Noted Vancouver photographer Fred Herzog dies at age 88
Credit to Author: Kevin Griffin| Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2019 20:58:16 +0000
Legendary Vancouver photographer Fred Herzog has died. He was 88.
Herzog, who died on Monday, is survived by his daughter Ariane and son Tyson, according to Equinox Gallery, which represents the artist. His wife Christel died in 2013.
Herzog was a young immigrant from Germany when he arrived in Vancouver in 1952. While working as a medical photographer at the University of B.C., in his spare time he walked the streets of Vancouver with his camera taking photographs of people, buildings and whatever caught his eye.
Most of Herzog’s photographs were of Vancouver as an urban city rather than outdoor destination. They were as varied as neon signs on Granville, crowded sidewalks on East Hastings, virtually empty streets disappearing into fog, an abandoned car in Strathcona, and gamblers at the PNE.
PNE photo by Fred Herzog
“I was trying to show vitality,” he said in an interview in 2005 in The Vancouver Sun.
In 2014, he was the recipient of the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts.
Screen shot of White Ship, archival pigment print, 1967 by Fred Herzog
What set Herzog’s work apart is that he was among the first in the world to make art with colour photographs. At one time, many in the art world didn’t take colour photography seriously, considering it amateurish and garish. Most other serious artists working in the 1950s and 1960s took only black-and-white photographs.
Herzog used the unique quality of Kodachrome slide film to accentuate colours and textures. By taking colour rather than black and white photographs, he made his street scenes seem much more modern.
Herzog’s breakout moment occurred late in life, in 2007, when The Vancouver Art Gallery held the first major retrospective of his work: Fred Herzog Vancouver Photographs.
Fred Herzog, Untitled, 1960, inkjet print, Collection of the artist, Courtesy of Equinox Gallery.
In the book Fred Herzog’s Photographs, Claudia Gochmann wrote that Herzog’s use of colour helped establish it as important as content and composition.
Quoted in a story in The Vancouver Sun in 2012, Gochmann said Herzog is one of the early masters of colour photography who had received far too little international recognition.
“Through this understanding of the medium, Herzog can be considered a pioneer in the development of colour photography as an art form,” she wrote.
On the street with his hand-held 35-mm Leica, Herzog said he had to work fast and on impulse.
Photo by Vancouver photographer Fred Herzog titled the Joke, 1960.
“If you don’t trust your instincts, if you don’t trust your first vision, then you lose it,” Herzog said in The Vancouver Sun in 1994.
“So when there’s action I start shooting right away. I don’t look long.”
Fred Herzog, The Hub, 1958, inkjet print, Collection of the artist, Courtesy of Equinox Gallery.
Fred Herzog, Hastings and Columbia Street, Vancouver, 1958, chromogenic print, Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Fred Herzog photo – Liquid Foods 1968 – Fred Herzog, 2013 Courtesy of Equinox Gallery, Vancouver
Fred Herzog, Foot of Main, 1968, inkjet print, Collection of the artist, Courtesy of Equinox Gallery.
Photo by Vancouver photographer Fred Herzog of Howe and Nelson, 1968.
Fred Herzog photo – Boat Scrapers 1 1964 – Courtesy of Equinox Gallery, Vancouver
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