The city that Fred Herzog documented for more than half a century no longer exists. As an urban flâneur, Herzog roamed the streets of Vancouver and created a portrait of his adopted home city that captures the essence of a bygone era in its randomness and spontaneity. The scenes he captured are now considered among the most important series of early colour photography. But it was not until the late 1950s that Herzog decided to work almost exclusively with Kodachrome colour slide film.

Fred Herzog. Black and White is the first tribute to a lesser-known facet of the photographer's work. Complementing the groundbreaking publication Modern Colour, the volume brings together almost graphic scenes of light and shadow and moments of life outside the city. The early black-and-white photographs evoke a sense of melancholy, not nostalgia, demonstrating that the appeal of Herzog's work lies in his ability to condense a psychological state.

Raised in Stuttgart, Fred Herzog (1930–2019) settled in Vancouver in 1953, where he worked as a medical photographer. It was not until the early 2000s that digital pigment printing techniques enabled him to reproduce the colour intensity of the Kodachrome slides he had taken with his Leica. His pioneering work in colour photography became known with his first major solo exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2007 and gained international recognition.