Greg Girard (born 1955) is a Canadian photographer whose work has examined the social and physical transformation in Asia's largest cities for more than three decades.
Tokyo-Yokosuka 1976–1983 (2019) completes a loose trilogy of photobooks (along with Under Vancouver 1972–1982 and HK: PM Hong Kong Night Life 1974–1989) that features early work made in the 1970s and 1980s,[5] largely before his professional career began in the late 1980s.
Between 1972 and 1982, Girard had an early interest in the effects of artificial light on colour film at night, and subject matter dealing with the social and physical underside of the city.
Girard's photographs, along with co-author Ian Lambot's, provide the most thorough record of what life was like for Walled City residents, and have served as a visual reference for film production designers (e.g. Batman Begins directed by Christopher Nolan),[11] writers (e.g.
Looking at the often ignored and overlooked features of the everyday city, Hanoi Calling is a record of the public and private spaces that form the foreground and background to daily life as the millennium anniversary approached.
The early use of colour transparency film and long exposures at night, which became a signature feature of his later work, especially in Phantom Shanghai, are first in evidence here.
In Hotel Okinawa (2017), Girard looks at this unique world "on base" and off, separate and yet conjoined, the result of decades of living in close proximity with the US military.
Additionally, archival photographs, periodicals and other artefacts, some dating back to the US occupation, appear throughout the book, registering historical strands that are part of the complex fabric of Okinawa today.