At Home in Hespeler

At the Vancouver Sun, there’s been an enduring mystery, what happened to photographer Vlad Keremidschieff?

One of the great mysteries of The Vancouver Sun is whatever happened to Vladimir Keremidschieff, the paper’s great hippie photographer in the early-1970s.

Vlad was the top rock ’n’ roll photographer in town during rock’s golden era of the ’60s and ’70s. He also covered many of Vancouver’s counterculture events, from anti-war protests to rock festivals and pleasure faires.

Here’s a riddle: you’re a journalist at a major newspaper in a major city. You wonder, what happened to that long haired guy who used to take the pictures? Where, oh where did he go? And how on earth am I supposed to find him?

Enter Rolf Maurer of New Star books. A couple of years ago, Maurer was looking for photos for a book on Vancouver’s hippie era. He kept running across Keremidschieff’s photos in old editions of the Georgia Straight, so he typed “Vladimir Keremidschieff” into Google.

That’s right, Maurer typed the name “Vladimir Keremidschieff” into the google, and “Vancouver’s great lost hippie photographer popped up.”

If only they had access to this google thing at the Vancouver Sun so their journalists could use it.

Brian Gardiner bad journalism