Fred Herzog . Photographs

Life may be colorful, but black-and-white photography is more realistic—or so it was said. For many years, color photography was considered an inferior and not particularly valuable medium. Classic black-and-white photography was undisputed in the art world, but artistic color photography was supposedly banal and amateurish, a commercial medium for dilettantes. Color photographs from these early years seem strangely familiar and often confound the viewer’s ideas of artistic value: it is impossible to say whether we saw them before in a family album or a museum. Are these really just snapshots, or are they the work of an artist? Are the intense colors the result of bad film quality or were they intentional? In the early 1950s, Fred Herzog began to revolutionize established viewing habits and existing orthodoxies.