By Robert Chaplin

Yasmeen Strang

‘Winters Hotel: A sense of Place’

On veiw

April 13th-May 10 2023

Mónica Reyes Gallery

2895 W33rd Avenue

Vancouver, BC V6N 2G3

If you are very lucky you may someday find yourself on the subjective end of Yasmeen’s lens. Yasmeen Strang does an excellent portrait photograph; she gets the light right, finds the best angles, and even captures that spark of personality we all hope to see in our portrait. But this show  is not that, neither is it street, document, photo-journalism, or conceptual wankery. 

In her solo show, ‘Winters Hotel: A sense of Place’, Yasmeen Strang does that thing we all hope to see in art. She freezes time. In this collection of striking formalist photographs, Strang has made a portrait of a place, The Winters Hotel in Gastown. There are no people in these pictures. No one to interrupt the textures of a space haunted by it’s own decay. The Winters Hotel burned down last year. Simultaneously epitaph and prophecy, Strang’s photographs are balanced, spatial, & kind. Go look Vancouver. Think about the city you are building and how  lucky we are to see where Strang pointed her lens.

robertchaplin.ca