Dark Waters project to shed light on oil-related threats to B.C.'s environment

Oil destroys all that we hold dear: that’s the message artist David Chin and photographer Hubert Kang are trying to deliver through their photography project, Dark Waters, which addresses the issues of the recent English Bay oil spill, the Kinder Morgan pipeline, and a whole host of oil-related threats that the Lower Mainland is currently facing.

The photographs in the series depict six models, ranging from children to seniors, covered in an oil-like substance.

Chin, a local artist and actor, collaborated with Kang to create the photographs after being inspired by a project by photographer Blake Little, which saw models of various shapes and sizes being covered in honey.

“[Blake Little's project] was more of an art piece, but it was that imagery that inspired my idea of pouring tar all over people to create the same sort of imagery that we see in the news when there are oil spills, except they're with animals,” said Chin in a telephone interview.

“They’ll be fine in the long run, but it’s us that will be gone.”

Chin said the models were selected with idea of diversity in mind—the youngest subject was Chin’s son, at six years old, and the eldest was Chin's 63-year-old mother. Over a dozen nationalities are represented among the six subjects.

“We understand very well that in the end, these are pictures; we’re not going to make a huge difference with a few photographs,” said Kang, who makes his living primarily as an advertising photographer in Vancouver and Toronto.

“People voice concerns in different ways, and we do that through the best language we know, which is pictures,” he said.

The title for the series, Dark Waters, comes from what Chin described as a reoccurring theme in some of his own art. Following the recent spill in English Bay, many of his paintings have focused on environmental disasters involving oil.

“Sometimes ideas are just what you see around you. I used to fish with my son every week at the Jericho pier, and we crabbed and we fished for herring and Dungeness, and now we can’t. It is really difficult to explain that to a six-year-old whose favourite pastime is fishing that we can’t do that anymore,” said Chin, commenting on the very quiet closing of all recreational fisheries in the Burrard Inlet just six days after the April 8 spill.

“For me, that was a very dark moment as a father. Dark water is what we’re going to leave our kids,” he said.

Although dates for an exhibition have yet to be set, Chin said the images will be on display at Beaumont Studio in the near future, with profits from all images sold going to local environmental organizations.

“At this point we haven’t identified specific organizations but I think were going to try and stay as local as we can in our focus,” said Chin. 

“It could be as poignant as contributing funds to get the Kitsilano Coast Guard station back. Though they are global issues, I also feel like we need to fix the problems in our back yard before we fix the problems elsewhere.”