A Portrait Within a Portrait

October 2008- When Garvin Snider first heard that Pivot Legal Society was giving away disposable cameras to Downtown Eastside residents for the Hope in Shadows photo contest, he thought it was a bad idea that was doomed to fail.

"I picked up a camera that first year in 2003, but I figured I would be one of the only ones to bring it back," recalls Snider. "I thought most people would throw them away or trade them on the street for drugs." Since that first year, Snider has snapped four winning photos, two of which have been featured in the Hope in Shadows annual calendar, including this year's third place photo, Rephotography.

"Ever since my first photo was chosen in 2003 I've been hooked," says Snider, who has participated in every Hope in Shadows contest and began selling the calendar and facilitating vendor training session in 2006.

"I began to truly feel like a part of the community and to be able to showcase that has been so amazing."

"It's an employment strategy, but it's so much more," explains Snider, who also sells Megaphone Magazine. "I personally believe it's brought a lot of pride and self-value to the people who have participated and to the people who live in the neighborhood."

Snider, who moved to the DTES from Ottawa in 2002, was able to get to know the community through his participation in the Hope in Shadows photography contest. "I began to truly feel like a part of the community and to be able to showcase that has been so amazing," says Snider. "Now that I'm a long time resident of the Downtown Eastside, I've met a lot of people who have become important to me and I like the fact that it truly is bare-boned honest down here."

Snider's winning photo, a portrait of local artist Andrew Owen holing up a self-portrait, was inspired by Owen's own photography.

"Andrew uses the wall in front of the Cambie Annex on Cordova Street as an art space and I've always been intrigued by his work so I asked permission to shoot his portrait using his technique," says Snider. "I like how it blurs the line between reality and image and becomes a portrait within a portrait."

An avid photographer, Snider was first introduced to photography under rather bizarre circumstances while growing up in Ottawa. "There's this huge painted sign on Bank Street in Ottawa that says, ‘G.G. Snider Photography,'" explains Snider. "Well, I'm G.A. Snider but for some reason it was a running joke that because it said ‘Snider Photography,' I was destined to be a photographer too, and so for Christmas or my birthday I would always would get a camera no matter what."

And with four winning photographs within the first six years of the contest, it would seem that receiving all those cameras as a kid just might have paid off.

By Amy Juschka. This article originally appeared in Megaphone, Vancouver's Street Newspaper