Fred Herzog

My second month living in Vancouver I got a job working at a stall in the Public Market on Granville Island. My commute to work saw me taking a bus to Granville and Broadway, and then walking down Granville Street to get to the island. That particular stretch of Granville is a pretty ritzy area, and so has loads of antique stores and galleries.
One morning while walking down I was struck by an image in the front window of the Equinox Gallery:


Family, 1967

The paisley, those earrings, that glove and cigarette..I just loved it all.
The entire time the exhibit was on I would walk a little slower by that window and take in the photo every morning. I was too shy to go into the gallery and see what else he had done.
Months later at my first trip to the art gallery I found a book of Fred Herzog photographs and was exposed to a Vancouver I had no idea about.
While there is a lot about Vancouver I love, the overall feel of the city still is lacking for me. Everything is so much newer here than in Ontario, and it's one hurdle I can't seem to get over.
Herzog's photographs show a Vancouver that I would have loved to experience.


Hastings at Columbia, 1958


Bookshop Main, 1963


Hastings & Seymour, 1961


Granville St, 1960


Hub & Lux, 1958