FRED HERZOG AND ARNI HARALDSSON IN

John Toohey

In her book On the Beaten Track, art critic and curator Lucy Lippard makes a distinction

between nostalgia, history and heritage. “Nostalgia, like memory, is personal and

subjective; history is purportedly specific; heritage is often concocted, generalized, and

idealized.”1 Lippard considers the terms as they relate to tourism, particularly in the ways

places are marketed, but her definitions are pertinent to how we respond to photographs, in

this case street scenes of Vancouver from the1950s and 1960s by Fred Herzog and a series

of Vancouver apartment buildings, built during this same period, and photographed by

Arni Haraldsson in the 1990s. Lippard’s definitions are not so fixed that objects, images or

places can only belong in one category but within this flexibility lies the problem that the

qualities we ascribe to photographs can result in a misreading. Are we really responding to

a sophisticated aesthetic, or simply a nostalgic idea of the past? If heritage is “concocted,

generalized and idealized,” does it then lead to a false understanding of history?

In 2006 Equinox Gallery in Vancouver mounted an exhibition of photographs that Fred

Herzog had taken of the city in the 1950s and 1960s.2 The show was promoted as a rediscovery of a lost genius whose works showed an astute but idiosyncratic sense of composition and a radical understanding of colour. Though Herzog was employed professionally as a medical photographer and technical instructor in the Fine Arts

Department of the University of and had personal associations with

Vancouver’s artists, few of his works had been seen by the public up to that point. His relative anonymity therefore allowed for him to be presented as something of a Holy Fool: the innocent who saw what the worldly had missed.3

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012 It is the misfortune of rediscovered photographers, particularly if their work was originally

personal and private, that while they add to the history of their particular genre they cannot

upset it. Whatever the quality of their work, they remain outsiders. In terms of composition

and the use of colour, Herzog anticipates the work of American photographers Stephen

Shore and William Eggleston by at least a decade yet, because the history has already been

written and because his work can obviously make no claim to having influenced theirs, it

cannot challenge their eminence – at least for the present.4 The problem is also that in

giving Herzog his due place in the history of photography that may end up being contrary

to his original intentions for taking the photographs.

Herzog has said that although his work was concerned with what Life Magazine has called

the ‘human condition’ he was not interested in pursuing photojournalism as an occupation.

While he put on slide shows for friends and occasionally took on small commissions for

artists, he was apparently happy working full time and regarded the photography he is now

famous for as a weekend pastime.5 In photography, the term ‘amateur’ doesn’t have the

implications it has in other fields. Originally an amateur photographer was someone who

did not operate a commercial studio. Some of the most revered names in 19th century

photography, such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Lady Hawarden and Peter Henry Emerson

considered themselves amateurs without any connotation that they were less adept than

professionals. For Herzog, to be an amateur meant that he was not limited to the structures

that magazines like Life required. (Herzog is not unusual in this regard. There have been

plenty of photographers who enjoyed the vanity of thinking that working outside of the

system protected their integrity.) But if Life, or other sources of popular culture, art history

or art criticism do not interpret the work at the time it was created, someone else will.

When the exhibition opened at Equinox Gallery what was striking about Herzog’s

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012 photographs wasn’t just their visual acuity. It was also evident that he had provided a

record of Vancouver in the years prior to its redevelopment.

Beginning in the 1950s with high-rise residential towers in the West End of Vancouver and

reaching a zenith in the 1980s, the transformation of Vancouver not only modernised the

urban centre, it provided the city with an entirely new identity.6 Once the hub of British

Columbia’s mining and resource industries, the city became a focus for finance,

technology and ’s foreign trade. Visible signs of modernization included the

Skytrain and Expo 86, which had the theme: “Transportation and Communication: World

in Motion - World in Touch.” Redevelopment also transformed the city’s demographics

and during the 1980s the city became increasingly popular for immigrants from East Asia.

For some people, particularly those who can remember an earlier Vancouver, the cost of

this regeneration has been not just the replacement of perfectly good buildings of character

with bland, unimaginative architecture but the erasure of the city’s heritage, or rather, its

marginalization as small pockets were preserved as token gestures.7

We normally use the word nostalgia in the sense of a sentimental regard for the past.

