AT A GLANCE
- Known for
- Colour street photographs of Vancouver in the 1950s and 1960s: neon signs, shop windows and working-class neighbourhoods
- Worked in
- Colour, mostly Kodachrome slide film; also about 30,000 black-and-white pictures
- Camera
- A Kodak Retina at first; a Leica M3 from 1957, later also a Nikon F
- Also
- Medical photographer from 1957 to 1990; first solo museum show at 76, at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2007
- Start with
- Fred Herzog: Modern Color (Hatje Cantz, 2017)
Fred Herzog (1930–2019) was a German-born Canadian photographer. From the 1950s on, he walked the streets of Vancouver with colour slide film, at a time when serious photography was almost always black and white. His pictures were little known until his first solo show in 2007, when he was 76.
The story
In 1952 Ulrich Herzog left Germany for Canada. He was in his early twenties and had been taking pictures for two years, mostly of friends on hiking trips in the Alps. On the way over, the ship took on water. “All my baggage was floating in water,” he remembered, and “all the negatives were destroyed in the salt water.” He arrived with nothing to show from his camera.
So he started again. In 1953 he moved to Vancouver, and the day after he arrived he joined Union Steamships. For about three years he worked at sea as a stoker and oiler. His crewmates called him Fritz, then Fred.
Back on land in 1957, he became a medical photographer at St. Paul's Hospital. At work he photographed surgery and skin diseases. In the evenings and on weekends he walked the city. Black and white meant long hours in the darkroom, and he did not have them. Colour slides came back ready. “I'd get 36 slides back, beautiful, finish,” he said.
Kodachrome had its problems. The film went by mail to Palo Alto or Rochester, and the wait was about two weeks. Film also cost money. For a neon street scene at Hastings and Carrall in 1958, he made a single exposure. “I only took one picture,” he said. “I had no money for that.” Not a second one for safety.
In 1968 he photographed a man with a bandaged hand, his arm raised to hail a bus. Behind him, an elderly woman holds a pair of white gloves. Man with Bandage became his best-known picture.
For decades, however, few people saw his work outside his own slide shows. In the 1980s the National Gallery of Canada turned down his offer to donate his collection. It was only interested in black and white. “Nobody wanted them. It's colour,” he said. Printing could not match his Kodachrome colours until he was in his seventies. Then, in 2007, the Vancouver Art Gallery gave him his first solo show. “People came to it and broke into tears because they recognized a city they had forgotten existed,” he said.
The young man who lost every negative at sea left more than 100,000 colour pictures of one city. None of them were staged. “Content cannot be manufactured, in my opinion,” he said. “That which I can find is better than that which you can make.”
The work
- 1930Born Ulrich Herzog on 21 September in Bad Friedrichshall, near Stuttgart, Germany
- 1952Emigrates to Canada and lives first in Toronto
- 1953Moves to Vancouver and works at sea for Union Steamships
- 1957Becomes a medical photographer at St. Paul's Hospital and buys his first Leica
- 1961Joins the University of British Columbia as head of its Photo/Cine Division
- 2007First solo show, Fred Herzog: Vancouver Photographs, at the Vancouver Art Gallery
- 2014Receives the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement; Bogner's Grocery appears on a Canada Post stamp
- 2017Fred Herzog: Modern Color is published by Hatje Cantz
- 2019Dies in Vancouver on 9 September, aged 88
Lessons
Know your exposure. Film was expensive, so he often made only one frame of a scene. He had to get the light right the first time.
Stay unseen. He photographed people just before they noticed him. Once they saw the camera, he moved on.
Find, don't make. He never staged his pictures. Signs, shop windows and passers-by gave him all the content he needed.
Try this: walk one street you know well for a month. Look for signs, shop windows and people passing them. Allow yourself only one frame for each scene.
Gear
Herzog spoke openly about his tools and the limits they gave him.
Kodak Retina: his first camera of his own, from 1950. He traded a folding plate camera he inherited from an uncle for it. It had a simple viewfinder and no rangefinder.
Leica M3: he bought his first Leica, an M3, in 1957. It became his main camera for the street. Later he also used a Nikon F.
Kodachrome slide film: a slow film, ISO 10, with rich and lasting colour. He mailed it away for processing and waited about two weeks for the slides.
For a 1958 view of Hastings at Columbia, he wanted a long lens he did not have. So he mounted a view camera lens on his 35mm camera with a bellows.
Books
Fred Herzog: Modern Color (Hatje Cantz, 2017). The largest survey of his work, with 320 pages and more than 230 pictures, many of them published here for the first time. Essays by David Campany, Hans-Michael Koetzle and the artist Jeff Wall place him in the history of colour photography. The prints are made with modern methods that finally match the look of his Kodachrome slides. The New York Times listed it among the best photo books of 2016. The best place to start.
Fred Herzog: Photographs (Douglas & McIntyre, 2011). A monograph of his colour street photographs of Vancouver, mostly from the 1950s and 1960s: vacant lots, second-hand shops, neon signs and working-class people. Claudia Gochmann wrote the introduction. Douglas Coupland writes about what the pictures show of the city, Jeff Wall writes about one single image, and Sarah Milroy talks with Herzog himself. Good for readers who want to hear his own voice next to the pictures.
Fred Herzog: Vancouver Photographs (Vancouver Art Gallery and Douglas & McIntyre, 2007). The 160-page catalogue of his first solo museum show, curated by Grant Arnold, with texts by Arnold and the writer Michael Turner. It was the first book to look at his whole body of work, and the show that made him known. A good choice for readers interested in Vancouver and its history.
Fred Herzog: Black and White (Hatje Cantz, 2022). A clothbound book of 70 black-and-white photographs, the less-known side of his work. It shows his play of light and shadow and scenes from outside the city. The text is by the writer Geoff Dyer. It was made as a companion to Modern Color, for readers who already know his colour pictures.
In his words
“Timing in photography is almost everything.”
“When people see you, the picture's gone for good.”
“Photographic finesse has its place, but it can also get in the way.”
“I loved the docks, the airport, the street, the people.”
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