History of EuropEan photography, 1900

Transcription

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1904 19051906 1907
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1912 1913 1914 1915
1916 1917 1918 1919
1920 1921 1922 1923
1924 19241926 1927
1928 19291930 1931
1932 19331934 1935
1936 1937 1938
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THE HIS TORY OF 20 TH CENTURY
EUROPEAN PHOTOGRAPHY
The project characteristics
The History of European Photography (1900 – 2000) is an international research
project spanning the whole of Europe. The project’s main aim is to publish an encyclopaedia in English (5000 copies per volume, about 600 pages per book), divided
into three volumes / periods, volume 1 – 1900 – 1938, volume 2 – 1939-1970, volume
3 1971 – 2000. Each volume of the encyclopaedia will be organized alphabetically by
country. A study on the history of photography in each country will be written by an
expert on photography from that country. Alongside the main studies, each book will
contain extensive additional material, biographies of mentioned photographers, and
timetables marking cultural, socio-political and technical photographic events in each
country for a given period. There will be two types of indices in each book: an index of
mentioned photographers and an index of other historical names and subjects.
The project is coordinated by Prof. Václav Macek, chairman of FOTOFO association,
professor at the University of Performing Arts, Bratislava, and director of the Month of
Photography festival, Bratislava.
In the last three years, we have put together a team of 46 internationally renown
experts from 35 countries, such as Gerry Badger, Hans Michael Koetzle, Mark Tamisier,
Vladimír Birgus, Jan-Erik Lundström (see below). Using this strategy, we can guarantee
the first class quality of our information. The first volume can be published as early as
spring 2010, volume 2 should come out in November 2010 and 3 is being prepared for
publication in two years.
Target groups
The target group of the encyclopaedia ‚The History of 20th Century European Photography‘ in English, the first of its kind in the field of photography, are not only experts
and scholars in European photography, but also a broader public interested in art
and photography. Furthermore, the book is meant to serve as a referential source
for educational institutions, schools, libraries, public cultural institutions, galleries
and museums. As the first complex overview of European Photography in the 20th
century, the encyclopaedia is a primary source in the study of photography. In the
field of science, the book presents the status quo of knowledge for each European
country and as such it represents a basis for historians of photography and art in
their research. In the commercial sphere, photography has been gaining still bigger
popularity among a broad public which is reflected not only in auctions and sales but
also in the market for exhibitions and publications on photography.
Long-term results
Our primary goal is to fill a gap in the theory of photography. While all existing
publications on this topic focus only on leading countries in European photography,
such as France, Great Britain or Germany, omitting more than half of the continent, we
are offering a complete overview of photographic development in the 20th century,
from Iceland to Russia and from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean. This three-volume
publication will also pave the way for future scientific research and comparative
studies on a pan-European level.
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Author s:
Albania: Rubens Shima, director, National
Gallery of Art, Tirane
Austria: Anton Holzer, Fotogeschichte
editor-in-chief, Vienna (volume 1), Ulrike
Matzer, art historian and critic, Vienna
(volume 2)
Belarus: Nadya Savchenko, Minsk
Belgium: Georges Vercheval, founder and
former director of Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi
Bulgaria: Katerina Gadjeva, Lecturer in
History of Culture Department, New
Bulgarian University, Sofia
Croatia: Želimir Koščević, freelance curator
Czech Rep.: Vladimír Birgus, Institut of
Creative Photography, Salesian University, Opava
Denmark: Mette Mortensen, Film and
Media Studies Section, Department
of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Louise
Wolters, photo historian
Estonia: Peeter Linnap, art critic and theorist, TV director, curator and teacher,
Professor and Head of Photography
Department at TAC (Tartu Art College)
Finland: Kimmo Lehtonen, Lecturer in
Digital Culture, Studies In Visual Communication, University of Jyväskylä
France: Marc Tamisier, photo historian
Germany: Dr. Ivo Kranzfelder (volume
1) lecturer of history and theory of
photography, University for Applied
Sciences in Würzburg, curator of private
collection, Hans-Michael Koetzle
(volume 2) freelance art critic, writer
and curator based in Munich
Great Britain: Gerry Badger, photo historian and critic
Greece: Nina Kassianou, curator and photography critic (Thessaloniki Museum
of Photography, Photographic Centre
of Skopelos)
Hungary: Béla Albertini (volume 1) Lecturer in art history and photographic
reportage, Eötvös-Loránd-University
(Budapest), University Kaposvár, Peter
Baki (volume 2) director, Hungarian
Museum of Photography, Kecskemét
tion Science and Media Studies,
University of Bergen
Poland: Lech Lechowicz (volume 1), Film
School, Lodz, Adam Sobota (volume
2) curator of the National Museum,
Wrocław
Portugal: Emilia Tavares, curator, the
Chiado Museum, Lúcia Marques,
independent curator and critic
Iceland: Aesa Sigurjonsdottir, art
historian, lecturer at the University
of Iceland and Iceland Art Academy,
freelance curator
Romania: Silvian Ionescu, freelance
curator and art historian (volume 1),
Mihai Oroveanu (volume 2), National
Museum of Contemporary Art,
Bucharest
Ireland: Dr. Justin Carville, PhD, MA,
BA (Hons), Historical & Theoretical
Studies in Photography, School of
Creative Arts, Institute of Art, Design
& Technology, Dublin
Russia: Irina Tchmyreva, head researcher,
Photographic Department of Moscow
Museum of Modern Art, Moscow
Italy: Gigliola Foschi, (volume 1) critic and
photographic art historian, Roberto
Mutti (volume 2) photography critic
Lithuania: Margarita Matulyté (volume
1), Agne Narušyté (volume 2) research
fellow at Napier University, Edinburgh, UK, supervises practice-based
PhD students at the Vilnius Academy
of Fine Arts
Latvia: Vilnis Auziņš, Latvian Museum of
Photography, Riga
Luxembourg: Paul di Felice and Edmond
Thill, Musée National d‘Histoire et
d‘Art, Luxembourg (volume 1), Paul di
Felice (volume 2) professor of visual
arts, artist, editor, curator and art critic
Moldova: Irina Grabovan, director of the
Art Center AoRTa
The Netherlands: Tamara Bergmans, Vrije
Universiteit Brussel (volume 1)
Norway: Sigrid Lien (volume 1) phd, prof.,
University in Bergen, Peter Larsen
(volume 2) Department of Informa-
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Serbia: Milanka Todic (volume 1) Faculty
of Applied Arts and Design, Beograd,
Goran Malic (volume 2) National
Centre of Photography, Beograd
Slovakia: Václav Macek, director, Central
European House of Photography,
Bratislava
Slovenia: Lara Štrumej (volume 1), senior
curator at The Museum of Modern
Art Ljubljana, Primož Lampič (volume
2), Architecturni muzej, publicist and
critic
Spain: Juan Naranjo, freelance curator,
Barcelona
Sweden: Jan-Erik Lundström, director,
Bildmuseet, Ulmea
Switzerland: Martin Gasser (volume 1),
curator Fotostiftung Schweiz, Peter
Pfrunder (volume 2), director Fotostiftung Schweiz
Ukraine: Tetyana Pavlova, Kharkov, art
critic, member of the International
Association of Arts Critics (Certification
1263), Freelance curator
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Coor dinator’s profile
FOTOFO is a non-governmental, non-profit organization focused on
promoting the art of photography. The association was founded in
1992. Prof. Václav Macek has been its chairman from the start. The
association’s mission is to function as a scientific institution in the
field of photography, promote quality photography from Slovakia
and from abroad and publish literature on photography, as well as
bringing the phenomenon of photography to a wider audience.
FOTOFO is one of the organizers an annual festival called Month
of Photography, Bratislava, which belongs to the Festival of Light
network and to the Photo Festival Union network. The association
also publishes a photographic journal, Imago, and has founded a
“Slovak Photography Personality of the Year” award. Together with
Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, House of Photography, Moscow, Café-Crème, Luxembourg, ZoneAttive, Rome, Kulturprojekte, Berlin and Vladimir und Estragon, Vienna, FOTOFO helps to
organize the European Month of Photography festival (exhibitions
Mutations I in 2006/7, Mutations II in 2008/9). Since November
2004, FOTOFO has been running the Central European House of
Photography in Bratislava, housing the Profile and Fuji Film galleries,
offering monthly photography exhibitions, building a public photographic library, organizing workshops in digital photography for
children and adults, and organizing topical events accompanying
the monthly exhibitions, such as debates, screenings, etc.
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Photographers
Burda, Vani
Marubi, Pjetro
Idromeno, Kolë
Pici, Shan
Marubi, Kel
Sotiri, Kristaq
Th e H i s to r y o f A l b a ni a n P ho to g r a ph y
Rubens Shima
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The Histor y of Albanian
Pho togr aphy
Artistic developments in Albania have followed a unique path, largely due to the
country’s unusual history and political events. Since the end of the 15th century
Albania formed part of the Ottoman Empire and was partitioned into different
administrative regions. These regions were continuously affected by an array of
political and military reforms imposed by the Ottoman administration. Albania’s
first moves towards independence began at the end of the 19th century, with
independence finally won in 1912.
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Shkodra
was one of the main Albanian cities where a new bourgeois social class with
Western European ideals developed. The city gradually grew into a key naval and
mercantile centre with highly developed, important sea connections and major
city ports throughout the Adriatic and Mediterranean seas, a position which it
retained until the middle of the 20th century. Economic progress and the prosperity that came with it also stimulated the development of education and created
favourable conditions for the arts to flourish.
Being the country’s largest northern city and an administrative centre with
a notable social, economical and cultural gravitas, Shkodra forged a clear national
consciousness. Historical chronicles tell of a thriving economy striving to move
forward. Many European countries had their consulates in Shkodra, which demonstrates the importance the city had for the Ottoman Empire and the region.
Initially under Austro-Hungarian influence and later under the Italians, the city
developed an ever-increasing interest in the applied arts. Amongst the cultural
institutions that opened in the 19th century were two religious establishments:
the Colleges of the Jesuits and the Franciscans. The Bushati Library, opened in
1840, served as a meeting point for all the Catholic missionaries who worked in
the city. In the last two decades of the 19th century the city produced the first
Albanian musical band and the first Albanian theatre.
Foreign cultural influences and the artistic customs of the times, alongside
many native artists (some of whom by now were educated in the West) would
have an effect on the city’s way of life. In this artistic climate, the transformation
and development of the city, and indeed of Albanian society as a whole, was
captured by a new technology: photography. This new invention was met with
astonishment but would soon take its rightful place in the difficult artistic terrain
of the period. The faithful capture of an image in such a swift and seemingly
effortless manner came as a revelation to Albanian society, prompting the creation of a historical documentary index of events, urban landscapes and portraits.
At the end of 19th century, this new invention created a priceless treasure
for the city of Shkodra that later would influence the history of the entire
country as well.
Albanian photography in its infancy had to deal with the historical, political
and cultural changes that the country was then going through. Independent
characters and events had to be documented as unique and irreplaceable
historical moments. There was a need in Albania to document everyday life, the
city, the customs and costumes so nothing from the centuries-old ethnographic
and cultural heritage would be lost. A quick look at this collection of photographs
Pjetro Marubi (1834 – 1903), A highlander from
Dukagjini, ca. 1880 s, collodion process, glass
plate 13 x 18 cm, Fototeka Kombëtare Marubi,
Shkodër.
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shows the importance of each photo in testifying to the history and culture
of the country and in conveying the real features of a nation.
The technology of photography came to Albania in the mid 19th century
through Pjetro Marubi (or Marubbi). It is thought that he took the first Albanian
photograph sometime between the years 1860 – 1864.1 In the beginning every
photograph was captured on wet glass plates coated with silver iodide (wet
collodion process), plates which were prepared by the photographer himself.
Later, around the years 1885 – 1890, the wet collodion process was replaced by
manufactured dry glass plates.
In this way, his photography became the first artistic medium to capture
images of Albanians. At this time in Albania, the people, the majority of whom
were Muslim, with small Catholic and Orthodox minorities, veered undecidedly
between an oriental and a western culture. There was no tradition, in painting
and sculpture, of creating artistic images inspired by everyday life. Up to that
point the Albanians had been familiar only with religious imagery, consisting
of the floral decorations and motifs of the mosques and tekkes, the frescoes
and icons in Orthodox churches and monasteries and the Western European
imported sculptures and paintings which formed part of the interiors of the
Catholic churches. This is why photography so astonished the people when it
first came to the city.
Pjetro Marubi’s first photographs show us cityscapes, highlanders, merchants,
townsmen, regional dresses and costumes. One of his earliest photographs, shows
an anonymous highlander from Northern Albania. He has been portrayed standing up, in a full-length portrait, in order that his pose, garments and weapons
complement his overall character.
He also produced carte-de-visite portraits.2 In the beginning Pjetro Marubi’s
photographs were produced in his studio3 and then, later on, with the advancement of photographic technology, he started to take outdoor pictures of city
scenes.
The human figure comprises the majority of Marubi’s artistic range. His models
generally stand in the middle of the scene, often in front of a painted backdrop
or natural scenery. This gives his subjects, and consequently his photographs,
a more artistic character. The lighting comes mainly from the left or from the
front. Many of the characters look straight ahead towards the camera, posing in
a challenging manner against photography as a social event. Their hands are busy
holding firearms or tools of trade: every single gesture tells us something about
the model’s character and personality. The warriors stand upright and ready, their
hands gently resting on their weapons, often looking the camera right in the eye.
This way of posing and posturing became a preferred formula for Marubi and is
repeated continuously in his work.
The firearms and dresses in all the photos taken by the Marubi Dynasty4 make
up an impressive collection of photographic props and costumes, informing us
on the prevalent taste and design of that era.