Lippard is careful to use the term in its original sense; “severe homesickness – a form of

melancholia caused by prolonged absence from one’s country or home.”8 This is precisely

the condition that affects in his introductory essay for the catalogue, Fred Herzog

Photographs. “Vancouver in 1950, 1960 or 1970 had a real beauty … Most of that has

been swept away. Today, whatever you can say about Vancouver, you cannot say that most

of its buildings are gracious and appropriate to their settings.”9 His lament isn’t just that the

old city has disappeared but that it didn’t have to. The buildings were still in good

condition and the architecture belonged to the landscape. What replaced it was more often

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012 than not inferior in quality and appearance, and when he says that a photographer like

Herzog couldn’t exist today he cannot believe anyone could show the same affection for

the city.

This sense of nostalgia for the old city is not unique to Vancouver. The 19th century saw

the establishment of more cities around the world than the 500 years that preceded it; on

the west coast of North America, in Latin America, and all of Australia and New Zealand.

These 19th century cities had the advantage of hindsight and were planned to avoid the

problems of haphazard construction, congestion and disease that faced the older cities of

Europe.10 What the citizens of these modern cities did not have was a deep sense of history.

Theirs was too recent. As a result, developers met little resistance, particularly from local

and state governments that wanted to present their cities as modern and dynamic. What

heritage the city had was consigned to a few old buildings and some plaques noting what

was once here. Wall’s jeremiad can be heard from Seattle to Perth and Johannesburg. The

removal of history is also the loss of memory and character.

But there is a trap in reading Herzog’s photographs that we can easily fall into. Much of

what he photographed was itself relatively modern. The neon signs, automobiles and

billboards that date and locate his scenes were not old when he photographed them.

Whatever his emotional response when he saw them, it was not motivated by nostalgia.

This is part of the disjuncture between Herzog’s intentions and our interpretation. It has

come about partly because his work was hidden for long enough that when it emerged we

feel some entitlement to read it on our terms. What we might be seeing isn’t Vancouver

through Herzog’s eyes but our memories or impressions of what we want its history and

heritage to be, the concoction and idealization that Lippard refers to.

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012

In 1993 and 1994, Arni Haraldsson worked the same area Herzog had covered thirty and

forty years earlier, photographing tower blocks in Vancouver from the 1950s for his

project Modern Apartment Buildings. In that the apartments he focused on were built at the

same time Herzog was at work, Haraldsson’s series can be read as a counterpoint to

Herzog’s images. Where Herzog is intimate, Haraldsson is distant and detached. While

Herzog’s captions rarely identify location, Haraldsson is specific about the building’s name

and date of construction. Built on the cusp of Vancouver’s redevelopment surge they can

be read as portents of what was to come.

The Modern Apartment Buildings series works as a typology, a systematic classification of

a particular building type photographed in exactly the same way. Each apartment block

fills the frame so there is very little extraneous detail. Haraldsson is playing at being an

objective viewer, a scientist categorizing building types without passing judgement. It is

clear however from the work that brackets this series, particularly his studies of

developments on the outskirts of Vancouver, that Haraldsson regards these apartment

buildings as symptomatic of a condition in modern architecture wherein individual identity

is subsumed under functionalism. The buildings are different yet they are essentially the

same.

Haraldsson has argued that the city is now the principal concern for contemporary

landscape photographers.11 Most of us are urban dwellers and our most common

experience of the landscape is as a site of buildings, roads and other forms of human

interference. The age when photographs of unspoiled nature could inspire a response

deeper than sentimental admiration has long passed. If we consider Modern Apartment

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012 Buildings as landscape rather than architectural photography, the series can be interpreted

as more than a typology of uniform buildings. It is also a statement on the way these

buildings have come to alter and dominate our perception of the world around us. We are

more familiar with the rigid lines and grids of architecture than the organic shapes of

nature.

