Over the past few years, it’s become clear that one of Vancouver’s newest art phenoms is also one of its most long-standing: the 82-year-old retired medical photographer and photographic flâneur Fred Herzog.
Since the early 1950s, Herzog has framed the changing face of urban life. Ranging from the docks and laneways of Vancouver to the streets of Mexico City, and largely shot in the hyper-real tones of now-vintage Kodachrome colour, Herzog’s work travels across time and place in a photographic journey that captures the subtle drama of structural and social identities in flux.
It’s an amazing documentary project (currently numbering 85,000 images and counting) that is indelibly marked by Herzog’s unique history and humanism.
With his work in increasingly high demand at home and abroad, including solo shows of late in New York and Berlin, Herzog remains quietly at work, walking and photographing the back alleys and streets of his hometown—though he now shoots in digital.
This selection of images recaps poetic views from Herzog’s six decades of framing the margins and minutiae of everyday life. Just click on the Photos icon above to take a look.