Marubi’s photos can be clearly divided into two major groups, each with
a specific artistic and historic importance: those taken in the studio and those
taken outdoors. In those belonging to the first group we notice a growing inclination towards a psychological study of the subject where he pays the same attention
to both the artistic quality of the photograph and to the historical importance of the
subject. The photos of large groups of people were taken mostly outdoors and overall have a value as documentary evidence. Marubi photographed not only people
and characters but also places and venues where important events took place.
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1
It is not possible to give a precise date for
the first Albanian photograph. The Albanian
sources, including the Albanian Encyclopedic
Dictionary (Fjalori Enciklopedik Shqiptar,
Tirana, 1985, p. 286; Fjalori Enciklopedik
Shqiptar, Vellimi II, Tirana, 2008, p. 1638;) (I have
added this new reference as it is needed. It is
not in the text you sent me for approval) quote
year 1858 as the date of the first photograph,
but so far there is no convincing evidence to
back this date up.
2
“...Some carte-de-visites portraits by Pjetro
Marubi measured 10 x 14.5 cm, and are
mounted on cards with a 0.5cm border...
The prints look like salt prints, but are probably
made on albumen paper... Many are handcoloured and varnished. On the back is written
in Italian and Turkish, Marubi P. Fotografo in
Scutari d’Albania. These prints were made
around 1870.” Gérard Girard, History of
Photography, (International Quarterly, Vol. 6,
No. 3 July 1982), p. 244.
3
“... This studio was 7 metres long by 5 metres
wide. The façade and two thirds of the room
was made of glass so that the light could
enter in equal amounts from above and from
the sides. The glass panels were covered with
huge black moveable cotton baize curtains
that could be drawn and opened by hand to
allow the desired amount of light in. The first
photographic cameras used in Albania were
German and French makes with dimensions
of 40 by 30 cm and slots to hold two negative
plates, 26 by 31 cm and 21 by 27cm. Photography took place in the open air, usually in shady
areas. Later appeared cameras atop wooden
tripods measuring 18 by 24 cm and 13 by
18 cm”. Kahreman Ulqini, Gjurmë të Historisë
Kombëtare në Fototekën e Shkodrës, (Shtëpia
Botuese 8 Nëntori, Tiranë, 1982), pp. 2-3.
4
The “Marubi Dynasty“ consisted of three
Marubis; Pjetro, Kel and Gegë Marubi. It lasted
for approximately a century, from around
1860΄s until 1950΄s.
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His full name at birth was Mikel Kodheli.
6
Zani Shkodrës translates as The Voice of
Shkodra.
7
The photograph Kapiteni Mark Raka dhe
Bajraktari i Shalës, which translates as Captain
Mark Raka and Bajraktar of Shala, is also
known under the title Dorzimi i Armëve
(The Handover of Firearms).
8
The Bajraktar is the hereditary leader of
a bajrak, a traditional political and administrative entity in Northern Albania. The word
Bajraktar comes from Turkish and literally
means ”clan chieftain“. The Bajraktar in this
photograph is a real life character called Lush
Prela. The captain is also a real life character
called Mark Raka.
9
This photo has been included in the book
The Photography Book, Phaidon, London,
2000, p. 302
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Pjetro Marubi’s studio was such a great success that the old master had to
take on assistants. One of them was the 15-year-old Kel Marubi (Kodheli).5 Upon
the master’s death in 1903, Kel inherited Pjetro Marubi’s photo studio, known as
“Studio Marubbi” and decided to change his surname to Marubi in homage to
and in memory of Pjetro Marubi. Thus began the history of the Marubi dynasty.
The studio changed too. New props, painted backgrounds and new equipment
improved the technical quality of the photos. New sources of light were added
to the studio, in different arrangements, increasing the quantity of detail in
the photographs. Kel Marubi worked on dry plates of silver gelatine-bromide
in 120 x 120 cm format. The subjects he chose to photograph were mostly historical events and aspects of the life and culture of the highlanders. As a photographer he tried to work in colour but he achieved greater artistic results in black
and white. Unlike his adoptive father, who preferred to capture the “natural
moment”, he shows a clear tendency to direct and stage his photos, especially
those depicting the key moments in the life of the Albanian highlanders.
Kel Marubi, is arguably the best Albanian photographer of his era as well as
a devoted and passionate Albanian patriot deeply involved with local patriotic
clubs and associations. He took photographs of the first government of the independent Albania. He was the founder of the newspaper “Zani Shkodrës”6. He was
also one of the photographers of the Albanian Royal Court of King Zog during the
years of the Albanian monarchy (1928 – 1939). Moreover, he was commissioned
by King Nicholas of Montenegro (1841 – 1921) to photograph several weddings
and events of the Montenegrin Royal Court at the turn of the century.
One of his most renowned photos, Kapiteni Mark Raka dhe Bajraktari i Shalës7
shows us the act of handing over firearms by the Bajraktar8, the most influential
figure of the region, to an official of the young Albanian state.
Taken in 1922 the photo was inspired by real life events, namely the Government’s reform to collect firearms all over the country. This is an indoor photo
taken in Marubi’s studio. All the people posing for the photograph are real personalities of everyday life with an important social and official status. Kel Marubi
tries to create a directorial, almost idyllic, mise-en-scene of the event. This can be
seen in the carefully studied arrangement of the models, their compositional pose
and the peacefulness that prevails throughout the whole photograph. Given the
Albanian highlanders’ historical close association with firearms, the purpose of
the photograph was to help the government’s attempt to disarm the population.
Kel Marubi invited these important and influential people to sit for him so they
could perform the act of handing over the guns in the most noble and dignified
manner. The mass publication of this photograph would make common people
see and recognize their leaders handing over the arms and encourage them to
follow their example. This image, one of the most accomplished compositions
of Albanian photography, is a clear example of photography becoming a propaganda tool.9
Being a careful observer of the surrounding environment, everyday life and
small details, Kel Marubi photographed with the same intensity and special
concern women weaving at the loom, merchants, foreign militaries, distinguished
visitors to the city, writers and poets, fighters and noblemen. Even in these photographs we feel and see the theatrical staging, the deep observation of peoples’
features and personality and the compositional arrangement of the subject.
Kel Marubi was the principal photographer in the country from 1890 until the
early 1920s. He created the figure of the modern Albanian photographer, which
would be followed ardently by all subsequent artists in Shkodra and throughout
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the country. He died in 1940 and his son, Gegë Marubi10, the last of the Marubi
Dynasty, took over the studio.11
Kolë Idromeno is another significant artistic personality in Shkodra and the
country’s most important painter at the turn of the century. He was a complex
artist who also made an important contribution to the development of Albanian
architecture and photography. After attending lectures in drawing at the studio of
Pjetro Marubi, Idromeno later moved to Venice where it seems he studied painting at the city’s academy of Fine Art for a short time. In 1884, he opened a photo
studio in Shkodra called Dritëshkronja e Kolës. Idromeno’s subjects show characters, ensembles of intentionally arranged figures; they document historical events
by building up compositional situations and moods. In his photographs nothing
is left to chance. The scenes have been thought out down to the smallest detail,
each element taken in turn. His creative output during his whole life vacillated
between photography and painting. In the words of Gérard Girard, Idromeno was
the first Albanian painter “...to make use of photography as a way of taking notes
10 His full name at birth was Grigor Marubi.
11 The Marubi Collection is on the UNESCO World
Heritage List and consists of a rich photographic archive with over 200,000 original
negatives, mainly on silver bromide glass
plates, hosted in Shkodra, in “Fototeka Marubi”.
The photography of Shkodra had as its leaders
the Marubi Dynasty, followed by the Pici Family, Pjetër Raboshta, Angjelin Nenshati and the
photographer Dedë Jakova (1917 – 1973).
Kel Marubi (1870 – 1940), Captain Mark Raka and Bajraktar of Shala, 1922, dry glass plate, 10 x 15 cm, Fototeka Kombëtare Marubi, Shkodër.
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12 His photo-archive is kept at the Instituti
i Kulturës Popullore (Institute of Popular
Culture)
in Tirana.
13 Pici family left a legacy of nearly 70,000 photos
in glass dry plates and celluloid.
14 Kahreman Ulqini, Gjurmë të Historisë
Kombëtare në Fototekën e Shkodrës, Shtëpia
Botuese 8 Nëntori, Tiranë, 1982, pp.2 – 3.
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in making sketches”. As a photographer he started out using the wet collodion
process but then moved on to dry plates. His photographic legacy is upwards
of 2000 glass dry plates.12
Shan Pici is the most prominent photographer out of the Pici family, a family
that influenced the development of photography in Shkodra.13 Shan Pici got his
first taste of photography in Marubi’s studio. In1924, he and his brothers Ndrek
and Tefë Pici opened their own studio. Shan quickly moved out of the studio in
search of wildlife and landscape photography. He captured the Albanian natural
habitat with all its great contrasts and diverse terrains. Pici is known primarily
as a landscape photographer but he also documented the social, sporting and
artistic events of the city. He tried to create an artistic identity by moving away
from the focus and themes of Pjetro Marubi.
At first, photographers in Shkodra used the collodion process. Then, around
the years 1885 – 1890, the collodion process was replaced with dry plates, which
were glass plates coated with a gelatine emulsion of silver bromide. As has been
noted, this presented a real advantage over the old technique of wet collodion,
not only because it made it possible to take photographs much more quickly, but
also because now photographers could easily move from one place to another
without carrying an enormous amount of chemicals and other equipment
with them.14 This new improvement allowed Albanian photography to develop
quickly, but this rapid growth was not accompanied by journals or magazines on
photography. Instead many series of photograph-postcards were sold. Initially,
the art of photography [the photographic process] was handed down from
craftsman to craftsman. Then, later, at the beginning of the 20th century, a trend
emerges whereby photographers spend their formative years abroad, to take
specialist courses on photography. These new photographers who had studied
abroad brought back the latest technical knowledge, materials and photographic
equipment.
The city of Korça, always noted for its elaborate culture and patriotic feelings,
forms the other important Albanian artistic centre, in the south east of the country. It was here in 1887 that the first Albanian language grammar school opened
as well as the first young women’s institute in 1891. At the beginning of the 20th
century the city was invaded by Greece (1912 – 1914) and then France (1916
– 1920). The first Albanian Lycée opened in 1917 during the French occupation.
Photography came early to Korça, arguably through Jani Zengo, a priest, artist
and iconographer, who had learned the technique of photography in Greece.
Kristaq Sotiri meanwhile is one of the most important Albanian photo
graphers of the 20th century and certainly the most accomplished. He was born
in Mborje, a village close to Korça, but his artistic development was influenced
greatly by his experiences in the photographic studios of the USA where he
stayed for nearly two decades. One of the studios where he stayed for eight years
and perfected his technique was George Steckel’s photography studio in Los
Angeles. Here, Sotiri learnt more advanced photographic methods and practices.
In 1922 – 1923 he settled for a short time in New York and opened a studio. Then
in 1923, for unknown reasons, he returned home to Korça, where he settled down
and opened a new studio, Studio Sotiri, concentrating more on portrait photography. His experiences in the USA played an integral part in his artistic development
and set him apart from any other Albanian photographer of the time. His photography, based primarily on the pictorialist movement’s approaches and using
impressionistic soft focus and aestheticized poses, is noted for giving the portrait
a lyrical aura using diffused and combined light. To make contact prints Sotiri
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used all formats, mostly in the 18 by 12 cm and 10 by 15 cm plates although some
fine photography examples are found in the 18 by 24 cm and 24 by 30 cm format.
This process was quite expensive and not everybody could afford it. Sotiri photographed only at certain times of the day, making the most of the natural light.
His studio, built on the ground floor of his home, very quickly made a name for
itself as a quality studio, with the rich and the bourgeoisie being its most frequent
clients. In contrast with the monumentality of Marubis’ photos, Sotiri’s are noted
for their clarity, refinement and delicacy, especially when portraying women
and outcasts. He also took some beautiful landscapes. Kristaq Sotiri left a photo
archive of around 11,000 negatives and plates, portraits and landscapes mostly
of the regions of Korça and Pogradec.
Another important photographer to open a studio in Korça was Vani Burda.
Like Sotiri before him he also emigrated but unlike Sotiri he went to the Albanian
colony in Bucharest, Romania. He returned to Albania in 1920 and shortly afterwards opened a photo studio in his hometown. He is remembered mostly for his
documentary photographs of popular movements of the time and his photographic collages.
The main trend in Albanian photography of the 1920s and 30s was to show
the modernizing processes in Albanian life and culture, documenting the social
changes happening in the country. Many images show details of the interaction
between urban elements and the customs and traditions of the past.
During the second decade of the 20th century, photography in Albania started
spreading throughout the country. Competition between photographers and the
availability of various foreign journals on photography helped raise the overall
technical quality of the studios. New genres were created such as the photoposter, the photo-collage, photojournalism and photography for tourist purposes.
The Albanian press started publishing the first materials by excellent Albanian
photojournalists such as Ymer Bali, Dedë Jakova and Kolë Maca. In 1928, the first
Albanian photo-album was published, entitled “Shqipria e Ilustruar”15, containing detailed geographical and panoramic information about Albania. In 1938,
the photo-album entitled 10 Vjetë Mbretni 1928 – 193816 was published, covering
a wide range of topics such as royal ceremonies and views from Albania. In Tirana
the activities of Ymer Bali, one of the main photographers of the abovementioned
album, and Jani Ristani are noteworthy: together with Vasil Ristani, they opened
a technologically innovative studio called Shtëpi për Arte Fotografike17 in 1936.
The National Body of Tourism in 1937 – 1938 created a fertile environment for
the development of Landscape Photography for tourist purposes. Noteworthy
amongst female photographers is the activity of Bernardina Marubi in Shkodra,
who was the daughter of Kel Marubi and also the first female photographer in
the country.
The Albanian photography collections from the 1860s until 1938 are irreplaceable historical documents of prime importance since they are the most natural
visual memory of the Albanian people’s cultural evolution and national identity.
At the same time they represent some of the greatest Albanian artistic qualities
from the end of the 19th until the middle of the 20th century.
