I moved away from BC for a few years and came back to a city rampant with dispensaries, apartment complexes, and construction zones ad nauseam. In the four years I was gone it seems like our city fundamentally changed. So imagine how much BC has developed in a hundred years. Or…go see for yourself.

The Presentation House Gallery in North Van is now showing an exhibit gathered by antique masters and private collectors, Uno and Dianne Langmann. The pair (Uno in particular) spent years collecting a variety of mediums from professional works by artists like Charles Horetzky and Edward Curtis to postcards and amateur silver prints of British Columbia. The works date all the way back 1860 and cover up to the early 20th century.

Donated to the UBC library, the collection is open for viewing now with the official reception going down this Saturday, April 16th. The prefix Nanitch, from title of the show – NANITCH: Early Photographs of British Columbia from the Langmann Collection – comes from the Chinook slang term for “to look and watch.”

There’s a little something for everyone in the show, everything from old school family portraits to the fascinating evolution of the British Columbia landscape itself, not to mention a window into the development of photography technique over time. It all reminds me of something T.S. Eliot once wrote: “the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence.” So head down to the gallery, transport yourself back in time, and learn a little more about the history of our stellar province.

Now to June 26 | Presentation House Gallery (333 Chesterfield Ave, North Van | by Donation | DETAILS