In 1979, photographer Gord McCaw moved to Vancouver and set up a studio in the Standard Building at 510 West Hastings Street. Between 1980 and 1992, he took a series of approximately 750 photographs documenting street art and graffiti in locations around Vancouver. In 2015, McCaw donated to Special Collections and Rare Books a sub-set of this series consisting of 54 prints that he had selected in 1998.

The graffiti and street art appearing in these images reflects the political issues, concerns and popular culture of the times in which it was produced. Many of the photographs also stand today as a record of the changing physical landscape of the city, documenting buildings, spaces and views that have disappeared in the intervening decades.

Additional photographs by McCaw have been digitized as The "Last Pogo" Vancouver Punk Rock Photograph Collection.

License and Usage Permissions

Copyright for these images is owned by Gordon E. McCaw. Images from the Gordon E. McCaw Vancouver Street Art Photograph Collection have been made available by Simon Fraser University Library under a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial license. A full legal outline of the license can be viewed at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode. We encourage the appropriate open use of images from this collection for educational and other not-for-profit purposes. Attribution/citation should be provided as follows: Image [insert image number here, eg. MSC166-044] by Gordon E. McCaw courtesy of the Gordon E. McCaw Vancouver Street Art Photograph Collection, a digital initiative of Simon Fraser University Library. [Please include the website url when images are used in an offline or print-based context].

Parties interested in using images from the Gordon E. McCaw Vancouver Street Art Photograph Collection for commercial purposes should contact Special Collections and Rare Books, SFU Library.

Contributed by Special Collections and Rare Books, Simon Fraser University Library.