15 Shqipria e Ilustruar translates as Illustrated
Albania.
16 10 Vjetë Mbretni 1928 – 1938 translates as
10 years of the Albanian Kingdom
1928 – 1938.
17 Shtëpi për Arte Fotografike translates as
The House for Photographic Arts.
Translated from Albanian to English by Genti Gjikola, Arthur Byng Nelson
Kel Marubi (1870 – 1940), Gjystina Zef Kola
and her Son, 1925, dry glass plate, 10 x 15 cm,
Fototeka Kombëtare Marubi, Shkodër.
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Biographical Notes:
Burda, Vani (Korça, 1875 – 1949) learned
photography in Rumania and in 1913
designed the first Albanian photoposter. He also developed the first
photographic collages which were
popular as postcards in patriotic circles.
He opened his own studio in Korça in
1920.
Idromeno, Kolë (Nikollë Idromeno)
(Shkodra, 1860 – 1939) was a gifted
artist with notable contributions to
painting, photography and architecture.
He took his first drawing lessons in the
atelier of Pjetro Marubi and there he
came in contact with photography.
He later went to Venice where he
apparently studied painting at the city’s
academy of Fine Arts for a short time. In
1884 he opened his own photographic
studio in Shkodra called Dritëshkronja
e Kolës. He was the first Albanian to
show a film in his hometown in 1911
– 1912. As an architect he was noted for
building some of the most renowned
buildings in Shkodra such as the Grand
Café, the National Bank and others. He
is revered as one of the most complex
and important Albanian artists of the
19th and 20th centuries.
Marubi, Kel (Mikel Kodheli) (Shkodra,
1870 – 1940) started working in Pjetro
Marubi’s studio as an assistant and in
1885 served a two-year photography
apprenticeship in Guglielmo
Sebastianutti’s studio in Trieste, Italy,
returning to work with Pjetro Marubi
in his studio. In 1903, on the death of
Marubi, he inherited the studio and
changed his name to Kel Marubi. In the
late 1920s he enrolled as one of the
official photographers to King Zog’s
court. At the height of his activity he
was a permanent member of Shkodra’s
city council and had a major influence
on the political life of the city.
Marubi, Pjetro (Pietro Marubbi) (Piacenza,
Italy 1834 – 1903) lived and worked
in Shkodra but little is known of his
early years. Allegedly a supporter
of Garibaldi, he left Italy for political
reasons, chased by Austrian troops,
and he initially travelled to Corfu and
then to Vlora in Albania. Following
the advice of the Italian consul there
he visited Shkodra, a city that then
had a population of around 45,000
people and over 3,000 stores. As an
amateur painter and decorator he
settled there and in the early 1860s
set up a photography studio, the first
in Albania, called Marubbi P. He is the
founder of Albanian photography and
also painted the murals and frescoes
of the Orthodox Church in Shkodra.
Sotiri, Kristaq (Mborje 1883 – 1970)
emigrated to the United States at an
early age where he gained valuable
photographic experience by working
in various studios. For eight years he
worked at George Steckel’s Portrait
Studio in Los Angeles (a studio
where Edward Weston had worked
before him in 1908 as a retoucher).
In 1922 he moved to New York and
in 1923, after nearly 20 years in the
United States, he returned home to
Korça where he opened Studio Sotiri.
He focused particularly on photoportraiture, achieving remarkable
results. In 1974, the Grand Palace
of Culture in Tirana held a major
retrospective of some of his best
works.
Pici, Shan (a.k.a. Mark Pici) (Shkodra,
1904 – 1976) had his first contact
with photography in Studio Marubbi.
In 1924, he and his brothers Tefë
and Ndrekë opened their own
photographic studio in Shkodra. He
particularly focused on panoramic
and landscape photography and
photographic documentation of
sporting and social events.
18 “...Pjetro Marubi painted the murals and
frescoes of the Orthodox Church in Shkodra.”
Taken from M. Prendushi, Kolë Idromeno,
Tiranë, 1984, p .19.
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Photographers
Alexandre
Fierlants, Edmond
Marissiaux, Gustave
Antony, Maurice
Gevaert, Lieven
Borrenbergen, Jozef
Emiel
Ghémar, Louis
Mesens, Edouard Léon
Théodore
Buyle, Ferdinand
Breyer, Albert
Chavepeyer, Emile
Claine, EvrardGuillaume
Colard, Hector
De Smet, Robert
Dhuicque, Eugène
Dubreuil, Pierre
Misonne, Léonard
Ghisoland, Norbert
Neuckens, Antony
Guidalevitch, Victor
Nougé, Paul
Guiette, René
Remes, Henri
Hannon, Edouard
Rombaut, Emile
Hersleven, Jacques
Simenon, Georges
Kessels, Willy
Sterken, Jozef
Lefrancq, Marcel-G.
Sury, Joseph
Leirens, Charles
Ubac, Raoul
Magritte, René
Van Parys, Germaine
Massart, Jean
Th e H i s to r y o f B e l g i a n P ho to g r a ph y
Georges Vercheval
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The Histor y of Belgian
Pho togr aphy
Belgium was founded in 1830, nine years before the first daguerreotype was
revealed. Too early for the September Days, which heralded the country’s new
independence, to be captured on film. Not soon enough to chart the construction
of the first railway line on the continent, between Brussels and Mechelen, in 1836.
“Belgium, country of several worlds” wrote Franz Hellens. Culture and the arts
radiate out even to the smallest towns, and they are expressed in French, Flemish
and even German! This diversity is an indisputable treasure. The character of the
Escaut river, renamed De Schelde further down its course, is not like that of the
Meuse. Flanders, a flat landscape with “a sky so low that a canal got lost in it”, as
Jacques Brel sang, differs from the gentle undulating Brabant region and the dark
forests of the Ardennes. The twists and turns of history, cultural exchanges and
trade bolstered complicity in the region. The Port of Antwerp was in the process
of expansion. In Wallonia, industry was on a par with Great Britain in terms of
creativity and productivity. Leopold II, the second King of Belgium, bought the
independent state of Congo for himself, as his own private property. He later
offered it to Belgium, which accepted it in 1908...
Like Belgium, photography is a mixture of truth and fiction, and it has found
a home here. Photography might even have been invented in Belgium: in February 1839, Albert Breyer, a student of German origin at the faculty of medicine at
the University of Liège, created photographic proofs on paper. He sent them to
the Academy of Sciences in Brussels, twice, with no response. He then became
a doctor and organised free consultations for workers...
Immediately after the daguerreotype had been disclosed, the first one in
Belgium was carried out by Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Jobard on 16 September
1839, in Brussels where he was living at the time. Exchanges did not stop at the
border. W. H. F. Talbot, John Muir Wood, Reverend Calvert Jones would travel to
Flanders, Liège, Brussels and the French, the Germans, the Swiss opened some
studios.
Guillaume Claine and Edmond Fierlants listed the architectural heritage as
early as in the 1860s. In 1870, Louis Ghémar, famous for his photographic portraits
of the 80 guests (including Nadar and Carjat) at the banquet given in 1862 in
honour of Victor Hugo during his exile, also published an album showing the
covering of the Senne, the river which runs through Brussels, and its effect on
urban infrastructure. Similarly, in 1872, Armand Dandoy published La Province de
Namur monumentale et pittoresque. These initiatives could not have continued at
the beginning of the 20th century had it not been for the work of Jean Massart,
who defended nature and the wilderness and created a catalogue of outstanding
sites, emphasising their fragility in a way that was ahead of its time. The National
Botanic Gardens of Belgium published two volumes of this catalogue in 1908 and
1912, but the war interrupted the project.
We should note here that photography in Belgium received one significant
boost when, in 1890, Lieven Gevaert, photographer in Antwerp, began to manufacture sensitive material and chemical products. Gevaert and Co, established
in 1894, was soon recognised for his products throughout the world. Gevaert
merged with Agfa in 1964.
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In the Photo Anthony-Permeke family workshop in Ypres, portrait photography and reporting were carried out during the First World War. On the Yser Front,
German progress was halted but Maurice and Robert Anthony saw the human
disaster and the extent of the destruction (Ypres was a ghost town in 1919) and
decided to chronicle their experiences. Their images were published notably in
L’Illustration in Paris and in the English Illustrated London News.
From 1915 to 1918, architect and photographer Eugène Dhuicque led
a project commissioned by the Ministry of the Sciences and the Arts to record
systematically all the buildings in western Flanders that had been damaged by
the conflict. Thousands of plates and autochromes were produced to show the
damage, to facilitate future reconstruction or to preserve memories.
For most portrait photographers, working from their own small businesses,
photography was their bread and butter. However, in the cities, some of them
Léonard Misonne (1870 – 1943), Near the Mill, 1902, Fresson process, 27.8 x 37.3 cm.
Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi (Collection Communauté française Wallonie-Bruxelles),
© Léonard Misonne/Lita, 2010/SABAM Belgium.
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behaved like artists, received clients in luxurious studios, carried out meticulous
work, employed personnel and enjoyed good social standing, on a par with
the doctor, the schoolmaster or the local priest. Ferdinand Buyle, for example,
began his career in the small town of Lokeren. It led him to Sint-Niklaas, then to
settle in Brussels in 1902 and it was not long before he opened a second studio
in Antwerp. Close to the Royal Family, appreciated by the bourgeoisie for the
quality of his work, he was a perfectionist as much for the angle of the shot as for
the finish. He was a master of composition and light. Paying careful attention to
the rendering of the subject, he said that he respected the truth of photography.
Gustave Marissiaux (1872 – 1929), Nude, 1911 – 1914, Sury process,16.2 x 11.3 cm
Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi (Collection Communauté française Wallonie-Bruxelles).
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However, some of his images look like photo-engravings, and he had no qualms
about modifying the backdrop or the shape of a garment to produce a better
result. In 1930, Ferdinand Buyle became Honorary President of the Union of
Professional Photographers.
At the other end of the scale, Norbert Ghisoland was a popular portrait artist,
in the Borinage, in Frameries, not far from Cuesmes, where Vincent Van Gogh was
an evangelist preacher in 1879. We are in the very heart of coal country wrote
Camille Lemonnier. Here, the coal industry reigns supreme over the whole land.
All its activity, all its intelligence, all its capital hangs over the pit. Norbert ought
to have been a pit miner, like his father. However, his father dreamed of giving his
son a different future, and Norbert was apprenticed to a photographer in Mons.
In 1902 he bought his equipment, helped him to set up a shop, a darkroom and
a studio. The atrium window was lovely, full of light. Norbert could then announce
: “we work every day in all weather”. And so he did. He worked ceaselessly, married, hired an employee. In Frameries, a large working-class district, the people
are not rich, but the ritual of photography is compulsory. Where does Ghisoland’s
talent lie? His images are far from sophisticated. Of course, he is an expert in
technique, setting and light. These are important but they do not explain everything. The essential lies elsewhere, in this incredible ability to gain his subjects’
trust, to understand them, to meet their regard and to reveal them to themselves
in spite of the pose, the painted decor and the stereotypical accessories. He was
also a chronicler of his time. He immortalised these young couples, first communicants, soldier, rope-makers, coal miners, pigeon keepers, archers, boxers, cyclists,
accordionists, and so on.
The portrait photographer could sometimes find himself on the edges of
his profession. Charles Leirens was a free spirit who had always been interested
in culture. His father and uncle were amateur photographers and members of
the Belgian Photography Association, so naturally he produced a few images as
a child. Music, however, was his real interest. After having studied the piano and
composition, he became director of the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. In the
30s, he founded the Maison des Arts. There, he organised exhibitions, lectures
(Le Corbusier, André Lhote), concerts (Walter Gieseking, Rudolf Serkin) and
meetings which aim, commented Marc Vausort, “was to let us get to know the
man after having applauded the artist”. This setting encouraged him to return
to photography. Charles Leirens practised portrait photography because he was
interested in “the other”. His models are artists, whom he wants people to recognise as men and women. For him, photography was a machine to help people see,
a means rather than an end, a tool adapted to his research: “I could never produce
a good portrait of a model for whom I felt no sympathy,“ he said. He captures
the gestures, explores the faces of his contemporaries, searches for the angle
that links the photographer to the subject. Between 1933 and 1965 he produced
hundreds of portraits. Among those of the 30s, we encounter Paul Valéry, Colette,
James Ensor, André Gide, André Malraux, Ossip Zadkine and Arthur Honegger.
Let’s go back a few years and look at the amateur photographers. Many of
them defined themselves as artists and they formed a significant part of the
Belgian Photography Association. Created in 1874, the Association extended
beyond the cities until in 1901 it numbered 750 members. These were essentially
wealthy bourgeois, bankers, solicitors, doctors, magnates of trade and industry.
They formed circles and clubs, held meetings, elected a president, vice-president
and treasurers, admitted new members and published internal newsletters advertising their exhibitions and providing technical information. They talked about
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Pierre Dubreuil (1972 – 1944), The Grand-Place,
Brussels, 1908, gelatin silver print, 24.6 x 19.9 cm.
Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi (Collection
Communauté française Wallonie-Bruxelles).
All rights reserved.
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new trends, which were strongly opposed by those upholding photography’s
traditions.
Brussels enjoyed a powerful magnetism and there was intense interaction, for
example, with the Camera Club of Vienna, the Paris and Hamburg Photo Clubs
and Photo Secession. When the London Linked Ring Brotherhood was opened
to foreign members, some Belgians claimed this privilege, among them Hector
Colard and Alexandre, also member of L‘Effort Circle.
Edouard Hannon was one of the 143 founders of the Association Belge de
Photographie. Coming from a wealthy bourgeois background, he was an engineer, director of the rich Solvay firm. From 1883, he had to visit company subsidiaries in many countries. His photographs, deliberately created in documentary
style and linked to social realities, show the poorest peasants deep in the heartland of Russia, young workers in Burgos, market scenes in Napoli, urban shots in
the United States. But Hannon by no means disowned the pictorialist aesthetic.
