About
The project, the person, and the method.
assets/img/portrait.jpg.Vancouver is one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world. This archive looks closely at the visual traces left in the city and asks how they reflect histories of migration, identity, power, and belonging.
I'm Sonny Saimon. I study cultural geography and visual culture, and this site is where my research lives in public. Every entry starts with a walk, a photograph, and a set of questions: who made this, who is it for, what has changed around it, and what does it ask of the people who pass it every day.
The archive is not finished and is not meant to be. It grows as the city does. Entries are revised when I learn something that changes how I read them, and the revision dates stay visible.
If you recognise a place, a sign, or a story here and know more than I do, I would like to hear from you.
Method
- Fieldwork
- Walks on foot, repeated across seasons and times of day. Photographs are made on site and never staged.
- Selection
- An entry is included when it says something about identity, ownership, or memory that a single photograph can hold.
- Writing
- Each entry records an observation, its historical context, my own interpretation, and a connection to the academic literature.
- Revision
- Entries are living documents. Changes are dated and earlier readings are kept in the archive.
Background
- 2024 to now
- Independent research and photography, Vancouver. Building this archive.
- 2022 to 2024
- Research assistant, urban studies. Fieldwork on neighbourhood change and signage.
- 2018 to 2022
- B.A. Geography, with a focus on cultural geography and visual methods.
- Tools
- 35mm and digital cameras, field notebooks, QGIS for mapping, this website for everything else.
Contact
Corrections, additions, collaborations, and conversations are all welcome.
sonnysaimonac@gmail.com