Though much of what Herzog photographed has vanished, there are clues scattered

throughout his photographs that help us identify not only the city but also often the very

corner where they were taken. Not so with Haraldsson. Apart from the titles there is

nothing, no street signs or other landmarks, to tell us where we are. We could just as well

be in Perth or Johannesburg; that we are in Vancouver is happenstance. Even the time

period is uncertain for although Haraldsson noted the year he took the photographs, those

details such as cars that would help us know the scene was shot between 1993 and 1994

are usually absent. In being ambiguous Haraldsson may have wanted to make a point about

the ubiquitous conformity of modern architecture.

Paradoxically, though Haraldsson’s point of view is ostensibly detached and does not

invite the emotional response that Herzog’s does, his images carry a political sensibility

absent from Herzog’s work. One way of reading them is as an antidote to the

sentimentality that has developed around Herzog. Not only were these apartment buildings

constructed during the era Herzog roamed through Vancouver with his camera - some may

even appear in the background to his images – but back then they could have been

photographed precisely in the format and style Haraldsson chose with little change in

appearance. Herzog’s work may have been neglected at the time but so too was the effect

incipient development would have on Vancouver’s landscape. Viewed alongside Herzog’s

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012 images, Haraldsson’s present us with a question and a choice. Using Lippard’s definitions

of nostalgia, history and heritage, what is it that we are responding to in the Vancouver

photographs of Herzog and Haraldsson? And which view resonates more authentically for

us?

Fred Herzog

Painter, Cold Harbour

Ink Jet Print

20 x 28.75 in

1956

http://www.equinoxgallery.com/artists/fred-herzog/art/21378

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012 In Herzog's photograph, Painter, Coal Harbour, the scene the painter is working on is not

quite the one we see. Only the distant tower connects the painting in progress to the view

ahead. The question we might ask is not what but why is the artist painting this scene. To

us it appears he is standing in a weed choked vacant lot on a sunny day working on a view

of a drab industrial area, hardly the typical image of the plein air artist.

Fred Herzog

New Pontiac

Ink Jet Print

19.25 x 30 in.

1957

http://www.equinoxgallery.com/artists/fred-herzog/art/90152

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012 In New Pontiac Herzog encountered a scene of obvious juxtaposition, the new car against a

patterned backdrop of rusted corrugated iron cladding. But in light of Haraldsson’s

photographs, that I will soon discuss of equal interest to us is the façade of the apartment

building peeping up in the background. The scene suggests an old and crumbling

Vancouver being squeezed out by new developments.

Fred Herzog

Westend from Burrard Bridge

Ink Jet Print

19.75 x 30 in.

1957

http://www.equinoxgallery.com/artists/fred-herzog/art/90124

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012 When Herzog photographed this scene of the West End in 1957, Vancouver was the third

largest metropolitan area in Canada and a major Pacific port yet the proliferation of timber

houses suggests it was still a small town abutting the mountains. Recent photographs of the

West End district around Burrard Bridge reveal the extent of Vancouver’s redevelopment.

Everything constructed that Herzog photographed in this view has disappeared. Such

broad panoramas are rare in Herzog’s work. This photograph suggests that he was either

struck by the contrast between the clustered buildings and the natural landscape behind or

he may have been attempting something unusually commercial, a postcard view of the city

that showed off its best features.

Fred Herzog

Westend Galaxy

Ink Jet Print

20 x 29 in.

1960

http://www.equinoxgallery.com/artists/fred-herzog/art/19788

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012 It is significant to note that Westend Galaxy is one of the few of Herzog’s photographs

where the encroachment of urban redevelopment is explicit. Here the timber and

corrugated iron façade at the rear of a house is contrasted with the modern office blocks on

the slope above it. With rubbish piled against it and in an obvious state of neglect, there is

very little charm left in the old building. It still possesses a character though, especially

when contrasted against the bland architecture of the modern buildings. When Herzog took

this photograph in 1960, the car was a recent model. Today it is one of those details in his

photographs likely to arouse nostalgia more than any profound sense of loss

Fred Herzog

Man in Black Hat

Ink Jet Print

20 x 29 in.