Along with others, he organised in 1895 the Salon de Bruxelles, aiming to „take
a confident step along the new road in art“. Works like Denise and Coppélia, as
well as gum bichromate landscapes were popular.
On 1 February 1899, an international exhibition took place at the Berlin Royal
Academy. Art critics noted Alexandre, Hannon, Misonne, Cumont, Vanderkindere
and Marissiaux who, in the same year, had abandoned his Law studies to open
a photography studio in Liège. Simple, barely retouched and full of light, the
portraits of Gustave Marissiaux were renowned among his bourgeois clientele.
He however was more concerned with his creative activity. His work, recognised
in his own time and then long neglected, is exceptional, as much for its quality
as for its extraordinary diversity. His Study of a young girl in 1900, in its formal
simplicity and the peculiarity of the girl’s expression, which appears to question
the viewer, goes far beyond the bounds of an ordinary portrait. His images are
animated by the same magic vibration when he is working with nature. Here
you can distinguish the influence of Emerson, whom he admired and cited in his
conferences, while Constable and Corot are never far away. For the albums Venice
or Jardins d’Italie, Marissiaux uses the greasy ink technique (Rawlins), and he uses
it for a reason. The goal is to strike a precise chord, in the musical sense of the
term, explains Marc-Emmanuel Mélon, who dedicated a perceptive work to the
photographer. Like the conflict between shadow and light, his works are divided
into two types. There is the softness of idyllic landscapes, faces with half-closed
eyes, shadowy romanticism when he depicts the Breton countryside. Then there
is an irresistible force which he transmits when he evokes the hot breath of the
iron and coal industries. But Gustave Marissiaux remained a great professional.
In 1904, a commission from the Union of Collieries in Liège led him to produce,
in stereoscopy, a long sequence describing the work of the mine in successive
chapters: The pit, The miners, The descent, Wall mining, The Hiercheuses (female
miners), At the spoil heap (Le puits, Les mineurs, La descente, Les tailles, Les
hiercheuses, au terril). It is an impressive collection, of high artistic quality, which
is displayed in around thirty stereoscopic viewers at the Universal Exhibition at
the Palace of Industry in Liège in 1905.
It is fascinating to note that the care taken over the lighting for a shot of the
coal sorting room is comparable to that of the Intérieur de Saint-Marc in Venice!
Admired at the Universal Exhibition, but rejected by the Belgian Photography
Association, which accepted neither the stereoscope nor the documentary, this
work would however be widely displayed, both in Belgium and abroad, and notably at the Paris Photo-Club. From 1911, Gustave Marissiaux secretly experimented
Emile Chavepeyer (1893 – 1959), The Chat, 1930,
gelatin silver print, 32.8 x 23.5 cm. Musée de la
Photographie, Charleroi (Collection Communauté
française Wallonie-Bruxelles), All rights reserved.
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with three-colour photography, a technique refined by the chemist Joseph Sury.
This system was difficult to manage and would never become commercially available, but nonetheless Marissiaux managed to produce beautiful nudes, still lifes,
landscapes and portraits of artists in their studios.
The other great figure in Belgian photography of the early 20th century was
indisputably Léonard Misonne. A mining engineer born in the heart of coal country in Gilly (Charleroi) his fragile health prevented him from practising his trade.
He admired Jean-Baptiste Corot and the Barbizon painters. He also liked music,
botany, zoology and the sciences. But it was to photography that he dedicated his
life. He refused, however, to be satisfied with showing everyday situations, which
were considered trivial. He had a deep distaste for his industrial surroundings and
he rejected modernity. “Art is nature seen through a particular emotion,” he wrote
in “Truth in Photography“ (Die Galerei). He expressed a taste for soft focus, rain,
misty weather (“without fog, the landscape is dead”), and the “sfumato”, which
blurs contours. He went further still by using a “flou-net” screen, a technique of his
Germaine Van Parys, (1893 – 1983), Albert Einstein on the quays Alongside The Schelde river, 1933, gelatin silver print, 18 x 24 cm.
Collection Library of Fotomuseum Antwerpen, © Van Parys Media.
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own invention, which he commercialised. “The technique with the greatest artistic
value is the one that gives the operator the greatest power over his image” he said.
The pictorialist school, which tried to merge into painting, an “art majeur”, also
held this opinion. The “noble” techniques and manual operations perfectly suited
Misonne who, like Robert Demachy, prided himself on never producing the same
proof twice. Processes using carbon, greasy ink (Rawlins) and mediobrome, which
he developed himself, enabled him to perfect his compositions by rubbing out any
disruptive elements. “In photographic art, light is everything” he declared, as well as
“light transcends reality” and “if you do not believe that light makes a tableau, quit
photography.“ Use light, and if necessary, reinvent it. He was demanding: a facade
was to be repainted in a lighter colour, a clearing created, a path re-drawn by his
children, the roof of his house equipped with an observatory so that he could
photograph the sky. His pictures of cities, expressive, less manipulated, but rarer,
are now considered the most interesting of his works (Cigarette matinale, Charleroi,
for example). His writings – “My Method“ (“Ma Méthode“); “Flou-net“ (“Le flou-net“);
“The Skies Drawn Down“ (“Le Ciels Rapportés“) – were published between 1914 and
1939 in Deutscher Camera Almanach, Photo-moderne, Camera (Luzern), Die Galerei,
American Annual and l’Amateur photographe.
Many photographers were part of a school which evolved from pictorialism
– via “post-pictorialism” – to modernism, particularly in the style of Henri Remes
and Emile Rombaut, two successive – and highly active – presidents of the PhotoClub of Antwerp. The first was THE editor of Licht, the first Belgian magazine in
Flemish, while the second edited the manual “Artistic interpretation through
photography”, widely read in Belgium and France. Jozef Emiel Borrenbergen, the
administrative director of a large firm in Antwerp, was a passionate amateur photographer. He joined the fotografische Kring Iris in 1909. He was its president from
1912 to 1965, giving it a dominant position and a creative force (which would
later continue under the influence of Antoon Dries). He founded the Antwerp‘s
section of the Belgian Photography Association, held countless conferences and
edited the Fotokunst review. His intense activity sometimes got him into delicate
situations, with traditionalists strongly opposing the progressive trends within
these movements. This did not stop him from developing his own work, mainly
rural landscapes in a post-pictorialist style, using techniques such as bromoil. In
the 20s and 30s, his art evolved towards modernism.
Victor Guidalevitch, an electrotechnician trained at the University of Liège
and working for Bell Telephone in Antwerp, was part of the Antwerp Photo-Club
Salon, a somewhat elitist circle, from 1932. Initially influenced by Emile Rombaut
and the pictorialist school – he worked with bromoil and the Color-Poudre pro
cess, invented by Joseph Sury – he then opted for the 24/36, deliberately favouring a different aspect of daily life and a search for original points of view. Between
the two World Wars, Piet Spoor, a diamond merchant in Kalmhout, Antwerp,
opted, uncompromisingly, for the Nouvelle Vision school. He produced dynamic
images and geometrical compositions. At the time, this was not a guarantee of
success. A member of the Fotokring Iris since 1929, he pursued this route with
dynamic images and geometrical compositions. However, he had little time for
the disputes between ancient and modern and declared himself a dissident.
Together with Robert Janssens and Frans Rombaut, he created the „Three Men‘s
Club“. In 1937, in response to an anti-modernist text by Léonard Misonne, the
group sent a letter in which he considered Misonne „a good advocate of a bad
cause“ and concluded that: „the world moves on, so what is the use of clinging
desperately to the past?“
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Pictorialist photographers are not necessarily traditionalists! By their choice
of and approach to their subject, some of them clearly distance themselves from
this school. In this context, we ought to mention Pierre Dubreuil, highly active
in Belgium although he was French and hailed from Lille. His work is exceptional
in its originality, not to mention his frequent reference to the unusual and the
bizarre, the boldness of his compositions (close ups, bird’s eye views, low-angle
shots, montages) and his use of light: all qualities which are evident in images like
Les volants, 1901 (where some young girls are throwing a ball over an imaginary
line), La Grand Place de Bruxelles, 1908 and the highly geometrical Croquet,
1932. A dominant figure in the Paris Photo-Club of 1900, elected to Linked Ring,
Dubreuil corresponded with Alfred Stieglitz and exhibited work at the Gallery
Albright in Buffalo. The cubist and futurist movements were a profound influence
on him. In 1912, the critic Cyrille Ménard described him as “whimsical, an eccentric, say some; one of those rare photographers, say others, in France, who show
ideas in their photographs and who will stand the test of time”... Controversial,
radical, bruised in spirit by the Great War of 1914 – 18, Pierre Dubreuil was to be
found more and more often in Belgium. Fascinated by the painter James Ensor,
by the Dutch movement De Stijl, and by Belgian surrealism, in 1924 he sold his
property in Lille, moved to Brussels, married Valentine Vanassche and became
president of the Belgian Photography Association. A year before his death in 1943,
he gave a part of his negatives and archives to the Société Gevaert collection in
Antwerp, where they were later to be destroyed by bombing, during World War II.
Dubreuil would probably have been forgotten had it not been for the American
historian Tom Jacobson, from San Diego, who during carried out research in
Belgium and Paris in the 1980s and who became interested in him while organising an exhibition at the Pompidou Centre.
The upheavals caused by the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution and
the major social changes shook many certainties, but we must not forget that
photographers, whether pictorialists or not, are less interested in history than in
the condition of the workers and in class struggles. There are however exceptions.
Emile Chavepeyer, a professional working in Châtelet and Charleroi during the
20s and 30s, refused to limit himself to photographing young married couples,
however happy they may have been. Curious about everything, including music
and painting (René Magritte was a childhood friend of his) and a foreign member
of the French Photographic Society, his aim was to transcribe his feelings for his
“Black Country” and, like Fernand Léger or Germaine Krull, he expressed a fascination for heavy industry and the flamboyance of the steel plants and the machine.
Although idealised, the worker is still present in his images. The exhausting labour
of the docker and the obvious poverty of working families did not stop them from
reaching grandeur. Skilled in the use of bromoil, Emile Chavepeyer and his brother
Albert experimented in transferring bromoil onto lithographic stone.
The Vooruit photographic circle, founded in Ghent in 1922, acted in the same
spirit. The Circle was linked to a Socialist newspaper of the same name, which,
however, published few images. Most of its members fitted into the prevalent
“art photography” movement. Some of them however thought differently. Jules
Beheyt was one of these: a professional who, since 1913, had photographed
demonstrations in favour of universal suffrage and who was determined to raise
awareness of living conditions in working-class neighbourhoods. Jozef Sterken
was another such photographer. A victim of mustard gas during the First World
War, he was one of the most dynamic members of Vooruit. His doctors recommended plenty of walks in the fresh air. He was interested in art, but was attracted
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Paul Nougé (1898 – 1967), Cut Lashes, from the
series Subversion of Images, 1929 – 1930, gelatin
silver print, 19.9 x 19.9 cm. Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi (private collection on deposit),
© Paul Nougé/LITA, Bratislava, 2010/SABAM.
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by documentary making, and he knew his own working class background well.
His images were renowned in Germany and the Netherlands, where the depiction
of working scenes was more common, but Vooruit also sent them to Japan, Brazil
and the US. The works of Stercken, points out historian Marc Van Gysegem, sometimes remind you of Rodchenko and the Soviet photography of those years. They
evoke a sort of working class apology, as well as an elegy to work and productivity. However, the romantic nature of Flanders is also an indisputable presence.
We have barely mentioned the photojournalists and documentary photographers occupied with social chronicling and events. The media, at the start of
the century, were relatively unconcerned with the image, which they only consid-
Willy Kessels (1898 – 1974), Worldexposition, pavilion of the city of Antwerp,1930
gelatin silver print, 23 x 16.7 cm, Collection Library of Fotomuseum Antwerpen, © SOFAM.
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ered for its illustrative value. They are therefore partly responsible for the situation
themselves. The images were often badly printed and generally not signed: press
photographers had so little motivation! In Belgium they did not have a standing
comparable to that of their French, German or Dutch colleagues. Naturally we
cannot compare their images with the major works created in other countries by
Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans or Dorothea Lange... However several names
are worth pointing out. In 1902, August De Winne, the editor of the newspaper
Le Peuple, published in Ghent “Door arm Vlaanderen”, a work which illustrated the
social situation of workers at home in the regions of Lokeren, Alost and Zele. The
photographer, whose name was Lefébure, was relatively unknown. On the same
topic and at the same time, a sociologically important project was carried out by
Antony Neuckens. Born in 1875 in Molenbeek, a glove maker and leather cutter
since the age of sixteen, Antony, as a “comrade”, set out on a journey which took
him to Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark and Norway. Convinced
of the need for greater solidarity between workers, once back in Belgium he
returned to his studies, approached socialist organisations, signed articles in
Le Peuple and was noticed by Camille Huysmans who hired him as a secretary on
a documentary section on work at home, to form part of the Brussels Universal
Exhibition of 1910. It was a complex task. Sanitary conditions, as well as poor
wages and child labour all had to be evoked. Antony Neuckens met the so-called
“free” travellers and realised that photography was the way to raise awareness of
their situation. He travelled throughout the country, from north to south, from
east to west, and collected thousands of images. Aesthetically powerful and
profoundly human, they tell of the daily life of weavers, glove makers, cigar makers, armourers, nailers, cutlers, ironmongers, marble polishers, diamond cutters,
laundresses, seamstresses, trouser makers and lacemakers. Four million people
would visit the exhibition in Brussels. In 1913, it was displayed in Antwerp, along
with the Ligue sociale d’acheteurs (Buyers’ social League), and in Ghent, where it
was supported by the cities of Brussels and Liège.
