The life and work of Foncie Pulice: Vancouver's best-known street photographer

Long before the world got wind of Scott Schuman (better known to millions of fashionistas as The Sartorialist), many who lived in British Columbia, especially in and around Vancouver, were familiar with their own local street photography celebrity, Foncie Pulice.

Unlike most of the street photographers - be they household names or otherwise - of today, Mr. Pulice wasn't in it for the fame or fortune, he wasn't trying to land his snaps in the pages of cutting edge fashion magazines, score a book deal, or trend across the blogosphere.

Born to Italian immigrant parents early in the century, it was during the thick of the Great Depression, while working as a house painter, that young Foncie (just twenty years old at the time) decided he might have better luck earning a living as a street photographer (an art and profession that had had come to vogue in many cities across the globe in recent decades).

Foncie was able to land himself a job at a local camera shop (that was rather charmingly named Kandid Kamera, located on West Hastings), where he was put to work taking street snaps of interested passerbys on the corner of Hastings and Main Street.




{Foncie Pulice pictured with his sister Ermie, circa the mid-1930s.}
  Business didn't exactly boom in that area however, and after a while Foncie moved further down Hastings (which, to those who are familiar with Vancouver, B.C., was a very different street in those days than what it developed into as the decades rolled on) to a spot right near the lovely part of town that is of Granville.
 
Though a stint in the service during WW2 temporarily saw Foncie leave his beloved Vancouver, after the war he quickly bought a photography studio on Granville and launched his own street photography operation, which he dubbed Foncie's Fotos. Coupled with his wife, Anne (who looked after developing and printing her husband's snaps), Foncie worked long hours and absolutely adored his job.

Once an interested party (or parties) had enjoyed having Foncie capture their image on the street, they later returned to his Granville studio to collect their photographs. Over the years Foncie - whose pictures were sharp, lovely, and often did a very good job of capturing a person the way they wanted to be seen - developed many return customers who were always eager to have him snap their photo, either on the street or in his studio.




{A snapshot of Foncie and his young son, Anthony, taken - more than a little fittingly - on one of Vancouver's streets in 1953.} 


Over the course of an impressive career that spanned from 1934 to 1979, Foncie Pulice shot thousands upon thousands (if not millions) of photographers of people on the streets of Vancouver. His work was not biased, jaded or staged, merely - like all the best street photographers - a candid, accurate representation of exactly how a person looked for one split moment in time.

As the 1970s came to a close and the art of street photography was, at the time, declining in popularity, Foncie and Anne retired to the sunny Okanagan, settling in the city of Kelowna, B.C. (which, coincidentally, is a mere stone's throw away from where I live). Though I never got a chance to meet Foncie (who passed away at the age of 88 in 2003), his wife or children, I like to imagine that he and I would have hit it off swimmingly.



{A portrait - I wonder if it was a self made one - of Foncie during the 1970s shortly before his retirement.} 


We would share in common a deeply rooted love not only taking pictures, but also of the exciting craft street snaps, and by extension of the preservation of British Columbia's history through the medium of photography.

Thankfully, today, The Knowledge Network (a B.C. public broadcast station) has embarked on a project to gather and continue to preserve Foncie's work, and by extension, Vancouver's history through an online website, called Foncie's Corner. This site is devoted solely to his fantastic work, so that past customers and new fans of Foncie Pulice's photography alike can continue to enjoy seeing his terrific snapshots for many more years to come (you can learn more about the project and how you can contribute here).

Over the years you've heard me discuss in numerous posts (such as this one) the fact that I have an extremely deeply rooted passion for vintage Canadian photographs and history. Should they happen to feature my home province of British Columbia, I adore them all the more and am always eager as can be to share a snippet B.C.'s fascinating past with all of you here.

In that spirit, I hope that you’ll all enjoy the following selection of Mr. Foncie Pulice's engaging, split second time capsules of Vancouver history, captured through his humble, yet masterful, entirely lovely street photographs.



