Before the Line

The Surrey–Langley SkyTrain extension will take roughly a decade to build and will not open until the end of 2029. In that interval the sixteen kilometres of Fraser Highway it follows are being taken apart and put back together: parcels cleared, frontages cut back, lots fenced, streets rerouted around excavations that will eventually be stations.

I am photographing that interval. The method is deliberately plain — frontal where the ground allows it, level horizon, no dramatic light, no people made into subjects. Each site is logged and returned to, so the same view can be compared across seasons and years. What matters is not any single frame but the accumulation: an inventory of ordinary places in the last years they will look the way they do.

The work is descriptive rather than argumentative. It takes no position on whether the line should be built. It records what was here first.