Don't Photograph Landscapes

Here is the article that I wrote following Herzog's talk last week. The Ubyssey newspaper published an edited version in last Friday's culture section...but it's Sunday and I've decided to privilege my blogfans with the original version. Enjoy!


Don't Photograph Landscapes

“I’m not here to show my work, I’m here to start a dialogue” said Fred Herzog, as he introduced himself to the eager crowd of aspiring photographers that attended UBC Photosociety’s first annual general meeting at the SUB on September 25. “I hope I can be interrupted often, and I hope you get used to my accent.” At that moment, a projector was fired up, marking the beginning of a memorable evening with the renowned Vancouver photographer.

Herzog’s work needed no introduction. After forty years of photographing street scenes in this city, his images of Vancouver have become as common to photographers as the totem poles in Stanley Park. Yet, it was the photographer’s presence, his own voice explaining his photographs that filled the evening with magic. The kind of magic that exudes from Herzog’s lively, colorful prints.

Born in Germany, Herzog moved to Vancouver in the 1950s and soon began capturing the life of the city with his camera. He separated himself from other photographers by shooting mostly in Kodachrome, a color slide film that was hard to turn into prints. This limited his ability to exhibit because “Making cibachrome prints was not feasible. It was almost impossible for me to make a profit selling the prints.” Thus, although his collection of slides continued to grow, his work remained in the dark for decades.

In a way, however, this initial marginalization helped to turn Herzog into a living legend. His images were taken decades before the were finally shown in galleries, turning his exhibitions into colorful odes to nostalgia. It takes only a minute or two of glancing at the impressive colors and contrast in his photographs to understand the power of images that bring back to life an era that is generally remembered in black and white.

Moreover, anyone that attended Herzog’s fantastic retrospective at the Vancouver Art Gallery last year understands that there is something very personal about his work. His images occur in the most public spaces, yet they remain deeply intimate. As spectators, it feels as if Herzog has suddenly allowed us to take a glimpse into the private life of his subjects, making us all voyeurs of life in an epoch that is foregone but never forgotten.

As a projector showed us some of Herzog’s famous images, Herzog explained that photography is about looking, about waiting. He mocked people who carry a bag full of expensive lenses saying “the picture has to be in your head, not in your camera bag” and underlined the importance of concentrating on a moment, on a sudden detail that makes an otherwise irrelevant scene unique. With this, Herzog revealed his place in the long tradition of documentary photographers who, like Cartier Bresson, causally roamed the streets waiting for the instant précis to capture a unique event forever.

Considering the inherent difficulty of shooting people on the streets, Herzog was quick to explain that it is imperative to look for body language, which includes clothing. Stopping the projector at a picture of a woman with a cigarette in her hand, he said that first impressions matter because humans automatically make judgments of the people they see, and thus, a photograph has to capture a gesture or a detail that gives a strong first impression. He then added, that “if you look long enough, you can find vitality anywhere.”

When asked about the risks of photographing strangers, Herzog first shared that “people have shouted at me, people have told me to get away, people have told me to get off their property, and people have threatened me with calling the police.” Thus, he suggested that we “shoot first, and ask questions later!” However, he confessed that in his particular case it has been easier since by the time he started exhibiting, most of the subjects in his pictures were too old to care. Almost jokingly, he suggested to wait thirty years before publishing a picture of a stranger because “a dead person will not take you to court!”

As the evening came to an end, Herzog delivered his most poetic moment. “To me, the city is a stage and the people on the streets are all actors.” In this sense, Herzog stressed that “We need to record how people look in their natural state…it’s the reality of how we look.” He explained that if photographers don’t accept the task of showing people with no interference, without staging them, then we will lose any visual evidence of the way we really were.

As a closing remark, Herzog comically reminded us for the twentieth time that in order to succeed as photographers, “don’t photograph landscapes, everybody does it, and nobody cares.”