Douglas Coupland

Provocative photographs inspired by his 1998 novel, Girlfriend in a Coma.

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Rabbit Lane, a leafy residential enclave in West Vancouver, is both the setting and a metaphor for Douglas Coupland’s gloomy but insightful view of contemporary society. 

Presented in conjunction with Capture, Vancouver’s annual photography festival, Coupland’s exhibition, Rabbit Lane, is a series of staged photographs on view at the West Vancouver Art Museum until May 28. The show, a two-year creative collaboration between the prolific artist and writer and curator Hilary Letwin, is inspired by passages from his 1998 novel, Girlfriend in a Coma, which takes place in and around his boyhood home.

“It’s as if time stood still in 1966 and it never changed,” Coupland says of his old digs. 

The novel opens in 1979 when teenaged protagonist Karen McNeil falls into a coma. She reawakens 17 years later only to discover her friends are fumbling aimlessly through a global apocalypse. Coupland says the book is ultimately about the need “to shape up and renegotiate with being alive in the world.”

Interestingly, Coupland had no trouble negotiating with his old neighbourhood to realize his vision. Rabbit Lane is largely crowdsourced, the result of a mass appeal for volunteers and donations – cars, retro clothes and, above all, mid-century post-and-beam houses. 

“I think they wanted to commemorate that part of history,” Coupland says of those who opened their homes. 

West Coast Modern is an iconic part of West Vancouver history, and, as Letwin observes, it almost becomes an additional character in the narrative. 

Coupland’s photographs initially seem reminiscent of Jeff Wall’s staged creations. But whereas Wall is rooted in reportage, focusing on the mundane and giving it importance, Coupland appears more interested in performance. His pieces acknowledge the camera. We’re aware they are set up. 

And while Wall takes weeks, even months, to plan and rehearse his tableaus, Coupland and Letwin jumped right in, planning first but shooting scenes without rehearsals. Their models were amateurs drawn from the community and were directed “live” on site. The entire shoot was completed in seven days.

“I think the structure owes a lot to classical painting,” says Coupland. “We were saying ‘think of The Last Supper and your relationship with everyone else.’ I was going for that kind of look and it translated seamlessly.” 

The central figure in Jared certainly looks like Christ and the formal positioning of the cast in Séance resembles 16th-century Mannerism. Coupland says he was looking for charged moments to amplify the sense of drama. 

While it’s helpful to have read Coupland’s book, the tableaus do stand on their own. Many convey an unsettling sense of disruption rather than literally interpreting key passages. For instance, in Doom, the kitchen floor is covered in baked beans (that’s 240 cans of beans, by the way) to represent an emotion rather than an event. But playing reality against the fanciful only reinforces Coupland’s message.

“There’s this world that we all live in called the real world and there is this other world that lies inside of us waiting to be opened,” he says. “I think these photographs inhabit some moment in time when letters are being opened and you’re actually seeing something that lies inside all of us. I think what art does, or what art tries to do, is to open and see inside a little bit.”

“I would really like everyone who has not read the book to look at these photographs and say: ‘What the hell is going on here?’” ■

Douglas Coupland: Rabbit Lane at the West Vancouver Art Museum from March 30 to May 28, 2022.

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