Vancouver-based photographer Fred Herzog, 83, has won the 2014 Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Visual Arts.
Herzog will receive the award, which comes with a cash prize of $30,000, on April 15 during a ceremony honoring the visual arts community in the Great Hall of the BC Law Courts building.
Established in 2004, the prize — granted annually to a senior British Columbia artist selected by an independent jury — is one of Canada’s most esteemed honours.
Herzog has been active in Vancouver's art scene for close to 50 years. Born in Germany, he immigrated to Canada in 1952 and began taking colour photographs of Vancouver's street scenes, vacant lots, neon signage and passersby using Kodachrome slide film, at a time when art photography was almost exclusively shot in black and white.
Drawing on documentary traditions, Herzog's work incorporates an "outsider's idiosyncratic sensitivity to a new environment into his work" according to the Vancouver Art Gallery, which presented a major retrospective of his work in 2007.
Previous winners of the Audain Prize include Takao Tanabe and Gathie Falk (2013), Marian Penner Bancroft (2012), Rodney Graham (2011), Robert Davidson (2010), Liz Magor (2009), Jeff Wall (2008), Gordon Smith (2007), Eric Metcalfe (2006), E.J. Hughes (2005) and Ann Kipling (2004).
