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

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1 FRED HERZOG AND ARNI HARALDSSON IN VANCOUVER 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 British Columbia 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

2 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 19 th 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

3 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 Canada 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 Jeff Wall 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

4 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 19 th 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 19 th 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.

5 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

6 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

7 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 in

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.

8 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 x 30 in

In New Pontiac Herzog encountered a scene of obvious juxtaposition, the new car against a patterned backdrop of rusted corrugated iron cladding.

9 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 x 30 in

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

10 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

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.

11 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

12 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?

Arni Haraldsson The Park Royal Towers, West Vancouver, BC C print 22 x 28 in 1994 http://ccca.concordia.ca/artists/work_detail.html?

13 Arni Haraldsson The Park Royal Towers, West Vancouver, BC C print 22 x 28 in 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.

Arni Haraldsson Ocean Towers (1959) C print 22 x 28 in 1993 http://ccca.concordia.ca/artists/work_detail.html?

14 Arni Haraldsson Ocean Towers (1959) C print 22 x 28 in 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.

Arni Haraldsson Park Wood (1954-56) C print 22 x 28 in. 1994 http://ccca.concordia.ca/artists/work_detail.html?

15 Arni Haraldsson Park Wood ( ) C print 22 x 28 in rk+wood+% %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.

16 Fred Herzog Prinz Ink Jet Print 20 x 29.5 in

Arni Haraldsson The Beach Park (1958), West End C print 29 x 37 in. 1993-94 http://ccca.concordia.ca/artists/work_detail.html?

17 Arni Haraldsson The Beach Park (1958), West End C print 29 x 37 in 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

18 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.

19 NOTES 1 Lucy R. Lippard, On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art and Place (New York: New Press, 1999) Fred Herzog, Douglas Coupland, Jeff Wall, Sarah Milroy, and Claudia Gochmann, Fred Herzog: Photographs (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2011). 3 Herzog, See for example, Stephen Shore, Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen, and Lynne Tillman, Uncommon Places: The Complete Works (New York: Aperture, 2004). 5 Herzog, Thomas A. Hutton, The Transformation of Canada's Pacific Metropolis: A Study of Vancouver, vol. 4. (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998) Katharyne Mitchell, Conflicting Geographies of Democracy and the Public Sphere in Vancouver BC, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (1997): Lippard, Herzog, Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, its Transformations, and its Prospects (Mariner Books, 1968) 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) Park Royal Towers, accessed December 13,

20 BIBLIOGRAPHY Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. London: Vintage, Haraldsson, Arni. Notes on Contemporary Architecture and Landscape. Arni Haraldsson: Projects on Vancouver Architecture and Landscape. North Vancouver: Presentation House Gallery, Haraldsson, Arni. Arni Haraldsson, Projects on Vancouver Architecture and Landscape. Exhibition. Presentation House Gallery. January 7 - February 19, North Vancouver: Presentation House Gallery, Haraldsson, Arni. So, To Speak. Ed. J-P. Gilbert, Sylvie Gilbert, and Lesley Johnston. Montréal: Artextes Editions, Haraldsson, Arni, and Ulrich Horndash. Ulrich Horndash: Futurism of the Engineers or Architecture As Anticipation of the Past. Vancouver: Contemporary Art Gallery, Herzog, Fred, Douglas Coupland, Jeff Wall, Sarah Milroy, and Claudia Gochmann. Fred Herzog: Photographs. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, Herzog, Fred, Grant Arnold, and Michael Turner. Fred Herzog: Vancouver Photographs. Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, Hutton, Thomas A. The Transformation of Canada's Pacific Metropolis: A Study of Vancouver. Vol. 4. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, Lippard, Lucy R. On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art and Place. New York: New Press, Mitchell, Katharyne. Conflicting Geographies of Democracy and the Public Sphere in Vancouver BC. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (1997): Mumford, Lewis. The City in History: Its Origins, its Transformations, and its Prospects. Vol. 67. New York: Mariner Books, Ross, Jerry, and Barry M. Staw. Expo 86: An Escalation Prototype. Administrative Science Quarterly (1986): Shore, Stephen, Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen, and Lynne Tillman. Uncommon Places: The Complete Works. New York: Aperture, Taylor, Timothy. The Way Things Are: Fred Herzog s Art of Observation. Canadian Art. Winter Canadian Art Foundation. Ontario. Accessed December 13,

21 Park Royal Towers. Accessed December 13,

22 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 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.

SCENES FROM SUBURBIA: DENNIS EKSTEDT, ARNI HARALDSSON, SUSAN DOBSON

SCENES FROM SUBURBIA: DENNIS EKSTEDT, ARNI HARALDSSON, SUSAN DOBSON John Toohey This exhibition examines the ways contemporary Canadian artists have considered the suburb, a zone defined by Statistics