Chinatown storefront photos offer glimpse into the past

A photography project along the streets of Vancouver's historic Chinatown uses storefront windows as a way to peer into the downtown neighbourhood's past.

Chinatown History Windows started as a way to bring back to life boarded up storefronts in Chinatown's core.

You can see the stylized, re-coloured historical photos and read the accompanying stories in 22 window fronts, some in empty buildings, others on vibrant businesses.

The photos, which will stay up for a year, marks the 70th anniversary of Chinese-Canadians winning the right to vote.

Many of the photographs document the discrimination Chinese-Canadians faced, from the head tax to public swimming pool bans.

The windows also celebrate the community's successes. One tells the story of Douglas Jung, the first Chinese-Canadian elected to Parliament.

Another memorializes the former site of Ho Ho Chop Suey, a landmark restaurant once famous for its three-storey neon sign.

"These stories, they matter. They set context," said Catherine Clement, the project's curator.

 "They enrich us when we understand where we come from, and what has happened here." 

Clement said her favourite panels are the ones that tell stories that otherwise might have been forgotten.

Next to the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Vancouver is a panel dedicated to Yucho Chow, a prolific photographer who documented four decades of life in Chinatown in the first half of the 20th century.

 

Clement came across Chow's studio seal on countless photos from family albums, but it took her seven years to find a photo of the man himself. 

It happened by accident. While researching another project, it turned out the woman she was interviewing was Chow's granddaughter.

"We were so pleased to be able to show people," Clement told The Early Edition.

"If you have that seal in any of your family albums, this is the man that took it, who's been this ghost for generations." 

That's the purpose of the photo project, Clement said, to make sure that the people and places that made Chinatown so vibrant and unique don't become ghosts.