Fred Herzog

Vancouver, British Columbia , 1958 - Photo by Fred Herzog

Vancouver photographer Fred Herzog was shooting street scenes on Kodachrome while other art photographers were still shooting B&W. The B&W photographers got published, while Fred's work was mostly seen only in slide shows. That has changed, and now Mr. Herzog's works are receiving wide attention. There is a book (link,) and a gallery exhibit, link.

The photo above is certainly drool worthy for the neon sign enthusiast. The White Lunch steaming coffee cup is pure genius, who wouldn't want to slide in there on a cold rainy Vancouver evening and grab a cup?

Fred's comments on shooting Kodachrome from an article in the Vancouver Sun:

•O n shooting in colour, at a time when all serious art photography was done in black and white:

"First of all when you do black and white all have is the basic resource, a negative. That needs a lot of dancing around the darkroom and time and patience and energy. You should ideally be a man of leisure, an English gentleman. And a lot of English gentlemen did serious and beautiful photography.

"But I didn’t have time for that. That’s one reason [I did colour slides]. I’d get 36 slides back, beautiful, finish.”"

• On Kodachrome slides:

"Kodachrome was the best film and the most reliable development, but it was far from reliable. I was so frustrated at times I sent film to Palo Alto or to Rochester, just to get them developed right. And of course that entailed an extremely long wait. You'd take the pictures today and they would come back in two weeks or something."

"But Kodachrome was the best film. I have to thank Kodak for making that product. Without that product, we would not have the pictures. Pictures that were taken on other films have suffered more than Kodachrome. Kodachrome was thought to last 50 years, and it has.”"

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