By Christian Martiusí‚  

Fred Herzogí¢â‚¬â„¢s photography exhibition is extensive, almost excessive. But this arrangement of overabundance traverses the visual spectrum.It often depicts images of overcrowded streets, jammed full of bright neon and gaudy advertisements, or shop windows teeming with row upon row of similar products, priced and hung like carcasses, waiting to be plucked. The unifying theme that gathers these pictures together is the sense of a city shaped by its economy, dominated by its impact and divided by its effects.

Shot on Kodachrome, a slide film of deep tones and sharp resolution, Herzogí¢â‚¬â„¢s pictures are presented in vibrant and sometimes lurid colors that reinforce the nature of the content. Day and night shots of Granville Street are a garish collection of illuminated crimson advertising billboards swarming the Vancouver skyline in Day-Glo reds, yellows and blues. Stores enveloped in dazzling painted letters and - laid out with goods for trade í¢â‚¬“ blankets of overwhelming color juxtapose against the otherwise dull concrete tones of a city. Radiant objects are regularly centered in the frame, an orange hat or red balloon, or people gesticulating or caught in moments of animated spontaneity. There are views inside the store windows, barbershops and cafes, and of figures lining the streets, sharing joke or standing in doorways watching the activity of the street amongst the dominant energy of consumer culture.

Jackpot (1961) is an evocative view of gamblers congregated around a gaming table, in perfect composition and expressive stances, looking beyond the frame towards the possibility of triumph. News Shop (1960) reveals a magazine centerfold hanging amongst limp impotent deflated balloons, and Kits Beach (1957), one of the few monochrome pictures in the collection, exposes changing room doorways and the jarring segregation of black and white bathers as they step out of separate exits. Here Herzogí¢â‚¬â„¢s singular images uncover the tensions of social inequality with a clear and concise aesthetic.

Herzogí¢â‚¬â„¢s pictures often recall the work of Robert Frank or William Egglestone and their photographic depiction of mid to late 20th century Americana, and this collection deals with a similar period and society. Even later photographs like Crossing Powell (1984) look as if they were shot in the 1950s. Herzogí¢â‚¬â„¢s vision of Vancouver rarely contemplates the distinctions between Canadian and American culture, preferring to address the notion of a public situated within a land of consumption and desire. Here Vancouver is represented as a city of color, one more realm of commercial influence denoted by the bold visual authority of the advertisement and the product í¢â‚¬“ though one that Herzog makes singularly beautiful.