04 January 2013

Art I like - Fred Herzog

Fred Herzog's "Old Man Main" is in the "Cartier-Bresson: a question of colour" exhibition at Somerset House (till 27 January). The entire show is well worth seeing, but Herzog's work strikes a chord with me because these photos were taken in Vancouver at the time I was growing up there, and they show things I didn't notice at the time, as well as bringing back a lot of other memories from that era. Like these houses (image from here), now replaced by high-rise apartments, hiding the North Shore mountains -
Herzog and West End from Burrard Bridge (1957)
Apart from my nostalgic links with these pictures, they are amazing images. This article has a selection, including this staircase -
You need to look at other photos to get an idea of the range of his palette; the colours are unlike those you get with digital photography.

Photo-flaneur Herzog has been using his camera since the 1950s and currently has 85,000 images.

1 comment:

Cate Rose said...

GREAT photos! I agree, digitization wants to brighten colors to within an inch of their natural life.