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 street residents, 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.