Photographers dedicated to photojournalism were rare in Belgium at the
beginning of the century, and they are often forgotten because they were not
credited for their images. However, we can mention Germaine Van Parys and
Jacques Hersleven. The latter, although born in Rotterdam, was close to the
Ixelles photographic circle from 1903. Working as a photographer in Brussels
and Antwerp from the end of the First World War, Jacques Hersleven is known for
his documentary reports which describe the work of the land, dying trades and
religious practices. His closeness to the royal family and the photographs he took
in this context made him famous. He worked with the newspaper Le Soir from
1935 to 1940.
At the age of fifteen, Germaine Van Parys produced her first images using
amateur equipment. In 1918, she captured the return of the royal couple to
liberated Brussels, and from then on she felt a vocation to be a photo reporter.
In 1922, she worked for daily papers Le Soir and La Meuse and for the Parisian
review L’Illustration. In 1925 she co-founded the Association of photo reporters.
Germaine Van Parys’ objective, whether photographing the royal family, celebrities, catastrophes or daily life in Brussels in the 30s, was simply to show what was
there, directly, and with respect. Her images are free from artifice and special
effects. Nothing is staged. Her whole art, said André Jocou, is in waiting for the
crucial moment, camera at the ready in a carefully prepared setting”. To begin
with, Germaine Van Parys used cumbersome equipment and paid no attention
to the type of plate. When she clicked the shutter, the image had to be the right
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Piet Spoor (1897 – 1979), Stairway to
Heaven,1930 – 1935, gelatin silver print,
29.4 x 23.7 cm, Collection Library of
Fotomuseum Antwerpen.
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one! Sometimes her subjects – street sweepers or market gardeners at their stalls
– stopped to pose. They were conscious of making history, even if only via the
back door. A war correspondent in 1940, active in the underground press and
then once more active in the war from 1945 – 46, she set up her own agency in
1958.
Photography is just a medium. It may take many forms and fulfil different
functions. However, if they are of high quality, these forms can be combined.
The international photography exhibition opened in Brussels in 1932. Alongside
Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, André Kertesz and Germaine Krull were several Belgian
photographers, especially Robert de Smet, Cami and Sasha Stone, Georges
Champroux and Willy Kessels. In his introduction to the catalogue, P. G. Van
Hecke, an art critic in Vooruit and editor of the review Variétés, emphasised that
photography is a means of expression used as much to reflect reality as for artistic
purposes; that its dazzling development will lead it to play a determining role in
the life of society and that it is a critical weapon for analysing society, its character
and its evolution. In the exhibition, formal experiences and reporting peacefully
co-existed without any difficulties. An example worth noting.
A witness and participant in modernity influenced by Russian constructivists
and the Bauhaus school, Willy Kessels is a very special case. He was an artist of
many talents, a sculptor and furniture maker working alongside painters and
architects (Marcel Baugniet, Victor Bourgeois, Henry Van de Velde) and recognised above all for his photography. His portraits are sensitive, his images of
architecture daring, his nudes and montages creative. For many people however,
Willy Kessels is the man who, in 1933, photographed the filming of „Misère au
Borinage“ (Poverty in the Borinage), an earnest film by Henri Storck and Joris
Ivens, who put forward the most legitimate demands of the working class and
was immediately censored. Kessels’ images are striking. They evoke those of
the Farm Security Administration (USA, 1930s). But art is rarely neutral and the
artist’s personality often presents contradictions. In her work on the subject
in 1996, Christine De Naeyer points out that, while the thirties were a time of
artistic modernity and of a number of daring moves, they were also hit by crisis
and a “return to order“. Job losses and the economic slump triggered the rise of
the extreme right and the formation of fanatical groups. Willy Kessels joined the
Verdinaso, a Flemish nationalist movement of which a faction would collaborate
with the occupying Nazis during the Second World War.
Some interesting contributions are not the work of photographers: Georges
Simenon was a prolific novelist. 200 books translated into 50 languages, 500
million readers, film adaptations (The Watchmaker of Saint Paul, The Widow
Couderc, The Maigret films) a career in journalism, as a writer and, during the 30s,
a photographer. He wanted to get closer to the people and to their experiences.
His work knew no boundaries, neither geographical nor social. His images of
Poland, Russia, Africa or the Maison du Peuple in Charleroi not only document the
people but are spontaneous and sincere. They hit the nail on the head.
Another interesting example, pointed out by Pool Andries, director of the
Antwerp Photo museum, is that of René Guiette. He was a painter, a major figure
in informal art, whose house and studio in Antwerp were drawn by Le Corbusier.
Guiette, who was able to meet Sasha Stone, took an interest in photography
from 1932 and discovered its powerful potential for his plastic research. Graphic,
and not slipping into anecdote, his images of day-to-day objects, body parts and
gestures whose principle meaning has been distorted, move towards symbolic
abstraction and even hermetism.
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The Belgian national character, both curious and subversive, skilled at selfderision, fitted in perfectly with surrealism. Xavier Canonne dedicated a thesis to
surrealism in Belgium where he emphasises the originality of Paul Nougé’s work
as well as that of his collaborators René Magritte and Marcel Mariën (who turned
later to photography). The Brussels surrealists were different from the Parisian
group, which was much better organised for achieving its goals; they met rarely,
usually in back rooms and, as remarked by Olivier Smolders, the momentum of
the group relied entirely on “the fortunes of life and friendship”.
Paul Nougé was a writer, poet and co-founder of the Belgian Communist
Party in 1919. He worked as a biochemist. He was also a photographer because
Raoul Ubac (1910 – 1985), Battle of the Amazons,1937, gelatin silver print, 21.9 x 16.4 cm, Musée
de la Photographie, Charleroi. (Collection Communauté française Wallonie-Bruxelles), © SABAM.
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1
Paul Nougé. ”Les réponses vivantes. Histoire de
ne pas rire”, in Les lèvres nues. Brussels, 1956.
Quoted by Olivier Smolders dans ”Paul Nougé,
Ecriture et caractère à l’école de la ruse”,
Labor, Brussels, 1995.
2
Susan Sontag, On Photography, Farrar, Straus
& Giroux. New York, 1973 / du Seuil, Paris, 1979.
3
E. L. T. Mesens was the director of the Galerie
L’Epoque, in 1927. The paintings of René Magritte were shown there. In 1928, he organised
Nouvelles Tendances as the first international
exhibition of modern photography in Brussels,
(before Fotografie der Gegenwart, Essen, and
Film und Foto, Stuttgart, May and July 1929).
4
Éditions Kra, Paris, 1924.
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this impersonal tool, between optics and chemistry, suited him. In 1924, he met
Aragon, Breton and Eluard. Was it with the latter in mind that he once wrote :
”I would like those of us whose names are starting to leave a trace, to erase it”.
He published the review Correspondances in Belgium, just before the first issue
of Révolution surréaliste in Paris. Like most of the tracts of the group, it distinguished itself by its allusive tone and a desire for discretion almost to the extent
of anonymity. A very subtle poem by Paul Nougé characterises it: ”They looked
like everybody else – They forced the lock – They replaced the lost object – They
mixed the liqueurs – They sowed questions with both hands – They withdrew
with modesty – Erasing their signature.”
A hoaxer, an agitator and a utopian, Paul Nougé had a great influence on
the group, although he scarcely talked, rarely published anything and, apart
from the games he played with Magritte and his other friends, only made a few
photographs. In 1929, he produced – sporadically – a set of photographs called
Subversion des images (Subversion of Images) which went down as one of the great
masterpieces of surrealism. Through this series, he discovered that photographic
staging is one of the ways of situating poetry. He did not, however, feel obliged to
indulge in aesthetics. The Cils Coupés (Cut Eyelashes) or Les Buveurs (The Drinkers)
are mainly questions. “Thinking an object means examining what is essential and
specific about it. Questioning it with all the precision the mind will allow. Understanding the world while transforming it: this is, no doubt, our true purpose”.1
Is surrealism linked to photography? We might suppose, with Susan Sontag
in On Photography, that all photography is surrealist or, to paraphrase Man Ray,
that art is not photography and photography is not art!2 Although photography is
said to be objective, it is evidently not and the surrealists, like the others or more
so, were merely interpreting reality. They played with it, manipulating it, turning
it upside-down for their settings, using superimposed images, photomontages,
photograms and other unusual techniques.
However, although most of the pictures considered as surrealist are dreamlike, disconcerting, disturbing or outrageous, their prime function is to highlight
social situations, to disconcert the establishment, to open the debate, even if only
to declare it closed immediately. When led by a free spirit, surrealism is a formidable weapon, a war cry against conventions. The amateur photographs showing
René Magritte, Paul Nougé, Louis Scutenaire, Paul Colinet fooling around pretending to be retarded soldiers are not art. They are committed, political, antimilitarist
gestures, like the shots of strong hands gripping knuckledusters (comme ils
l‘entendent et comme nous l‘entendons) by Edouard Léon Théodore Mesens and
Robert de Smet,, published in Farewell to Marie (L’adieu à Marie) in 1927. Robert de
Smet, close to Norine and P.G. Van Hecke, the publishers of the magazine Variétés
which paid close attention to surrealism, took photographs of intellectuals and
artists, among which choreographer Akarova. He also exhibited work in Nouvelles
Tendances3, presented by Edouard Léon Théodore Mesens, along with Germaine
Krull, Man Ray and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Just as unclassifiable as de Smet, Mesens
has been called “the neglected alchemist of surrealism“. A poet, collagist, photographer, publisher and art dealer, he was first and foremost an avant-garde musician who took part in the Dada adventure.
Was Raoul Ubac a painter, a sculptor or a photographer? Aged nineteen,
in his hometown of Malmédy in eastern Belgium, he discovered Manifeste du
Surréalisme d’André Breton4. It was a revelation. During a trip to Dalmatia in 1932,
he shot pictures of stones, a subject which he was to pursue for ten years. In 1933,
he went to Paris, attended the Academies and met Raoul Hausmann and Man Ray,
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René Magritte (1898 – 1967), Love, portfolio The Fidelity of Images, Le Perreux-sur-Marne, 1928, gelatin silver print,
11.1 x 7.3 cm, Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi (Collection of Communauté française Wallonie-Bruxelles).
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Xavier Canonne. Le surréalisme en Belgique
1924 – 2000, Fonds Mercator – Ville de Mons.
2007.
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under whose influence he began to torture his photographs: double exposures,
photomontages, burnings, exposure to sunlight and lithification! In 1936, he
started his Penthésilées series: a multiplied female body, evoking ancient and
unlikely battles.
There are so many ways to see, and so few ways to look, said Marcel G.
Lefrancq, a surrealist, among other things. It is true that, since adolescence, he
had been interested in surrealism along with prehistory, folklore and photo
graphy. Alongside his business studies, he met up with students at the Academy
of Fine Arts and expressed himself through collage, automatic writing where he
summoned up the bizarre, eroticism and anticlericalism. In his photographs, he
portrayed images in the form of an unsolvable equation, like his Law of Coincidences, or his perspectives which turn Mons into a dream world by day and, after
dark, into a disturbingly dangerous place where he trapped his friends. He was
passionate about architecture and discovered architectural modernity at the Brussels international exhibition in 1935, thanks to the Italian pavilion in particular.
From 1932, the climate of protest and quasi-insurrectionary social struggles in the
Hainaut province inspired intellectuals and artists. A surrealist group was founded
under the explicit name Rupture, which implied an opposition to capitalism and
to the gentrification of traditional left-wing parties. Marcel Lefrancq joined the
movement with conviction, led actions supporting the Spanish Republic and
became concerned about the rise of Fascism in the West, made creative images
questioning a society in crisis. He participated in the (short-lived) Mauvais Temps
review which filled André Breton with enthusiasm. Breton commented that “it
would be very difficult for me not to agree” and that “the time has come to speak
out.”
But lets return to Magritte. It may be a surprise to find here René Magritte as
a photographer. It was with undisguised pleasure that he shot thousands of pictures of his friends posing in creative and unusual scenarios. They were amateur
photographs which he did not take very seriously and never even enlarged. They
were to feed his imagination and his sharp glance would then process them as
a tool for research. They served as a substrate for numerous paintings. Since he
appears himself in certain images, we could also ask to whom they should be
attributed. Nougé, perhaps? Or someone else? Does it really matter? Wasn’t this
movement really about collective invention?
With their signifying images, the surrealists questioned our relationship to art
and, more importantly, our perception of the world. This confirms that “experience
is within range of a glance, for who dares to see... one can experience by looking,
if one dares to see”. In the words of Paul Nougé in his Conference of Charleroi (La
Conférence de Charleroi) in 1929, the main aim of paintings, photographs, poems
is to “invent the fundamental feelings comparable, in strength, to hatred and
love”.5
Translated from Belgian to English by Thomas Wilhelm, Alžbeta Karasová
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Antoon Dries (1910 – 2005), Holiday, 1939, gelatin silver print, 29.4 x 37.2 cm, Collection Library of Fotomuseum Antwerpen.
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Biographical Notes:
Alexandre (Albert Edouard Drains) (Paris,
1855 – 1925) moved to Brussels in 1875
and was a member of the Brussels
section of the ABP (Association Belge de
Photographie) from 1887 to 1914 and
of Linked Ring from 1893 to 1908. He
was a portrait photographer, landscape
photographer, documentary maker and
artist and though he planned to shoot
a film in the Congo, he had to content
himself with filming the “Congolese
Village” at the 1897 Tervueren exhibition
in Brussels.
Die Kunst in der Photographie. Ed. Franz
Goerke/Julius Becker, Berlin, 1897.
Dujardin Laetitia-Marie, Alexandre,
aperçu biographique d‘une oeuvre
méconnue, The Free University of
Brussels, 2002.
Antony, Maurice (Antony of Ypres)
(Ypres, 1883 – 1963) entered the
Antony-Permeke family business in
1899 and his brother Robert joined
him in 1901. During World War I,
they documented the destruction of
the region for newspapers both in
Belgium and abroad. From 1940 to
1946, in London, they shot reportage
on Belgians working to clear the ruins.
