Denis Bouvier would like to give a nod (clin d’oeil) to street photographer Fred Herzog with this photo reminiscent of a scene Herzog might have photographed. The elderly gentleman in black and white seems to be from a bygone era wearing his formal clothes and gloves while viewing the colourful modern life on Granville Street from a discreet distance.
Herzog’s website describes his work as “the only comprehensive body of art/photography of Vancouver in existence.” A street photographer par excellence, Herzog has been documenting urban life in Vancouver since settling here in 1953. His iconic pictures involve corner stores, vacant lots, neon signs and street scenes often depicting ordinary people. He took most of his photos in the early years on weekends and evenings while he worked as a medical photographer at UBC. He also taught photography in the late 60s and early 70s at Simon Fraser University and UBC.
Herzog worked mostly with kodachrome colour slide film in the 50s and 60s when most art photography was done in black and white. This somewhat marginalized him from the art scene of the day. In fact, it has only been in recent decades that his work has been fully appreciated. His career really took flight in 2007 after the Vancouver Art gallery had a retrospective of his work.
In 2009, Herzog received the City of Vancouver Heritage Award and in 2010 received an honourary doctorate from Emily Carr University. On April 15, 2014, at age 83, Herzog received one of Canada’s most esteemed honours: the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts. The prize included $30,000, $10,000 of which he will give to Presentation House in North Vancouver, the photo gallery that always supported his work.
Herzog has collections of his work in all the major cities in Canada and some in San Francisco and Seattle. He has had shows in Berlin, London, Paris and Madrid. He will be part of one of the biggest shows this year in Germany at Hamburg’s 100 Years of Leica. It will feature 140 famous photographers who used Leica cameras.
You may run into him on the street someday, since he is still actively photographing.
To view some of Herzog’s photos, visit: http://www.equinoxgallery.com/artists/portfolio/fred-herzog
©2014 Denis Bouvier | denisbouvier.com
©2014 Denis Bouvier | denisbouvier.com
©2014 Denis Bouvier | denisbouvier.com