1959

http://www.equinoxgallery.com/artists/fred-herzog/art/20978

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012 In his essay on photography, Camera Lucida, French theorist and semiotician Roland

Barthes speaks of the ‘punctum’ as the detail in an image that holds the eye and by “its

mere presence changes (our) reading.”12 For many of us, the punctum in this image will be

the rear of the Pontiac the man appears about to get into. The fawn colour blends in with

the muted tones produced by an afternoon shower in late autumn, but what are we

responding to that Herzog saw? To us it may appear to be a scene of old Vancouver, dated

by the age of the cars and other details, such as the neon signage. When Herzog took this

photo in 1959 however, the angular design of the Pontiac had only recently been

introduced. Long bodied cars with rear fins would become symbolic of the economic self

confidence and excess America was to experience in the forthcoming decade. Did Herzog

imagine a time when an audience would look upon this car as representing an age they had

not experienced? And is the nostalgia we might feel for the car’s design or what that

represented?

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012

Arni Haraldsson

The Park Royal Towers, West Vancouver, BC

C print

22 x 28 in

1994

http://ccca.concordia.ca/artists/work_detail.html?languagePref=en&mkey=16963&title=Pa rk+Royal+Towers+%281967%29&artist=Arni+Haraldsson&link_id=1837

An online advertisement for the Park Royal apartments as they are now called describes

them this way. “Situated on the scenic West Coast of British Columbia, on Vancouver’s

beautiful North Shore, Park Royal Towers West Vancouver apartments for rent are on the

doorstep of some of the most beautiful nature in Canada.”13 None of this is in evidence in

Haraldsson’s image. The cluster of trees at the right side of the building could be the edge

of a small city park. We have a road but no traffic, a building but no people. The pale grey

sky in the background accentuates the ordinariness of the scene.

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012

Arni Haraldsson

Ocean Towers (1959)

C print

22 x 28 in

1993

http://ccca.concordia.ca/artists/work_detail.html?languagePref=en&mkey=16961&title=O cean+Towers+%281959%29&artist=Arni+Haraldsson&link_id=1837

In allowing a few extraneous details to creep into the image of Ocean Towers, Haraldsson

accentuates the bland uniformity of the apartment buildings. Were these details not to

appear- the apartment block at the rear, the tree in the left foreground - we would instead

have a study of a patterned grid, interesting from an aesthetic point of view perhaps but

devoid of Haraldsson’s socio-political content.

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012

Arni Haraldsson

Park Wood (1954-56)

C print

22 x 28 in.

1994

http://ccca.concordia.ca/artists/work_detail.html?languagePref=en&mkey=16959&title=Pa rk+Wood+%281954-56%29&artist=Arni+Haraldsson&link_id=1837

The image of Park Towers adheres to the formula Haraldsson uses in Modern Apartment

Buildings. Against a grey sky, the building fills the frame with just a few extraneous details

such as the tree intruding on the space. But where the other buildings are photographed

front on, here he has borrowed from the early modernist architectural photographers who

shot buildings from a low vantage point to accentuate angles. The Park Wood apartments

were designed by Semmens Simpson, considered among the most prominent modernist

architectural firms in Vancouver in the 1940s and 50s.

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012

Fred Herzog

Prinz

Ink Jet Print

20 x 29.5 in.

1959

http://www.equinoxgallery.com/artists/fred-herzog/art/21375

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012

Arni Haraldsson

The Beach Park (1958), West End

C print

29 x 37 in.

1993-94

http://ccca.concordia.ca/artists/work_detail.html?languagePref=en&mkey=16973&title=Th e+Beach+Park+%281958%29%2C+West+End&artist=Arni+Haraldsson&link_id=1837

The tower in the background of Herzog’s Prinz serves to fill in the dead space and frame

the advertisement for the sausage, so breaking the scene into four distinct quarters. Without

it the image would be unbalanced; for Herzog it appears to have no other use. He is more

interested in what is happening at street level; the glow of neon, the advertisements and the

remains of the snow upon the pavement. This scene may not be full of action but it is lively,

drawing the eye around its various elements. Haraldsson on the other hand is not interested

in expressing life but the banal evidence of architectural history. This building, constructed

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012 around the same time the one in Herzog’s photograph, is mute in terms of human activity.

For all we know there may not be a single living being in the entire city.

