Rosa 'Ketchup and Mustard' 13 August 2025

Rosa 'Boscobel' & Rudbeckia hirta 16 August 2025

In the 80s and 90s I used to tell people that Vancouver was a world class city because Kodachrome could be processed here. It was, first, in West Vancouver, and from there Kodak moved Vancouver proper on How Street.

In those 80s and 90s photographer Fred Herzog would invite a few of us to his home where he would project his Kodachromes on a large projection screen.

He did not really become famous until technology caught up with the reproduction of Kodachromes. Until the new era of digital scanning and inkjet printing, Kodachromes could only be appreciated through projection. The then classic darkroom practices took away sharpness and shadow detail from Kodachromes. Cybachromes were even worse as they made the colour almost garish,with that over-the -top shine in contrast and shadow detail all but disappeared.

The early inkjet prints of Herzog’s Kodachromes finally made them look like Kodachromes.

Kodak closed their Kodachrome processing plant and Kodachromes disappeared from history.

I firmly believe that if Fred Herzog came back to our 2025 Vancouver he would feel lost. Colour has disappeared. It has been replaced by tall condos that are blue, green or grey. Most of our then famous neon signs are gone. Another photographer who would go on unemployment soon here would be Cartier-Bresson. Our streets are either boring or terrible if you go to Main and Hastings.

My Rosemary in our garden at first liked “colores sobrios”. Sobrio in Spanish has no connotation with sober. It means understated. Then as the years progressed in our garden she started liking yellow, orange and red. By the time we moved from our large corner garden in Kerrisdale to Kitsilano 9 years ago she was buying colourful perennials and she adored the Black Eyed Susans you see here.

My scans are no longer sobrios (well sometimes they are as hostas have understated colours in their flowers). Suddenly to help take away my melancholy (just a tad) for my loss of Rosemary I am scanning plants of loud colours and mixing them in ways that many years ago Rosemary would have considered verboten.

There is a word in Spanish much more evocative than garish. Colorinche, defines colours in bad taste. I think my scans here are a garishly lovely.

And so  with my two scans here today, I dedicate them to the memory of my Rosemary and to that friend Fred Herzog who would feel lost on Robson.

The Story on How Kodachrome Was Invented