Fred Herzog

The quiet images of a master of color – rendered in timeless, striking black and white.

Fred Herzog. Black and White reveals for the first time a lesser-known side of the legendary photographer who shaped the visual identity of Vancouver like no other. Long before he gained fame for his richly saturated Kodachrome slides, Fred Herzog captured life on the streets in black and white – direct, unfiltered, and full of poetic depth.

This book brings together photographs from the 1950s through the 1970s: urban snapshots, rural scenes, and travel impressions that bring a vanished everyday world into focus. At times melancholic, at times humorous, sometimes nearly graphic in their reduction – yet always with Herzog’s distinctive eye for the exceptional within the ordinary.

Highlights:

- First-ever publication of Fred Herzog’s early black-and-white photographs
- Insight into Canadian life between 1950 and 1970
- Surprising street photography moments with strong artistic sensibility
- Compositions shaped by dramatic light-shadow contrasts and graphic clarity
- An authentic portrait of urban and rural life
- High-quality photobook design with meticulous image reproduction

Black and White builds on Hatje Cantz’s bestselling Modern Color, expanding Herzog’s oeuvre with the little-known black-and-white side of his work.

FRED HERZOG (1930–2019) grew up in Stuttgart. In 1953 he settled in Vancouver, where he worked as a medical photographer. A pioneer of color photography, he was already in his 70s, when printing technology finally allowed him to recreate the texture and depth of his Kodachrome color slides. His first solo show at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2007, gained him widespread international recognition.