Herzog’s work has much in common with William Eggleston, who eschewed big scenes in favour of the quotidian. And a lot of English gentlemen did serious and beautiful photography… But I didn’t have time for that. Fred Herzog is known for his unusual use of color in the 1950s and 1960s, a time when art photography was almost exclusively associated with black and white imagery. 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. 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.

Scenes of society in the macrocosm, rather than showing us nothing, showed us everything: race relations, urban alienation, gender politics and class distinctions. Fred Herzog is known for his unusual use of colour in the fifties and sixties, a time when art photography was almost exclusively associated with black and white imagery. For more than 50 years, the Canadian photographer worked almost exclusively with Kodachrome slide film, and it is only in the past decade that technological advances have enabled him to produce archival pigment prints that match the extraordinary color and intensity of Kodachrome slides. Professionally employed as a medical photographer, he spent his evenings and weekends photographing the city and its inhabitants in vibrant color.In this respect, his photographs can be seen as a pre-figuration of the New Color photographers of the seventies. There’s defiance in the work of Herzog, whose images focused largely on the working class of Vancouver, Canada.

Roger Bamber’s 50-year career spanned everything from the Falklands War to Live Aid, but it was in his home city that he found most of his inspiration, as Ailsa McWhinnie discovers. Those images, taken through a camera that possessed only a primitive peephole viewfinder, were lost some years later as Herzog travelled to Canada on a rust-bucket ship that apparently nearly sank. 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. However, technology only allowed him to make archival pigment prints that match the color and intensity of the Kodachrome slide in the past decade.Two of Herzog’s big influences were Walker Evans, who documented the effects of the Great Depression in the U. What was striking to Herzog at this time was that he was beginning to identify a genre that had perhaps not yet found its definition: street photography. The real pioneer of the medium seems to change depending on whom you ask (most people, perhaps rightly, would say William Eggleston) but let’s allow some space for another name: Fred Herzog. Fred Herzog is best known for his unusual use of color photography in the 1950s and 1960s, a time when art photography was almost exclusively associated with black-and-white imagery. Herzog’s big breakout occurred late in life when The Vancouver Art Gallery held the first major retrospective of his work in 2007: Fred Herzog Vancouver Photographs curated by Grant Arnold.