Fred Herzog (1930–2019) was a German-born Canadian photographer celebrated for his pioneering use of colour in street photography. After immigrating to Canada in 1952 and settling in Vancouver the following year, Herzog spent decades documenting the city’s working-class neighbourhoods, storefronts, neon signage, and everyday street scenes using Kodachrome slide film. His bold use of colour in the 1950s and 60s predated the acceptance of colour in fine art photography by decades. Technological limitations prevented him from making prints that matched the vibrancy of Kodachrome until the 1990s, when his work finally received widespread critical recognition. Herzog worked as a medical photographer, later becoming Head of the Photo/Cine Division at the University of British Columbia and teaching at both UBC and Simon Fraser University. His 2007 retrospective at the Vancouver Art Gallery established him internationally as a key figure in modern colour photography, and he received the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in 2014.

Fred Herzog was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1930 and emigrated to Canada in 1952. Settling in Vancouver, he worked as a medical photographer while independently documenting the city’s streets with color Kodachrome film — an unusual practice when color was seen only in advertisements or amateur snapshots. His images of neon signs, shop windows, and pedestrians captured the texture of postwar urban life. Herzog’s work remained largely unseen for decades; his first major museum retrospective was held at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2007. Today he is regarded as a pioneer of color street photography, predating the movement associated with artists like William Eggleston.