He was awarded prizes at the Universal
Exhibition of Liège in 1905 and in
Antwerp in 1930.
Antony d‘Ypres, Stad Ieper, 1987
Maurice & Robert Antony, “Ooggetuigen”,
Stad Oostende, 1998.
Borrenbergen, Jozef Emiel (Borgerhout,
1884 – 1966) was initially strongly
attached to pictorialist techniques and
the Flanders countryside (like Henri
Remes and Emile Rombaut) but later
turned to modernism. In 1909, he
joined the Iris photography circle and
contributed to its renown. The Dutch
photographic review, Fotokunst, which
he edited in 1924, was released in
a French version four years later. The
publication l‘Amateur photographe
(The Amateur Photographer) contains
several pages relating the life of
the ABP and they formed the basis
of the Bulletin de l‘Association belge
de Photographie (Newsletter of the
Belgian Photography Association).
Borrenbergen Jozef Emiel, Schnegg
S.A., Rêmes Henri, Le Miroir de la
Belgique, N.E.A., Brussels, Paris, 1928.
Andries Pool, Jozef Emiel Borrenbergen,
fotograaf 1884 – 1966, Museum voor
Fotografie, Antwerp, 1984.
Buyle, Ferdinand (Lokeren, 1872 – 1949)
was a portrait photographer, working
first in Lokeren and then in Sint-Niklass
and he moved to Brussels in 1902. In
the same year he opened a subsidiary
in Antwerp. Being a perfectionist, he
attached great importance not only to
technique but also to respect for the
subject and he passed on these ideas
to his assistants and apprentices.
Breyer, Albert (Berlin, 1812 – 1876) was
a medical student at the University
of Liège in 1839 which led him to
create photographs on paper, using
a negative/positive system. He was
committed to social action and
became a doctor in Brussels.
Joseph Steven F. & Tristan Schwilden,
Un cadeau à l‘Europe, naissance de
la photographie en Belgique, Crédit
communal, Brussels 1989.
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Chavepeyer, Emile (Châtelet, 1893
– 1959) was initially a house painter
but became interested in photography
and perfected his skills in Brussels and
Paris before opening a portrait studio
in Châtelet with his brother Albert,
a painter and graphic designer, in
1922. As a childhood friend of René
Magritte, he played an active role in
artistic movements and developed
his own creative photographic style,
combining a modernist viewpoint
with techniques such as the transfer of
bromoil onto lithographic stone.
Mayeur Catherine, Emile Chavepeyer
1893 – 1959, Charleroi Museum of
Photography, 1987.
Claine, Evrard-Guillaume (Marche, 1811
– 1869) was journalist and became
interested in photography in 1847,
using the negative-positive process to
photograph architecture. He compiled
a collection of shots of the country’s
most important civil and religious
monuments for the Ministry of the
Interior.
Joseph Steven F. & Tristan Schwilden,
A l‘aube de la photographie en Belgique,
Guillaume Claine et son cercle, Crédit
communal, Brussels, 1991.
Colard, Hector (Brussels, 1851 – 1923)
was a member of the Brussels section
of the ABP until 1914 as well as the
Linked Ring and the Paris Photo
Club. He translated the works of
Henry Peach Robinson and Alfred
Horsley Hinton into French. His own
photographic output is divided
into documentary works and highly
manipulated pictorialism and he
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edited the ABP Bulletin from 1882 to
1892.
De Smet, Robert (Ghent, 1906 – ?) came
from the same family as the painters
Léon and Gustave de Smet and was
close to the Flemish intellectual
elite. Initially working in Ghent, he
subsequently moved into a studio
on the prosperous Avenue Louise
in Brussels in 1926. His celebrity
portraits and images for the fashion
designer Norine or the choreographer
Akarova were published in the review
Variétés.
Dhuicque, Eugène (1877 – 1955) was
a teacher at the Royal Academy of
Fine Arts and served as president of
the Central Society of Architecture in
Belgium and he worked as an architect
on the restoration of Notre Dame,
Paris. From 1915 to 1918, he was sent
by the Minister of Sciences and the
Arts on a photographic assignment to
safeguard cultural heritage in western
Flanders, a zone devastated by the war.
15 / 18, het Verwoeste Gewest. Mission
Dhuicque, Stichting Monumenten en
Landschapzoeg vzw, Bruges, 1985.
Dubreuil, Pierre (Lille, 1872 – 1944) was
a member of the Lille photographic
society from 1891 to 1899 and played
an active role in Brussels and in the Paris
Photo Club and was elected to Linked
Ring in 1903. Alfred Stieglitz selected
some of his works (including the Grand
Place de Bruxelles) for an exhibition
of pictorialist photography in Buffalo
(New York) in 1910. He lived in Brussels
after World War I and became the voice
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of the modernists. Retrospectives
were exhibited in 1935 by the Royal
Photographic Society, London, and
from 1987 to 1988 at the Centre
Georges Pompidou, Paris.
Jacobsen Tom, Sayag Alain, Pierre
Dubreuil. Photographies 1896 – 1935,
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris/
Dubroni Press, San Diego, 1987.
Fierlants, Edmond (Brussels, 1819
– 1869) was initiated into the world
of photography by Hippolyte Bayard
in Paris in 1850 and was one of the
founders of the French photographic
society in 1854. Returning to Brussels
in 1858, his campaign to photograph
works of painted art was backed by
the government. In Antwerp, Brussels
and Leuven, he later undertook
projects focusing on architecture.
Joseph Steven F. & Tristan Schwilden:
Edmond Fierlants, photographies d‘art
et d‘architecture, Crédit communal,
Brussels, 1988.
Gevaert, Lieven (Antwerp, 1865 – 1935)
was initially a portrait photographer
and member of the ABP from 1891 to
1914 and he began manufacturing
photographic paper in 1890. In 1894,
he founded the firm Lieven Gevaert
which expanded worldwide.
Lieven Gevaert, de mens en zijn werk,
Davidsfonds, Leuven, 1955.
Verpoorten Johan, Lieven Gevaert, De
Sikkel, Antwerp, 1968.
Lieven Gevaert, Herdenking van de 50e
verjaardag van zijn overlijden, Museum
voor Fotografie, Antwerp, 1994.
Janssens Wilhelm, Roosens Laurent,
Lieven Gevaert: momenten uit zijn
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leven, Stichting Mens en Kultuur,
Ghent, 1994.
Ghémar, Louis (Lannoy, 1819 – 1869)
moved to Brussels in 1836 and worked
as an illustrator and lithographic
artist on the satirical review Charivari.
He discovered photography in 1850
in Edinburgh and opened studios
first in Antwerp and then Brussels
and specialized in the reproduction
of works of art. He is famous for
his portraits of the 80 guests at the
banquet presented in honour of
Victor Hugo in exile in Brussels by the
publishers Lacroix and Verboeckhoven
and for his images of the funeral
ceremonies of King Leopold I and the
accession of Leopold II.
Sartorius Francis, Despy-Meyer Andrée,
Trousson Raymond, Les éditeurs
belges de Victor Hugo et le Banquet
des “Misérables”, Crédit Communal,
Brussels, 1986.
Ghisoland, Norbert (La Bouverie, 1978
– 1939) was an apprentice to Gallade
in Mons from 1897 to 1900 and then
set up a studio at Frameries and
worked there for over 30 years.
Raynaud Patrick, Norbert Ghisoland,
Photographies 1910 – 1930, Jacques
Damase, Paris, 1977.
Busine Laurent, “Des photographies
pas trop lointaines et pourtant déjà
surannées”, in Henri Evenepoel et
Norbert Ghisoland, Photographies
d‘enfants, Culture et Loisirs, Frameries,
1979.
Balthazar André, Norbert Ghisoland,
Photo Poche, Delpire / Centre National
de la Photographie. Paris, 1991.
T h e
D’Hooghe Alain, Norbert Ghisoland,
La Lettre volée / coll. Vu d’Ici. Brussels,
2002.
Guidalevitch, Victor (Simféropol, 1892 –
1962) was a civil engineer and member
of the Antwerp Photo Club and he
defied the usual stereotypes as in the
1930s he was a modernist who was as
comfortable using bromide as bromoil
or the Color-Poudre technique invented
by the chemist Joseph Sury. He took
part in numerous salons, including the
ABP exhibitions in Antwerp, Brussels
and Charleroi.
Guiette, René (Antwerp, 1893 – 1976)
was a painter from Antwerp who was
involved in Art Informel (his house
and workshop were designed by the
architect Le Corbusier) and in 1932
he became interested in photography
which for him was both a form of
expression in itself and a source of
inspiration for his painting. Pool
Andries’ study of Guiette in 1987
brought him widespread recognition.
Andries Pool, Schraenen Guy, René
Guiette, śuvre photographique,
Provinciaal Museum voor Fotografie
Antwerp, 1987.
De Kerchove D‘Ousselghem Manuela,
Goyens de Heusch Serge, René Guiette,
Mercatorfonds, Antwerp, 1991.
Hannon, Edouard (Ixelles, 1853 – 1931)
was an engineer and then director
of Solvay S.A who took portraits
using a pictorialist approach and also
produced documentary reportage on
his travels to Russia, Italy, Spain and the
United States. His house in Brussels,
H i s t o r y
o f
E u r o p e a n
built in 1904 by the architect Brunfaut,
today houses the photographic space
Contretype.
De Keyser, Gilbert, Godefroid JeanLouis, Rétrospective Edouard Hannon,
Contretype, Brussels, 1986.
Hersleven, Jacques (Rotterdam, 1880 –
1967) was born in the Netherlands but
he worked predominantly in Belgium.
He was a member of the photographic
circle of Ixelles from 1903 and was
professionally active in Brussels and
Antwerp from the end of World War
I and is known for his documentary
reportage on the world of work. He
worked with the newspaper Le Soir
from 1935 to 1940. He was close to the
royal family, which contributed to his
renown.
Kessels, Willy (Dendermonde, 1898
– 1974) studied architecture and fine
arts in Ghent and Sint-Truiden and
took an interest in the avant garde. An
architectural draughtsman, he turned
first to interior design and then from
1926 to photography: architecture,
industry, portraits, nudes, creative
editing and cinema-set photography
in 1933 for Henri Storck and Joris Ivens’
socially-aware film “Misère au Borinage”
(poverty in the Borinage area). He
joined the Verdinaso, a Flemish
nationalist movement, a faction of
which collaborated with the occupying
Nazis during World War II.
Kessels Willy, Guislain Albert,
Découverte de Bruxelles, L‘Eglantine,
Brussels 1930.
Leplus Françoise, Paviot Alain, Willy
Kessels, Paris, 1990.
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de Naeyer Christine, Willy Kessels,
Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi.
Coessens Piet, Eelbode Eric, Snauwaert
Dirk, Amnesie, Responsabilité
et collaboration, Willy Kessels,
photographe, Palais des Beaux-Arts,
Brussels, 1997.
Lefrancq, Marcel-G. (Mons, 1916 – 1974)
studied business sciences and was
interested in art, prehistory, folklore,
architecture and photography of his
town, friends and family. His social
and political background – support
for the Spanish Republic in 1936 and
anti-Fascism – led him towards the
Surrealist movement in Mons and
La Louviere. He contributed to the
review Mauvais Temps and the group
Rupture. His collages and photographs
evoke the strange, eroticism, and anticlericalism. In May 1940, he moved
to Dordogne where he worked with
Abbé Breuil, the great prehistorian,
and became involved in the anti-Nazi
Resistance movement.
Lefrancq Marcel-G., Aux mains de la
Lumière, de Haute Nuit, Mons, 1948.
Despinoy G., Lefrancq Michel, Simon
Armand, Marcel-G. Lefrancq, Salle StGeorges, Mons, 1994.
Canonne Xavier, Lefrancq
Michel:,Marcel-G. Lefrancq, aux mains
de la lumière, Museum of Photography.
Charleroi, 2003. Canonne Xavier,
Surréalisme en Belgique 1924 – 2000,
Fonds Mercator / Ville de Mons, 2007.
Leirens, Charles (Ghent, 1888
– 1963)studied harmony and
composition at the Ghent Royal
Conservatoire and perfected his skills
T h e
H i s t o r y
o f
B e l g i a n
in Brussels. He was Director of the
Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels from
1928 and founded the Maison d’Art
in 1933 where he organised concerts
and exhibitions and created portraits
of the artists. From 1936 to 1940, he
took photographs in Italy, France and
Germany and in 1938 he edited the
International Review of Music. He moved
to New York in 1940 where he worked
for the press and taught musicology
and photography at the New School for
Social Research from 1942 to 1951 but
fleeing McCarthyism, he returned to
Europe.
20 portraits d‘artistes, portfolio. Ed. by
Connaissance, Brussels, 1936.
Leirens Virginia, Auquier Yves, Hellens
Frans, Hasaerts Paul, Charles Leirens,
1888 – 1963, Monique Adam, Brussels,
1978.
Vausort Marc, Charles Leirens,
L‘Intelligence du Regard, Charleroi
Museum of Photography, 1991.
Magritte, René (Lessines, 1898 – 1967)
attended the Brussels Academy of Fine
Arts in 1918 and was influenced by
Pierre-Louis Flouquet, Victor Servranckx
and Giorgio de Chirico. He met E.L.T.
Mesens and founded the review
Śsophage. He and Camille Goemans,
Paul Nougé and André Souris formed
the heart of the Surrealist group in
Brussels. Essentially a painter, Magritte
however also used photography,
placing his friends and family in unusual
situations or to set a project. In 1929, in
La révolution surréaliste (the Surrealist
Revolution), he published a photo
montage (a group with Dali, Miro,
Bunuel, Eluard, and Goemans).
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–
1 9 3 8
Scutenaire Louis, La Fidélité
des Images. René Magritte, le
cinématographe et la photographie,
Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels,
1976.
Sterckx Pierre, René Magritte,
photographs, Pace/McGill Gallery,
New York, 1990.
