows of a certain building and catching every kind of character of it. Can you speak a little bit about that your sort of days on set and how you make sure to sort of catch these moments? Absolutely, they're going yesterday, we were in a very beautiful location. I can give you yesterday's day as it's fresh, but this is what happens on every location. We're usually on site from very early in the morning to catch pre sunrise and sunrise and then we continue through the day until dusk, sunset dusk. I have to say I don't leave the site. I have an idea that potentially I will take a break and potentially I'm gonna leave the site, but I never do. I find you need to be there in the moment committed to be able to achieve the shots and sometimes I'm fully aware that the light is not there yet. And then I'm gonna repeat the shots again when the light happens and I know exactly what the light is gonna look like, but I still do them. I don't know why, but I still need to have I need to know that I have the full range of images no matter what. So in many ways it's hard because we don't give ourselves any breaks. But at the same time, some of the most unique shots have happened exactly in times when people tell me don't be there or the light is not good or even when there is pouring rain and we still go at sunrise, maybe the sky will open for 10 seconds and you'll be able to do something that's happened recently on a project. It was very dark, the sky opens with the dark sky at the background, a little bit of the sunrise and it's one of the most spectacular shots. So always be there and always be present. It's kind of the way I approach the shoots. So the exhausting way, but at the same time we're catching every sort of light and we're trying to get every opportunity possible to showcase the project. And although the light is more dramatic and maybe a little bit less orthodox, so that kind of an unorthodox for architectural photography, it elicits that emotional response, right? And I know you mentioned Absolutely. Recently that you shot a building in moonlight which I thought was really interesting. Yes, we had full moon and we decided, okay, we're going to take the opportunity, it was super moon, it was very, very bright and those shots are so unique. So those are the situations. We kind of try to somehow experiment every time we go somewhere to actually achieve something that actually will be worthy for people to say, wow, I want to be there. And that's the whole sensation that we're trying to achieve with architectural photography is I want to be there, I want to explore the project because as much as we talk about art, we're there to actually showcase the art of our clients as well because all of those architects are really, they have worked for five years on projects and it's their little child that we need to somehow photograph and we need to make sure that we make it justice. And this is always what I want to do, make it justice, catch every light, even going rain, like we've been doing a lot of rainy type of shots recently because we have local architects that want to see the weather not as perfect because it's not perfect here, it's raining most of the year. So we really need to kind of explore what is happening originally as well. So we're trying to stay true to somehow what's happening in Vancouver, especially with the rain. So the rain shots have been very, very successful, I have to say. Very iconically Vancouver, absolutely. And now as the show has opened, it has actually spurred a bit of a discussion in the press about the meaning and the significance of architecture. Recently, there was an article that came out in Taiyi, kind of contrasting what was happening, sort of contrasting what we see in the exhibition with the buildings compared to kind of what's going on downtown with homeless shelters in recent weeks. In this kind of art gallery context, it's very interesting to consider your photos in this wider social context, all good art sparks conversation. And I know that the local and international architects who you work with and are featured here take many of these issues to heart when designing their buildings, regardless of their purpose. In fact, we could have done a show focusing specifically on projects that were environmental or socially focused. Can you speak to us a bit about the intricacies of some of the projects, many of which are community spaces or touch on the cost of living issues and environmental issues? I know there's quite a few examples in the show. For sure. And thank you for raising this question because I mean, it is very important for us to talk about it. We have photographed so many important projects to try to support the communities in Canada from honestly, from housing projects, from single mothers, from housing for single mothers, multi-generational homes. We're doing remote community centers, arena swimming pools. So there's so much thought about the community. And our architects, I have to say, try really hard to push their ideas out there. They need our support. This is where we kind of need to understand that we need to support their designs. We need to implement, to somehow find a way to implement their ideas because they find quite a lot of battles to support projects, community projects. And we see this at the background. We have very interesting stories, especially going in the first nations communities. We were in Daurey River recently, one of the shots that we photographed is from there. We were in Hazelton where, again, an arena really was the heart of the community. So everybody was there. And the architect took a really structurally and sound building and created something exceptional out of it. I mean, literally the kids were playing hockey in a building which was falling apart. It was colder inside than outside. And this is up north. And he actually built something that is the soul of the community. Kids are there at 10 o'clock at night. So, but I know the hardships they have to go through to actually get to the point where those buildings are built. And this is where I think we need to shine light. Stories need to be written about those projects. I remember one of them was nominated for an Arcutizer Award. And I reached out to quite a few publications asking them to support the project. And do you know, nobody responded to me. So we need to kind of start shining light on those exceptional individuals that we have. We have some of the biggest voices here in Vancouver. Sustainability, like mass timber buildings are like one of the biggest voices, Michael Green, he's here in Vancouver. We have equilibrium consulting that are one of the engineering firms that is really groundbreaking the way they do. They do their buildings, like the sealed buildings, they're trying environmentally to be so conscious. But again, the stories are not there about all of this. We have two passive factories in Pemberton and for passive housing factories like in Pemberton and in Squamish. Again, the communities that we're really shining light on things that are more the news of the day rather than really showcasing what the architects in Vancouver are trying to do. And I think to be honest, the attention should be on them and supporting them. And I truly respect when journalists somehow actually investigate and properly what the Vancouver community is trying to do and what it's trying to achieve and shine light on them. And this is where I always feel we showcase work, but I always try to tell stories about what we experience on site as well. So they know that those people are heroes. They have to do so much to manage, to find funding, to be able to create those buildings. So I definitely feel the attention should be there. The attention should be really on understanding what our design community and architecture community is trying to achieve and be proud of it. I'm so proud to say that I'm from Vancouver because so many people know those names that are actually really pushing sustainability master timber building. So I'm proud to be from Vancouver. And the people that are supporting the architects and building those exceptional houses, community centers, I just wanna thank them because they're behind the scenes. Nobody knows who they are in any cases, but they're the real heroes here. And it's inspiring to know that these people, this group of people are working on these solutions and they're trying to implement them wherever they can. And even looking at Wargandy's house and how you turned the bottom floor of his home into kind of a community space where non-profits could have meetings and that sort of thing where it was built for multi-generational living and to see those photos of the grandmother and the mother and the daughter kind of all sharing space together. One of some of my favorite photos of yours that I've seen, even though you have so many amazing photos and it was quite difficult to narrow it down. But yeah, even the equivalent, sorry. Sorry, the multi-generational living is a huge one as well. And it's all of the ideas that are coming from people like Gelgivara. Like I mean, she's thinking about communal living of exactly what is gonna happen with the medical system with our aging population. And all of those ideas are there. They're there and all of those designers are trying to support them. Sometimes they're trying to support them with their own finances, which really is where I think we should talk about this a lot more. I think that this race, this article race, like all of those questions, but at the same time I think that it needs to continue and it needs to investigate where exactly the, what exactly the Vancouver Architects are doing. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you everyone for joining us this evening. This exhibition runs until June 3rd. We are open from Tuesday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. And we have an exhibition catalog for this exhibition that costs $20 plus tax and is available at our bookstore. We look forward to seeing you soon at the West Vancouver Art Museum. I appreciate the conversation too. Thank you so much, Alison.