Fred Herzog

Before it was a housing development and golf course, Westwood Plateau was a 1,400 acre-odd parcel of land that included a racetrack. All photos by Bruce Stewart in 1970. Two of the streets in the development – Deer’s Leap Place and Carousel Court – were named for the track’s most challenging sections. According to a… Continue reading The Westwood Racing Circuit (1959-1990)

The friendship between Bruce Stewart and Fred Herzog began because of a mutual love of photography and went onto span half-a-century. Bruce Stewart has been documenting Vancouver ever since his father gave him a reflex camera for his eleventh birthday. A few years later, he started an after-school job at the Department of Biomedical Communications… Continue reading Walks with Fred Herzog

Howard Fry spent three decades as a commercial photographer in Vancouver. In 1998 he retired to Salt Spring and became embroiled in a battle to save part of the island from development. Salt Spring Island: In 1999, Salt Spring Island was under threat. A German millionaire sold his holdings—roughly a tenth of the island—to Texada… Continue reading Howard Fry and the Salt Spring Island Calendar’s 20th Anniversary

  I had the pleasure of visiting Griffin Art Projects with Tom Carter last Saturday. It’s a gallery of sorts hidden in an industrial building on Welch Street in North Vancouver. The exhibit features stories, photos, videos and paintings about Chinatowns in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, many from private collections. Some of Tom’s personal collection… Continue reading Whose Chinatown?

I’m a big fan of Svend-Erik Eriksen’s photography of Vancouver in the ’70s. Last week I called him up and asked how he got started. Erik, is an animator by trade, but his interest in photography goes back to the 1950s when he was a kid in Namu, BC. His parents had immigrated from Denmark… Continue reading The Photography of Svend-Erik Eriksen

Fred Herzog, Foncie, Selwyn Pullan, Michael de Courcy, Bruce Stewart and Angus McIntyre were just a few who took up a camera in the Vancouver of the ‘70s, and were documenting images of everything from buildings to the changing skyline, and from neighborhoods to neon. They also put a spotlight on people—the famous, the quirky,… Continue reading Vancouver in the Seventies

  When I think of photographers working in Vancouver in the 50s and 60s, I think of Foncie Pulice, Selwyn Pullan and Fred Herzog. Foncie was a street photographer who opened Foncie’s Fotos in 1946 and shot millions of photos of people as they strolled Vancouver’s streets. Vancouver-born Selwyn Pullan, served in the Canadian Navy… Continue reading The photographs of Jan de Haas (1914-1967)

Mother Tongue Publishing is a small trade publisher run by the amazing Mona Fertig from her heritage house on Salt Spring Island. While other publishers turn their backs on books that lack mass market appeal, movie options or foreign rights potential, Mona actively seeks out poets, first-time writers and unrecognized artists.