La Fidélité des Images. René Magritte,
le cinématographe et la photographie,
CGRI, Brussels, 1997.
Wauters Anne, Photographies, de la
poétique de l‘image à la subversion
du réel, in Magritte en compagnie, Le
Botanique, Brussels, 1997.
Nougé Paul, René Magritte in
extensor, Ed. Didier Devillez, Brussels,
1997.
Roegiers Patrick, Magritte et la
Photographie, Palais des Beaux-Arts,
Brussels, 2005.
Canonne Xavier, Surréalisme en
Belgique 1924 – 2000, Fonds Mercator/
Ville de Mons, 2007.
Massart, Jean (Etterbeek, 1865
– 1925) was a member of the Royal
Commission for Monuments and
Sites and Director of the Botanical
Gardens in 1902 and Director of the
Botanical Institute in 1905 and used
photography to help protect nature.
Pour la Protection de la Nature en
Belgique, Brussels, 1912.
Jean Massart, Pour la Protection de la
Nature, Agfa-Gevaert N. V., Mortsel,
1985.
Marissiaux, Gustave (Marles, 1872
– 1929) moved to Liège in 1893
to study law but soon turned to
photography, becoming a member of
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the ABP in 1894. In 1895, he presented
a paper on l’Art et la Photographie
(Art and Photography) and in 1899
opened a portrait photography
studio. His works formed part of
the pictorialist movement. In 1904
however, he produced reportage
consisting of 450 stereoscopic slides
on life in the collieries. This reportage
was presented at the Universal
Exhibition in Liège in 1905. In 1908, he
published Visions d‘artiste, a portfolio
of 30 photogravures (1899-1908) and
Jardins d‘Italie in 1916.
Mélon Marc-Emmanuel, Gustave
Marissiaux, la possibilité de l’art,
Museum of Photography, Charleroi,
1997.
Mesens, Edouard Léon Théodore (E.L.T.
Mesens) (Brussels, 1903 – 1971)
studied at the Brussels Conservatoire.
Passionate about the musical avantgarde, he played violin and piano,
composed music, publishing his
first work at the age of fifteen and
was influenced by Erik Satie. Born to
a Flemish father and a Francophone
mother, he moved confidently in both
the Latin and Germanic cultures of his
country. He was one of the founders of
the Brussels Surrealist group and was
an editor, picture seller and organiser
of exhibitions, as well as a poet,
photographer, collage and rayograph
artist.
Geurt-Krauss Christiane, E.L.T. Mesens,
L‘Alchimiste méconnu du Surréalisme,
Labor, Brussels, 1998.
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Misonne, Léonard (Gilly, 1870 – 1943) was
a mining engineer but spent all his time
on photography and as a member of
the Brussels section of the ABP joined
the pictorialist movement, using the
Fresson carbon process and the oil
process which he learned in Paris
under Constant Puyo. He was invited
to the London Salon of Photography in
1910 and to the French Photographic
Society in 1912. He presented his own
exhibition at the Camera Club of New
York in 1922. In the 1930s and 1940s
he used the mediobrome technique,
a process he invented himself.
Special edition of Die Kunst in der
Photographie, Halle, 1908.
Duvivier Charles, Léonard Misonne, son
oeuvre, sa method, Devaivre, Brussels,
1937.
Debanterlé René, Mélon MarcEmmanuel, Polain Dominique, Autour
de Léonard Misonne, Museum of
Photography, Charleroi, 1990.
Andries Pool, Auquier Yves, La couleur
du temps, Photographies de Léonard
Misonne, Centre national de la
Photographie, Paris, 1991.
Mélon Marc-Emmanuel, Canonne
Xavier, Rousseau Christelle, Vausort
Marc, Debanterlé René, Léonard
Misonne. En passant..., Museum of
Photography. Charleroi, 2004.
Neuckens, Antony (Molenbeek-Saint-Jean,
1875 – 1948) followed in his father’s
footsteps at the age of 12 as a glove
cutter and plied this trade for several
years before embarking on a tour of
Europe as a “companion”. There, he saw
the social realities of his time, formed
relationships with “cottage industry”
workers at home, and photographed
them systematically, becoming involved
in workers’ rights and organising several
exhibitions.
Askenasi-Neuckens, Anne, and Galle,
H i s t o r y
o f
E u r o p e a n
Hubert, Les derniers ouvriers libres, le
travail à domicile en Belgique, Luc Pire,
Brussels, 2000.
Nougé, Paul (Brussels, 1895 – 1967)
was a Surrealist thinker, poet,
photographer, co-founder of the
Belgian Communist party and
biochemist from 1919 to 1953. While
he met Breton, Aragon and Eluard, it
was Xavier Canonne who highlighted
his originality, like that of Magritte and
Marcel Mariën, or that of the tracts of
Correspondance. But Colinet, Magritte,
Scutenaire and Nougé, acting as
clowns in a photograph: is that art, is
it strategy, or is it a political stance?
In 1929 and 1930, Nougé produced
Subversion des images, a collection
published in 1968.
Smolders Olivier, Paul Nougé, écriture
et caractère à l‘école de la ruse, Labor,
Brussels, 1995.
de Naeyer Christine, Paul Nougé et la
photographie, Didier Devillez Éditeur,
Brussels, 1995.
Quaghebeur Marc, Outers Jean-Luc,
Verheggen Jean-Pierre, Paul Nougé,
quelques bribes, Didier Devillez Éditeur,
Brussels, 1995.
Remes, Henri (Antwerp, 1873
– 1944) published in 1902 the first
photography review in Dutch, Licht, for
amateur photographers and in 1903
he joined the Antwerp Photo Club, of
which he was president from 1908 to
1911. He is recognised for his still lifes
and his landscapes, as well as for his
use of bromoil in large format.
Rombaut, Emile (Antwerp, 1886 – 1935)
was a dynamic member of the
Antwerp Photo Club from 1904 and
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became its president in 1911 after
Henri Remes. A staunch defender of
the oil impression, gum and bromoil
processes, he was a modernist
tempered by a conservative outlook.
In 1935, he organised an exhibition
of Belgian pictorialists at the French
Photographic Society in Paris.
Rombaut Emile, L‘Interprétation
artistique en Photographie,
Photographie moderne, Brussels, 1924.
Simenon, Georges (Liège, 1903 – 1989)
was marked by the Great War and the
humiliating charity of the rich and
was a journalist, writer (author of 200
books translated into 50 languages)
and man of images. In 1931, together
with Germaine Krull, he published
a photographic novel, La folle d’Itteville.
From 1930 to 1935, he produced
thousands of sensitive, creative
photographs on his travels to Africa,
Eastern Europe and Central America
which became a source of inspiration
for his literary works.
Assouline Pierre, Dubois Jacques,
Lacassin Francis et Al, Simenon,
L‘Homme..., Complexe, Brussels, 1993.
Assouline Pierre, Simenon, Gallimard,
1996.
Vercheval-Vervoort Jeanne, Bertrand
Alain, Les photographies de Simenon,
Museum of Photography, Charleroi.
1999. Bonmariage Freddy, Simenon,
écrivain photographe, La Renaissance
du Livre, Brussels. 2006.
Sterken, Jozef (1895 – ?) fell victim to
mustard gas in World War I and during
his convalescence photographed
nature and, in 1920, won the City of
Ghent photography competition.
A member of the Vooruit Photo Club
and contributor to the magazine of
the same name, he practised both
art photography and documentary
T h e
H i s t o r y
o f
B e l g i a n
photography where he paid tribute
to the world of work. Although the
romantic nature of Flanders is present
in his work, Sterken’s pictures recall
Rodchenko and Soviet photography.
Van Gysegem Mark, Fotografie in OostVlaanderen, Ghent, 1992.
Sury, Joseph (Chimay, 1886 – 1944) was
a chemist working in Antwerp who
studied at the Brussels Academy.
A pictorialist photographer and pioneer
of colour photography, he invented the
Colour process (using powder) with
which Gustave Marissiaux successfully
experimented in 1913 but whose
spread was halted by the war until the
1920s.
Ubac, Raoul (Köln, 1910 – 1985) spent
his youth in Malmédy where at
the age of 19 he discovered the
Surrealist Manifesto. He moved to
Paris, studied painting and sculpture
in the academies, met Man Ray and
discovered photography in 1933. He
experimented with the techniques
of brûlage and solarisation and in
1934, under the pseudonym Michelet,
published Actuation poétique,
a collection of poems and photographs
with Camille Bryen. He accompanied
Eluard and Breton in the Minotaure and
René Magritte in L‘Invention collective in
1940.
Greff Jean-Pierre, Raoul Ubac,
photographies, peintures, sculptures...., Le
Botanique, Brussels, 1987.
Bouqueret Christian, Raoul Ubac,
Bouqueret-Lebon, Paris, 1995.
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joined the daily newspaper Le Soir
in 1922 and worked for La Meuse
(Liège) and L’Illustration (Paris). At the
launch of the National Association of
Photographic Reporters, she was its
Vice-President. She photographed the
first Brussels-Congo flight, Lindbergh
land in Brussels and Piccard in his
stratospheric balloon. In 1939, she
met Einstein on the docks of the port
of Antwerp, next to the ship which
was to take him to the USA. She was
a war correspondent in 1940 and in
1958 set up her own press agency.
de Keyser Eugénie: Germaine Van
Parys, Pas perdus dans Bruxelles,
Monique Adam, Brussels, 1979.
Adriaenssen Agnès, Persfotografe
Germaine Van Parijs, zestig jaar
geschiedenis, Gazet van Antwerpen,
10.1.1981.
Van Gysegem Marc, “Photographie
sociale et photojournalisme”, in Pour
une Histoire de la Photographie en
Belgique, Museum of Photography,
Charleroi, 1993.
Celis Karen, “Entre-deux, een
confrontatie tussen hedendaagse
historiche vrouwelijke fotografie”
in België en Nederland, collaborative
work, Museum voor Fotografie,
Antwerp, 1999.
Vercheval-Vervoort Jeanne, Des
Femmes dans l’Histoire, En Belgique
depuis 1830, collaborative work. Ed.
Luc Pire, Brussels, 2007.
Van Parys, Germaine (Eberg) (Brussels,
1893 – 1983) began taking photographs
at the age of 15 but discovered her
vocation as a photojournalist when
she photographed the royal couple
in liberated Brussels in 1918. She
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T h e
H i s t o r y
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E u r o p e a n
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–
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Photographers
Arning, Eduard
Höch, Hannah
Perscheid, Nicola
Bayer, Herbert
Hoffmann, Heinrich
Peterhans, Walter
Consemüller, Erich
Hofmeister, Oscar
Renger-Patzsch, Albert
Dührkoop, Rudolph
Hofmeister Theodor
Retzlaff, Erich
Erfurth, Hugo
Lendvai-Dircksen, Erna
Salomon, Erich
Eugene, Frank
Lerski, Helmar
Sander, August
Graeff, Werner
Man, Felix H.
Stone, Sasha
Hausmann, Raoul
Moholy, Lucia
Umbo
Heartfield, John
Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo
Hilsdorf, Jacob
Munkácsi, Martin
Th e H i s to r y o f G e r m a ny P ho to g r a ph y
Ivo Kranzfelder
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The Histor y of Germany
Pho togr aphy
A history of photography in Germany from 1900 to 1938 clearly covers a time
period marked by far reaching historical changes: the German Empire, the First
World War, the Weimar Republic and Hitler’s so-called Machtergreifung (seizure
of power) a term which, to put it mildly, is not uncontroversial, all form part of
this period. Historians speak of the 20th century as ‘the short 20th century’ (Eric
Hobsbawm) and consider it as having started in 1914 and as having ended in
1989. Even in the short period from 1900 to 1938, we are confronted with the redrawing of borders and even with the complete transformation of certain forms
of government. This same period also saw the waging of the most brutal war ever,
and the collapse of the world of the 19th century.
The German Empire or Reich, was founded in 1871 and lasted until the end
of the Second World War in 1945. Publicist and historian Sebastian Haffner sees
its history as being marked by three turning points: 1890 with the resignation of
Bismarck, the empire’s founder, 1918 with the defeat in the First World War and
1933, with the coming to power of Adolf Hitler. Germany became a different place
in each of these four periods.1
Similarly, one could also speak of three different phases in the perception
of reality or in its interpretation through photography during this period. Even
though generalisations unavoidably tend to over-simplification, it could be said
that fine art photography prior to 1914 presented a rosily idyllic counterpoint to
the realities of society at the time. After the shock and the catastrophe of the First
World War however, the photography of the Weimar Republic represented a new
departure, with its very objective, very different take on reality. As for the heavily
ideological blood and soil photography after 1933, it draws in some respects on
the harmlessly idyllic imagery of fine art photography prior to 1914 while at the
same time making clever use of the innovations of the avant-garde of the Weimar
Republic.
The amateur movement and fine
art photography prior to 1914
1
Sebastian Haffner, Von Bismarck zu Hitler, Ein
Rückblick, Knaur, München, 1989. p. 9 – 10.
2
Werner Sombart, Die deutsche Volkswirtschaft
im 19. Jahrhundert, Georg Bondi, Berlin, 1913,
p. 86.
From an art historical or from an aesthetic point of view, the last third of the
nineteenth century in Germany was characterised by floridly decorative styles
as well as by would-be respectable, genuinely conservative styles which were
no doubt a reaction to the recently attained national unity. The period after the
foundation of the Empire is known as the Gründerzeit (Founding Epoch) and not
without reason. Some of the painters who marked this period were Hans Makart,
Franz von Lenbach, Franz von Defregger and Eduard Grützner.