{Really, could her whole gorgeous look be any more perfect? Image of Marjorie Stuart Ashdown, who was born in East Vancouver in 1920, taken in 1936.} 



{A lovely young woman, then 20 years, who was in town from Innisfail, Alberta to visit her cousins in 1937.}

{Style and swagger abound from this nicely dressed chap (identified as Henry James Stewart and a bachelor at the time it was taken) while he was on Granville Street in 1937.}



{A woman and her daughter (Patricia) as they pass the Royal Bank of Montreal sometime during the late 1930s. The person who contributed this picture to the collection added that Patricia made all her own clothes, including the wonderful white coat she's sporting here.} 



{One of the things about street photography that I always really enjoy is picking out the interesting details in the background, such as the sign in this 1930s shot of a little girl and (I'm guessing) her father or grandfather, which says "Diamonds, English China, Souvenirs" - certainly your mixed bag of offerings there.} 



{Two cheerful, stylishly dressed 1930s woman - don't you just adore their hats?} 



{Four ladies (identified as Phyllis, Mary, Catherine and Rose) pause to have their photo snapped during a day of shopping.} 



{It's completely lovely fashions across the board on all three of these young women, whose picture was captured in 1939.} 



{More charming fashions, these time captured three years later in 1942, being sported by sisters Colleen and Yvonne Leveque. This photo was taken shortly before Colleen enlisted in the RCAF.} 



{Though the photo itself has seen better days, the image that continues to shine out from it still clearly shows a handsome young couple from 1946.} 



{Two mothers and their sweet little kids snapped in Stanley Park, during the spring or summer of 1947.} 



{A cheerful chap and two smartly attired ladies with lovely hairstyles, circa 1943.} 



{A beautiful close up shot of a smiling young 1940s woman identified as Dodo Mosses.} 



{Quite a few of the photos included in this collection include a little bit of background information about them. In the case of this particular image of a beautifully attired young woman, we're told that her coat was purchased for her by her husband who worked overtime before he shipped out overseas with the RCAF in 1944 so that she would stay extra warm while he was gone. What a heartwarmingly sweet memory.} 



{Between his well coiffed 'do and her stylish trousers, there's much to delight in about this fun shot from 1948.} 



{A woman identified as Dorothy Black walking on Granville Street in 1948. Love her crisp plaid blazer.} 



{A pair of smiling best friends, Hilary and Diane, shopping downtown in 1949. Both ladies were students at King Edward High School on 12th and Oak at the time, and both would later go on to become teachers.} 



{The elegantly attired members of a ladies bridge club. Fantastic hats and handbags one and all!} 



{Foncie didn't just shoot his wonderful street snaps during the daytime. Here we see a young 1950s couple named Don and Anne Kyle on the street in front of the Sky Diner at night.} 



{Two teenage gals having a blast at the PNE in 1953. The accompanying info for this shot comes from one of the ladies pictured here and says that pair earned pocket money by picking blueberries at a local farm. This point struck a touching note with me, because some of my own relatives ran blueberry farms during the mid-twentieth century in the Lower Mainland, too, of which my own mom worked on one of them to earn her own spending money as a teen, too.} 



{As anyone who has spent even a little bit of time in Vancouver will tell you, rain is a very common occurrence there, often necessitating the bringing of an umbrella wherever you go, as was the case for these two gals back in 1954.} 



{There's great fashions and happy faces aplenty in this charming shot of a 1950s couple walking hand-in-hand.} 


{Three beautifully dressed young women, two of whom were in town visiting from the Kootanies, on their way to the movies in 1954.}



{Love the fashionable wiggle dresses these two young ladies are sporting while photographed one day in 1958 while out on their lunch break from work.} 



{Smiles and style abound in this wonderful nighttime shot from 1958, which shows a young woman (who reminds me a little of Ava Gardner) and her date headed to a dance. The couple would later go on to marry and settle in the nearby city of Delta, British Columbia.} 

{All image used throughout this post are via Foncie's Corner.}

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These images speak of a time long gone, yet they seem squarely familiar and are so very easy to relate to. I've never had a street photographer stop and ask to take my snap, but I like to imagine that Foncie might have done just that, if he was still with us and out taking snaps today. After all, in these Canadian parts, a modern gal sporting the fashions of his youth wouldn't have been something that likely walked past Foncie's lens every day.

I hope that you enjoyed seeing a small snippet of Foncie's vast collection of photographs, hundreds more of which can be viewed online day or night, anytime you might be in the mood to enjoy a longer look at work of Vancouver's best known, and most loved, street photographer.