Life may be colorful, but black-and-white photography is more realistic—or so it was said. For many years, color photography was considered an inferior and not particularly valuable medium. Classic black-and-white photography was undisputed in the art world, but artistic color photography was supposedly banal and amateurish, a commercial medium for dilettantes. Color photographs from these early years seem strangely familiar and often confound the viewer’s ideas of artistic value: it is impossible to say whether we saw them before in a family album or a museum. Are these really just snapshots, or are they the work of an artist? Are the intense colors the result of bad film quality or were they intentional? 

In the early 1950s, Fred Herzog began to revolutionize established viewing habits and existing orthodoxies. As a pioneer of color photography, he developed a profound visual sensibility for the ostensibly inconsequential. His subject matter included Vancouver streets, supermarkets, gas stations, bars, urban and natural landscapes—and again and again, people in their environments, visualizing the highs and lows of the (North) American dream. He explored color photography as a medium with the potential for both great objectivity and great virtuosity, and provided a critical view of the banal, the ephemeral, and the seemingly meaningless. Above all through his use of color, he infused his works with a unique and compelling atmosphere, allowing them to appear, for the first time, authentic. Not only the color but also the subject matter pushed the boundaries of the prevailing understanding of art. While the seemingly banal motifs no longer seem so surprising today, the photographs presented in this exhibition still possess a unique fascination and an enduring freshness.