fred herzog

When painting, my choice of subject matter is all over the map, but my photographic passion is definitely urban scenes. I also love 'period pieces', so when I read today about the upcoming Fred Herzog photographic exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery I got pretty excited. The VAG seems to play the two extremes of the art spectrum: crowd-pleaser exhibitions to draw visitors at one end and avant garde events to stimulate the grey matter at the other. The Fred Herzog exhibition is definitely the former but there is plenty to think about, too. The Georgia Straight article is worth the read if you know Vancouver.

There's a glass-half-empty "you young people have ruined everything" flavour to Herzog's remarks, but because he trained his eye on the city for a half century, there's also a lot of truth in his observations. For example, modern Vancouverites know Robson Street as the place to shop. Herzog knew Robson Street as neon signs and German immigrant-run mom-and-pop businesses:

Go to one of the main streets in Singapore now and one of the first things you’ll say is, ‘That looks like Robson Street,’ because all the companies that sell clothes and shoes and watches and electronics offer the same stuff worldwide. And it’s not interesting to me as a photographer.…That’s sad, because each business on that street [Robson] was unique and owned by an individual. Now it’s all part of chains.…The whole street has been replaced. What we have now is not a version of what it was in a more modern style. What we have now is something else.

Robson Street in 1957:






















Nothing says 'The '60s' like Lucy, Norris and a Ford Falcon (please correct me if that's not a Ford -- I used to be good at identifying cars from the '60s):

Those of you well-acquainted with this view from the Granville Street Bridge (2004)













check this out (1957):






Vancouver magazine also has an excellent article on Herzog here.

The exhibition runs January 25th until mid-May.