Street Reverb Magazine

©John Goldsmith

Last fall, on another typically cool and cloudy Vancouver day, I had the distinct pleasure to meet the esteemed local street photographer, Fred Herzog. He was giving a public lecture at Emily Carr University of Art + Design which was hosted by faculty member and photographer Stephen Waddell. The following audio is from the 18 October 2010 lecture and was generously provided by Airn Macfarlane.

[audio:FredHerzogLecture_StreetReverb.mp3|titles=Fred Herzog Lecture - Emily Carr University - 18 October 2010|artists=Fred Herzog]

For anyone who lives in this cosmopolitan city, Herzog’s photographs have a way of implanting memories within us and from to a time when most locals had not yet arrived here, including me. When Mr. Herzog landed from his native Germany in the early 1950s, Vancouver was not deemed the world’s most livable city time and again. It was just a fledgling and Expo 86, the event that put Vancouver on Canada’s map, was still a full three decades away. At that time, instead of tourism, and for better or for worse, the Olympic Legacy, Vancouver mostly got by with physical labour and logging. Those things charged the city’s neon lights along Granville Street. With his Leica in hand, Herzog operated as a self-described flaneur.

“Take street pictures because it hones your instincts for speed, for quick composition, for [inaudible]. But above all what you bring in your mind to the scene is what makes your picture. If you don’t read, if you don’t have discussions with enlightened friends, you do not get there. There is a saying about seeing: Only a few people can see but most people don’t even look. And that says a lot to me. You can only see if you have something in your mind to bring to the picture. The camera is just the least important adjunct to your ideas. Your observations are important because they’re you. The camera is just a gadget you can carry on in your hand or around your neck or on a tripod.”

On its rain-slicked streets that rippled with reflections of pink, green and blue, the strip spun like the film reels of its movie houses and the roulette wheel of the Pacific National Convention. Herzog primarily photographed the working class though you might not be able to tell. Back then, people dressed up to go out. Now, to Herzog’s chagrin, the buzz and its neon are gone. The billboards, too. They say it was to sanitize the city but, with it, the character also went, only to be replaced with glinting green glass towers, flashes from dance club lights and the occasional pops from gang firefights. What remains are Herzog’s lasting Kodachrome images, which were constructed at a time when most of his contemporaries were known for their gritty monochromatics, with blacks as dark as the soot shadowing the top of the Hotel Vancouver. Since Kodachrome was both expensive and slow (ISO 10), it meant shooting at long shutter speeds (1/10s) and usually not more than one or two frames per scene. There was no extravagance, such as the kind a dSLR can afford, most of which are too heavy for Herzog to hold onto as he pushed over 80 years of age. Yet, he still shoots and I’d bet his frames are every bit as precise as his neatly combed hair. Now, Kodachrome has expired and Herzog himself opts for smaller point and shoots, especially for travel.

“Who says I didn’t learn a lot from the movies? Absolutely. You know, what we put into our pictures is not a smart idea. What we put into our pictures is our whole life and our whole intellectual discourse. Everything we know and everything we have done and everything that’s in our history goes into every single picture we take. Have you ever thought of that? That’s how it is.”

In his lecture, Herzog described his decision to shoot color as conscious, and what is significant, it came at the peril of not eating or, at least, eating less; his preference was the 0.75 cent goulash on Robsonstrasse. Herzog avoided the gourmet luxuries of food for the best film, or maybe a double matinee if he was feeling indulgent. He discussed his appreciation for technology, almost like an engineer rather than a photographer, but what surprised me were the technological hurdles he face by choosing to shoot Kodachrome. If the challenges of street photography weren’t hard enough, he made it more difficult. It’s no wonder other photographers of the day stuck it out with black and white. Even more, by his own account, Herzog preferred sharp images and would bin the rest. Now I tell you: I never before wished to be a garbage can but, I think I would have been quite taken to have been the one in Herzog’s room.

“You have to take risks. You have to take risks even now. And if you go out, and you take only safe pictures, you have not achieved anything. You have to make a hole for yourself every day you go out and you take 50 pictures, at least a few of them have to be risky. I mean technically risky. You have to do something you have never done before.”

As a 20th century industrial port, the city’s residents made an effort to parade themselves in their Sunday best. Today, that formal attire has been replaced with yogawear. As I hurried to the talk that day in my best t-shirt, I didn’t really know what to expect. I had never met Herzog and all I could guess was that his speech was thick with a German accent. And, even though I had come across a few informal photos of him, I wasn’t sure that I would recognize Herzog.

As I made my way to enter to the South Building with a group of other street enthusiasts, I saw an older man perched on an overlook, carefully watching the street below. Whoever he was, the gentleman looked comfortable in that role. I quickly dashed up the stairs to the entrance of the building and clumsily approached him with a hot coffee in hand. Like the people he photographed crowding around the betting table, I took a gamble: “Mr. Herzog?”

Yes, it was. A modest man, with a keen wit, and later I would find, opinionated in his politics. He is street smart, and, of course, has a sharp eye. He sees in color. Don’t we all? Yes, times have changed and we should thank Herzog for his starring role in that.

Fred Herzog’s prints are regularly on display at the Equinox Gallery in Vancouver. New copies of the book Fred Herzog: Vancouver Photographs (2007) are sold out at Amazon but a new book from a recent C/O Berlin exhibit is available on pre-order. See: Fred Herzog: Photographs.