Listening Place (Under Burrard Bridge)

In this photograph with its single-point perspective, a mammoth bridge with repeating concrete arches appears to recede into history.

In this work by Jin-me Yoon, a Korea-born, Vancouver-based artist, people in camp chairs look small in relation to the built form. “The bridge testifies to the naturalization of the past’s vision of “progress”; the photograph documents a witnessing of that past—a listening place,” she says.

Seated there are Chung-soon Yoon and Hereditary Chief Találsamkin Siyám Bill Williams of Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation), representatives of two different cultures colonized by others.

One chair is left empty for the ancestors

Under the Vancouver bridge, one chair is left empty for the ancestors; seated in the other two are adult children from each family. To this intimate intergenerational group Chief Bill recounts the colonialist crimes upon which the structure was built: the dispossession, the forced dislocation, the attempted eradication of a people and the burning of their homes.

Image: Listening Place (Under Burrard Bridge), 2022, chromogenic print, 81.3 x 121.9 cm (32 x 48 inches) – one of the works in Prevailing Landscapes, April 12 – June 22, 2024, presented by The Gordon and Marion Smith Foundation for Young Artists in Partnership with Artists For Kids, part of the 2024 Capture Photography Festival