Fred Herzog: Modern Color

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Herzog started taking pictures in Germany in 1950 where, as part of a youth group who every summer went hiking in the Alps, he was given a Kodak Retina I camera. There’s defiance in the work of Herzog, whose images focused largely on the working class of Vancouver, Canada. This book brings together more than 230 images, many of which have never been reproduced before, and includes essays composed by respected authors David Campany and Hans-Michael Koetzle. In this respect, his photographs can be seen as prefiguring the New Color photographers of the 1970s. That which we find, the work and the use of the people out there, it’s natural, that’s what ordinary people do, that interests me.

Despite slight shifts in social, cultural and technological parameters, the world now looks much the same as it did in the ’60s and ’70s. Fred Herzog is known for his distinctive approach to color photography in the 1950s and 1960s, a time when the art form was almost solely represented by black and white imagery. The young German immigrant was fascinated by all aspects of Canadian life and set out to document it with his camera. In this respect, his photographs can be seen as a pre-figuration of the New Color photographers of the seventies. Furthermore, his shots were taken using mostly Kodachrome slide film, meaning he was limited in terms of actually getting to exhibit his images in public.The Canadian photographer worked largely with Kodachrome slide film for over 50 years, and only in the past decade has technology allowed him to make archival pigment prints that match the exceptional color and intensity of the Kodachrome slide, making this an excellent time to reevaluate and reexamine his work.

Professionally employed as a medical photographer, he spent his evenings and weekends photographing the city and its inhabitants in vibrant color. Fred Herzog is known for his unusual use of colour in the 50s and 60s, when art photography was almost exclusively associated with black and white imagery. They come from that process of walking and that intuitive, deductive reasoning of where to be and how to take a picture when you’re there,” said Andy Sylvester, owner of the Equinox Gallery in Vancouver. Herzog also had the vision, and courage, to shoot in color when virtually all serious art photography was in black and white.

Fred Herzog, as we said, is known for his unusual use of color in the fifties and sixties, a time when art photography was almost exclusively associated with black and white imagery. In the 1950s and 1960s, many in the art world didn’t take color photography seriously, considering it amateurish and garish. It was the best film and most reliable development, although he had to wait an age for the results as he sent them to Palo Alto, California, or Rochester, New York. Two of Herzog’s big influences were Walker Evans, who documented the effects of the Great Depression in the U. In 1953, decades before William Eggleston and Stephen Shore established color photography as a serious medium for art photography, Fred Herzog shot his first roll of color film.