Fred Herzog

Fred Herzog (1930 –2019) devoted his artistic life to walking the streets of Vancouver as well as almost 40 countries with his Leica, photographing - mostly with colour slide film - his observations of the street life with all its complexities.

Fred was born Ulrich Herzog in Stuttgart, Germany in 1930 and spent his childhood in Rottweil, Germany. He lost both of his parents during and directly after the war, and in 1946 Herzog went to work as an apprentice in his grandparents' hardware store. Disillusioned by the ravages of war and the situation in Germany, he immigrated to Canada in 1952 and settled in Vancouver in 1953.

During the next several years. Herzog studied photography magazines while working aboard ships for the CPR steamship line, and in 1957 he was hired as a medical photographer at St. Paul's Hospital.

Herzog ultimately became celebrated internationally for his pioneering street photography, his understanding of the medium combined with, as he put it, "how you see and how you think" created the right moment to take a picture.