As North American cities continue to grow and downtown cores evolve into suburban shadows of their former urban selves, the shabbier realities of contemporary life at the city’s heart are forced to migrate and disappear as “villages” are torn down, reimagined and redeveloped into upscale properties.

With a gentle touch, George Webber takes his camera into the mysterious half-light of these disappearing interior spaces, penetrating them with a thought-provoking humanity and then withdrawing without creating a ripple. This is an area that transcends place, lying between a city’s mountain and prairie landscapes, a purgatory of dark and light, hope and despair.

Over a five-year period between 2004 and 2009, photographer George Webber hung out in Calgary’s East Village. In what he describes as “my little personal battle against time,” he touched the feral heart of the place, capturing its gritty, shattered beauty with his camera.

Last Call is an unforgettable and astounding collection of colour photographs of Calgary’s East Village in all of its lurid glory, along with touching and poignant excerpts from Webber’s journals.

George Webber is a renowned documentary photographer whose previous collections with Rocky Mountain Books include an illustrated edition of Robert Kroetsch's classic novel Badlands, Prairie Gothic (with Aritha van Herk), Last Call (with Karen Connelly), Alberta Book (with Fred Stenson), and Saskatchewan Book (with Lorna Crozier). He is the recipient of numerous National Magazine Awards (Canada), two Awards of Excellence from the Society for News Design (USA), and an International Documentary Photography Award (Korea). His images have been featured in American Photo, Canadian Geographic, Lenswork Quarterly, Photolife, The New York Times, and Swerve magazine. In 1999 he was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in recognition of his contributions to the visual arts in Canada. George lives in Calgary, Alberta.

George Webber's profile page

Karen Connelly is the author of nine books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Her first book, a collection of poems called The Small Words in my Body was published 22 years ago. It won the Pat Lowther Award. Her poetry has been translated into French, Spanish, Russian, and Burmese. She is also the author of several acclaimed books of prose, including The Lizard Cage, winner of the Orange Broadband New Writers Prize, Touch the Dragon, winner of the Governor General’s Award, and Burmese Lessons, a love story, shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award and the BC National Award for Nonfiction. Her journalism, essays and poetry have been published in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Life, Toronto Star, The Walrus, The New Humanist (Britain), National Geographic Traveller, Shambhala Sun, and dozens of literary magazines and periodicals in Canada, the U.S., Britain, and Asia.Her books are explorations of the countries where she has lived and travelled: Burma, Thailand, Spain, France, Greece, and, of course, Canada. In all three genres, she has increasingly assumed the role of writer as political witness. She has long been a supporter and an occasional board member of PEN Canada and has been active in various campaigns on behalf of writers in prison or living under persecution. She makes her home in Toronto with her family.

Karen Connelly's profile page

Webber's work is honest, desolate and authentic.—Globe and Mail