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Revealing lives of the Downtown Eastside

Vancouver's Downtown Eastside is the poorest postal code in the Canada in a city that prides itself on being the "world's most livable city.

Vancouver's Downtown Eastside is the poorest postal code in the Canada in a city that prides itself on being the "world's most livable city."

In 2004, New Westminster photographer Gabor Gasztonyi began an amazing five-year project to photograph residents of the Cobalt, Balmoral, Regent and Sunrise hotels. Slowly, people let him into their lives and allowed him to photograph them in their private moments in their rooms and on the streets in a neighbourhood where people seek shelter, safety and love in extreme social conditions.

The result is a remarkable book, A Room in the City. Using minimal words, Gabor lets the photographs tell their own stories. He will be in the library to talk about his experiences and show some of his photographs on Tuesday, March 6 at 7 p.m. As space is limited, pre-register in the library or call 604-527-4667.

A selection of his photographs is on display in the reference department from March 1 to 31 and can be seen in a video at www.tinyurl.com/GaborPhotos.

The library has a number of books and DVDs that deal with issues relevant to the Downtown Eastside.

In In Plain Sight: Reflections on Life in Downtown Eastside Vancouver, seven women share their life stories from childhood, moving into and out of the Downtown Eastside, through periods of addiction and recovery, strength and illness, affluence and poverty.

Michael Barnholden and Nancy Newman, in Street Stories, tell of 100 years of homelessness in Vancouver from the early displaced aboriginal populations, the aftermath of the fire of 1886, and the influx of early immigrants to stories and images of today's homeless.

Jack Layton wrote Homelessness: The Making and Unmaking of a Crisis with a view not only to understand the problem, but to find workable solutions.

The DVD Through a Blue Lens was created by seven Vancouver police officers who video-documented the lives of people on their beat in order to help prevent drug use among young people.

editorial@royalcityrecord.com