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012 NOTES

1 Lucy R. Lippard, On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art and Place (New York: New Press, 1999) 15. 2 Fred Herzog, , Jeff Wall, Sarah Milroy, and Claudia Gochmann, Fred Herzog: Photographs (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2011). 3 Herzog, 11-16. 4 See for example, Stephen Shore, Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen, and Lynne Tillman, Uncommon Places: The Complete Works (New York: Aperture, 2004). 5 Herzog, 13. 6 Thomas A. Hutton, The Transformation of Canada's Pacific Metropolis: A Study of Vancouver, vol. 4. (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998) 1-7. 7 Katharyne Mitchell, “Conflicting Geographies of Democracy and the Public Sphere in Vancouver BC,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (1997): 162-179. 8 Lippard, 153. 9 Herzog, 21. 10 Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, its Transformations, and its Prospects (Mariner Books, 1968) 482-525. 11 Arni Haraldsson, So To Speak, ed. J-P. Gilbert, Sylvie Gilbert, and Lesley Johnston (Montréal: Artextes Editions, 1999). 12 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (London: Vintage, 2000) 42. 13 Park Royal Towers, accessed December 13, 2012 http://www.parkroyaltowersapt.com/the- apartments/overview/.

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. London: Vintage, 2000.

Haraldsson, Arni. “Notes on Contemporary Architecture and Landscape.” Arni Haraldsson: Projects on Vancouver Architecture and Landscape. North Vancouver: Presentation House Gallery, 1995.

Haraldsson, Arni. Arni Haraldsson, Projects on Vancouver Architecture and Landscape. Exhibition. Presentation House Gallery. January 7 - February 19, 1995. North Vancouver: Presentation House Gallery, 1995.

Haraldsson, Arni. So, To Speak. Ed. J-P. Gilbert, Sylvie Gilbert, and Lesley Johnston. Montréal: Artextes Editions, 1999.

Haraldsson, Arni, and Ulrich Horndash. Ulrich Horndash: Futurism of the Engineers or Architecture As Anticipation of the Past. Vancouver: Contemporary Art Gallery, 1992.

Herzog, Fred, Douglas Coupland, Jeff Wall, Sarah Milroy, and Claudia Gochmann. Fred Herzog: Photographs. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2011.

Herzog, Fred, Grant Arnold, and Michael Turner. Fred Herzog: Vancouver Photographs. Vancouver: , 2007.

Hutton, Thomas A. The Transformation of Canada's Pacific Metropolis: A Study of Vancouver. Vol. 4. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998.

Lippard, Lucy R. On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art and Place. New York: New Press, 1999.

Mitchell, Katharyne. “Conflicting Geographies of Democracy and the Public Sphere in Vancouver BC.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (1997): 162-179.

Mumford, Lewis. The City in History: Its Origins, its Transformations, and its Prospects. Vol. 67. New York: Mariner Books, 1968.

Ross, Jerry, and Barry M. Staw. “Expo 86: An Escalation Prototype.” Administrative Science Quarterly (1986): 274-297.

Shore, Stephen, Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen, and Lynne Tillman. Uncommon Places: The Complete Works. New York: Aperture, 2004.

Taylor, Timothy. “The Way Things Are: Fred Herzog’s Art of Observation.” Canadian Art. Winter 2013. Canadian Art Foundation. Ontario. Accessed December 13, 2012. http://www.canadianart.ca/features/2012/12/12/fred- herzog-art-of-observation/.

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012

Park Royal Towers. Accessed December 13, 2012. http://www.parkroyaltowersapt.com/the-apartments/overview.

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012

VIRTUAL EXHIBITION DESIGN

The online exhibition will be displayed as a book in landscape format, with pages the

viewer will turn. It will be presented with a boring front cover (see attached example) that

suggests a government report, the implication being that it represents a government

department’s attempt to investigate a situation now that the damage has been done.

Following on from the introduction there will be ten pages of photographs, that is to say

each photograph stands alone on its own page. The viewer will click on an icon at the

bottom right of the page and the page will turn. As an example, see

http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2007/snapshot/index.shtm When the viewer clicks on the

image the text associated with that image will appear, encouraging the viewer to read it

rather than skip past. Following Sylvie’s suggestion there will be a page for viewers to

leave comments at the end. The pages will be white, at the very most a bone colour.

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012