Expected Shipping Date: April 1, 2025
Rodney DeCroo’s street photography project, Night Moves, is a gritty, touching, poignant, and truthful portrayal of contemporary urban life. With his poet’s eye for detail, he faithfully captures the living character of East Vancouver, especially the life and pulse of the Commercial Drive area that he has called home for the past thirty years.
In a style reminiscent of Mary Ellen Mark’s Streetwise, the street photographer Vivian Maier, or Fred Herzog’s chronicling of the urban flâneur, DeCroo observes and records present-day city life as it unfolds on the streets and alleyways of his neighbourhood.
We see the light and the dark of the world reflected in these photos. In this largely working-class part of Vancouver DeCroo introduces us to the wage-earners, the labourers, the residents of the street, the troubled, and the transient. They are all here in his black-and-white images, never exploited or dehumanized, but always viewed through a compassionate lens.
FROM THE INTRODUCTION:
“For all of its natural beauty—towering mountains and dramatic ocean views—the city sometimes known as Lotusland also has a complex side. Increasingly it’s a place of haves and have-nots—those on the fringes, through either circumstance or life choices, doing their best to hang on.
Since he started shooting a half-decade ago, DeCroo’s photos have spotlit a Vancouver that’s about something more than unlimited growth and runaway commerce—a place where no one dreams of owning a Tesla or a three-bedroom condo, mostly because in all likelihood that’s not going to happen.”
— Mike Usinger
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR NIGHT MOVES:
“Rodney DeCroo’s photography reveals as much about the man behind the camera as it does his subjects, which acutely depict life in East Vancouver. These raw, deeply human portraits connect desolation to revelation, showing us a side of the city we typically ignore. Humane and humanizing, this is beautiful yet urgent work.”
— Archer Pechawis, performance artist and filmmaker
Rodney DeCroo is the author of two previous books of poetry, Allegheny, BC and Next Door to the Butcher Shop. His poems have been published in Canadian publications such as subTerrain, Geist, Event, BC Bookworld, The Vancouver Province, Discorder Magazine, and The Georgia Straight, among others. His poetry has appeared in Beyond Forgetting, an anthology celebrating the work and life of legendary Canadian poet Al Purdy, and as part of BC’s Poetry in Transit. He has appeared on CBC to read his poems and is also a well-known, touring singer-songwriter with eight albums to his credit. His solo plays Stupid Boy in an Ugly Town and Didn’t Hurt have toured across Canada and the US. In 2019, Moniack Mhor, Scotland’s National Writing Centre, awarded him an International Poet in Residency.