Society was changing in fundamental ways during this time due to the
industrial revolution. There was mass immigration from the countryside to the
cities and the agrarian state became an industrial state. From an economic point
of view, the two decades from the mid 1870s to the mid 1890s passed “without
enthusiasm, without lyrical verve, without any speculative euphoria”2. From about
1895 however, a remarkable economic upturn set in, from which only the agricul-
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tural sector did not benefit. According to Sombart the reason for the upturn was
the technological developments associated with the use of electricity in all areas
of life: in factories, in public life and in households. The whole economy benefited
from this impetus and the number of new listings on the share-market grew
dramatically.3
In addition to this, the population of Germany more than doubled during the
19th century, from about 25 million in 1800 to about 55 million 100 years later.
The beginning of the Reich saw the foundation of the first mass political party,
the conservative Zentrum Party. The Social Democrats, then still revolutionaries,
also grew strong during this period. Bismarck fought both of them doggedly. He
fought the so-called cultural war against the catholic Zentrum party in the 1870s
and he fought the Social Democrats by passing the Sozialistengesetz in 1878
(‘a law against the pursuit of social democracy which is a menace to the common
good’). The 1880s and the 1890s saw the birth of the first professional associations
and, more or less at the same time, modern unions. These developments were
accompanied by the emergence of large, educated, upper and middle classes
and of a large proletariat. This industrialisation and all its consequences elicited
3
Von 92 im Jahr 1894 auf 364 im Jahr 1899.
Sombart, op. cit., p. 88.
Eduard Arning (1855 – 1936), Metallurgical Works, 1900, multi-colored rubber. 65,9 x 91.3 cm, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg.
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4
Ulrich Keller, „Modell Malerei: Die kunstfotografische Bewegung um 1900“, in Deutsche
Fotografie. Macht eines Mediums 1870 – 1970,
exhibition catalogue, Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn,
DuMont, Köln, 1997, p. 31 – 40, esp. p. 33.
H i s t o r y
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a reaction which began in England and gradually spilled over into Germany under
the guise of an aesthetic reform movement which sought to reconcile art with life
and which assigned a specific role to the amateur.
The pioneering period of aesthetic and technical achievements in commercial photography had ended. There were no new developments in this area of
the order of the stereotyping process for the production of portraits. The new
discoveries that were made, such as the dry gelatine process – that is to say the
ready-to-use negative – and film rolls, which were marketed from 1888 by Kodak
complete with camera box (‘You push the button, we do the rest’), enabled the
beginning of mass photography and the emergence of the amateur photographer. From a historical point of view this was, economically and technically, the
logical next step.
The first amateur photography associations emerged towards the end of the
1880s. The largest and most influential was founded in Hamburg in 1891. Alfred
Lichtwark, the director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle had all these factors in mind
when he came out in support of amateur photography and made the Kunsthalle
available for exhibitions by the amateur photographers’ associations. The first of
these exhibitions took place in 1893 and comprised 6000 exhibits.
However, it did not take long for this broadly based amateur movement to
develop into a more elitist movement with an international focus. There are two
main reasons for this. One is cost: admission fees, membership fees, and equipment costs were not insignificant. In 1905, even the relatively cheap Kodak rollfilm camera cost 50 Goldmark. The other reason was the focus on fine art photography as distinct from the taking of happy snaps, on effects which the specialised
publications would characterise as ‘pictorial’ or ‘reminiscent of a painting’.
In order to achieve the latter effect, people were encouraged to turn to the
works of the old masters. The production of true to detail, well-focused images,
which is the natural strength of the photographic medium, was rejected in favour
of the hazy look of the painted image. “True to detail depictions of flocks of sheep
and farmers were derided by the defenders of the painting style of photography,
and blurred images were celebrated as art: it had become as simple as that.”4 In
other words one tried to produce photographic images using elaborate, nonsilver printing methods such as offset printing and pigment processes which
produced a painting-like effect, but were easier to produce than a real painting.
Thus, people were to an extent working in a manner that was at odds with their
medium and its inherent characteristics.
The cost factor meant that only the ten thousand wealthiest people could
afford such an activity or, to be more precise, such a hobby: hardly any of the
people who could afford this activity needed to work. These are the words,
pronounced with no small measure of pride, of the German-American fine art
photography critic and theorist, Sadakichi Hartmann. This elitist circle formed
a world-wide network: the Hamburgers, who operated under the aegis of publicist and exhibition organiser Ernst Juhl Sammler, had contact with the Wiener
Camera-Club, the Linked Ring in England, the Photo-Club de Paris and of course
with Alfred Stieglitz’s Photo-Secession in New York.
The exhibitions of the amateur movements were at first organised on
a regional basis but became increasingly international and elitist as time went on.
This is explained by the fact that the increasingly international focus led to fewer
and fewer amateurs active at a regional level having the opportunity to participate. The 6000 exhibits at the first exhibition in Hamburg had shrunk to just a few
hundred ten years later.
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Frank Eugene (1865 – 1936), Rebeckah, 1901, photogravure, 17.3 x 12.3 cm, Fotomuseum im Münchner Stadtmuseum, München.
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5
Sadakichi Hartmann, „The Solitary Horseman“,
in Camera Work, No. 7, 1904, p. 17. quoted by
Ulrich Pohlmann, in „Der Traum von Schönheit – das Wahre ist schön, das Schöne wahr.
Fotografie und Symbolismus 1890 – 1914“, in
Fotogeschichte, Beiträge zur Geschichte und
Ästhetik der Fotografie, Marburg, Vol. 58, 1995,
p. 3 – 26, esp. p. 5.
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Only one German fine art photograph found its way into the temple of fine
art photography that was the collection of Alfred Stieglitz, namely The Solitary
Horseman (1904) by the brothers Oskar und Theodor Hofmeister. Hartmann saw
in this image a representation of fine art photographers par excellence. “They are
also solitary horsemen, treated with indifference as they are for the present by the
profession and denounced by the majority of artists.”5
That was more wishful thinking that anything else because the fine art
photography movement was barely integrated into the broader artistic scene.
Beyond that, there was a rapid decease in activity. There were only two more
exhibitions held by the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Amateurfotografie (Society
for the promotion of amateur photography) between 1904 and 1914 – in marked
contrast to the ten exhibitions held between 1893 and 1903.
The subject matter of German fine art photography was limited to three areas.
Landscapes, in which the Hofmeister brothers were leading lights, portraits –
important names in this area being those of Hugo Erfurth in Dresden, Jacob Hilsdorf in Bingen and Nicola Perscheid in Leipzig: and the interiors of the buildings
Oscar (1868 – 1943) und Theodor Hofmeister (1871 – 1937), The Lone Rider, 1904, photogravure, 12.1 x 17.7 cm, published in Camera Work, Juli 1904,
Museum ür Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg.
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of the grande bourgeoisie. Nude photography was only of marginal importance in
Germany. We have seen that people turned to the model of the old masters: they
also turned to the landscapes of the Fontainebleau school, to the impressionists
and to the symbolists. However, as Ulrich Keller has convincingly demonstrated,
the images produced by the fine art photographers never challenged the established aesthetic norms of bourgeois society. Themes such as the suffering soul
who withdraws from reality or from bourgeois society, one thinks here of Paul
Gauguin or van Gogh, which were characteristic of fin de siècle art. Such themes
could not, to name but one example, have been an issue to a wealthy doctor such
as Eduard Arning, one of Hamburg’s first car owners. Arning’s large format, multicoloured offset Hüttenwerk (1900), is clearly inspired by James McNeill Whistler’s
Nocturnes, and is also larger than many of the works from which it is derived.
Whistler’s aestheticism and his public relations style appealed to the fine art
photographers. Their themes of choice were idyllic scenes, landscapes, cityscapes
and family scenes.
The fine art photographer was rather an odd creature. Possibly the most
representative was German-American Frank Eugene Smith, who called himself
Frank Eugene. He taught both in Munich, where he had studied at the Akademie
der bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts), and in Leipzig. Eugene often worked
his negatives with an etching needle, pencil or brush in order to achieve a ‘painting’ effect. He was also representative as regards his international network within
the movement. He became a member of the Linked Ring in London in 1900, he
was a founding member of the New York Photo-Secession in 1902 and he joined
the International Association of Fine Art Photographers in 1905. In July 1907 he
met Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen and Heinrich Kühn in order to experiment with the new autochrome lumiere procedure in Tutzing on the shores of
Lake Starnberg near Munich. This meeting was later to become known in fine art
photography circles as the ‘summit meeting’.6
By this time, the high point of the fine art photography movement had long
passed. The associations, such as the one in Hamburg, were more concerned
with maintaining the upper class social side of things than anything else: they
were more interested in organising lavish social events than evenings devoted to
photography, which Lichtwark would have preferred. This situation led to the end
of the elitist movement. Moreover, “photography and the amateur movement had
become too much of a commonplace, too ordinary. Anybody could produce a fine
art photograph just by studying the photography magazines. There was a repertoire of recognised themes, effects and techniques. The elitist, artistic motivation
had therefore completely gone.” 7
In order to highlight the contrast of this with the rest of the art scene of that
period, we only need to mention that Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl
Schmidt-Rottluff and Fritz Bleyl founded the expressionist artists’ group Die
Brücke (The Bridge) in 1905, that Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and Gabriele
Münter founded Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Horseman) in 1911 in Munich, that the
Futurists had come into being in Paris in 1909, and that the Fauves around Henri
Matisse had by then been active for a long time. The fact that Picasso had become
successful hardly needs mentioning.
The real achievement of the fine art photographers in Germany lies in the
fact that their activities had led to a marked improvement in the standard of
professional photography. Quite a few professional photographers identified
with the aims of the amateur movement: Rudolf Dührkoop, the aforementioned
Erfurth, Hildsdorf and Perscheid for example. The conventional studio portrait in
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6
See Ulrich Pohlmann (Ed.), “Frank Eugene,
The Dream of Beauty”, exhibition catalogue
Fotomuseum im Münchner Stadtmuseum,
Nazraeli Press, Fotomuseum im Münchner
Stadtmuseum, Munich,1995.
7
Jens Jäger, „Amateurphotographen-Vereine
und kunstphotographische Bewegung in
Hamburg 1890-1910“, in Kunstphotographie
um 1900. Die Sammlung Ernst Juhl, exhibion
catalogue, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe
Hamburg, Hamburg, 1989, p. 33 – 38, esp. p.
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particular, with its set poses and props, changed fundamentally as a result of the
influence of the amateur movement. It became fresher and more spontaneous,
and it was sometimes set outdoors.
The Weimar Republic
Unknown Photographer, Cover of the Berliner
Illustrirten Zeitung (Ebert and Noske in the Summer.
Recorded during a visit to the Resort of Travemünde
in Haffkrug), No. 34, 24 August, 1919, Kulturprojekte Berlin.
8
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Malerei Fotografie Film,
second edition 1927, reprinted by Florian
Kupferberg, Mainz, 1978, p. 47
9
Ibid., p .26
10 Haffner, op. cit., p. 203
The break between pre-war photography with its backward looking aestheticism
and the emergence of a new way of perceiving, a ‘new vision’, is best illustrated by
an image in Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s book Malerei, Fotografie, Film (Painting, Photography, Film), which was first published in 1925 as part of the Bauhaus series.
In it, Moholy reproduces a photo of a Paris Boulevard taken by Alfred Stieglitz in
1911 and adds the following caption: “The victory of impressionism
or the misunderstanding of photography. The photographer has become
a painter, instead of using his camera photographically.”8
Moholy uses the word ‘photographically’ to mean ‘seeing objectively’, that is
to say to perceive without the distorting influence of intellectual experience or
associations. “Everyone has an obligation to see the optical reality, that which is
objectively there – that which can be interpreted in and of itself before he can
arrive at a subjective position.” 9
Art had retained the expressionism of the early years: expressionism had
survived the war. Art also consisted in the vehement Dadaist rejection of expressionism, and in the later period of the Weimar Republic, in ‘objectivity’ and in ‘the
new objectivity’ in painting, in the ‘new building’ in architecture and in the ‘new
vision’ in photography. These terms bear the notion of a new beginning following
the catastrophe of the First World War. However these things must be seen in
a more differentiated way.
Broadly speaking, one can divide the Weimar period into three phases. “In
the early years, from its foundation until 1924, it looked as if the Republic would
fail from the outset. Then, surprisingly, there came a period of consolidation, the
‘roaring twenties’, from 1925 to 1929. Then, fairly suddenly, there came the period
which saw the breakdown of the Republic and the lead-up to Hitler’s Machtergreifung from 1930 to 1932.” 10
In November 1918, a revolutionary wave rolled over the country, a wave
similar to the one that brought the Russian Revolution. It is one of the great
ironies of history that the wave of the Russian Revolution was in no small
measure energised by the most senior ranks of the German army under the
leadership of Field Marshall Hindenburg (who would later appoint Hitler chancellor) and the reactionary monarchist Ludendorff, in order to weaken the Russian
opponent. At the end of the war, almost without a sound, the monarchy
slipped away and the Republic was declared. While this was happening, the
revolutionary insurgencies were violently suppressed. 1919 saw the murders
of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in Berlin during the so-called Spartakusaufstand (Spartacist Uprising) and of Kurt Eisner, prime minister of the Munich
Räterepublik (Republic of Councils). Power went to the Social Democrats who
were, to an extent, unprepared for it. They lost it however, during the 1920
elections. There was no stable government until 1925. The Nazi Party was
founded in 1920 in Munich and one year later the SA (Sturmabteilung) made
its first appearance. Its role was to terrorise political opponents. In 1923 the
country was rocked by inflation. This period was followed by a phase of relative
stability from 1925 until the world economic crisis of 1929. In 1926, Germany
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was accepted back into the League of Nations. Its foreign minister at the time was
Stresemann.
As distinct from the pre-war years, photography had come to be seen as
a medium for representing reality which could not be viewed separately from
the historical developments and prevailing social circumstances. It took on an
extremely diverse range of manifestations during this period, practices and techniques which were being carried out simultaneously, rather than coming one after
the other in a sequential fashion. For that reason, the presentation below of the
most important aspects of photography in the Weimar Republic does not follow
any pre-determined structure. It is simply based on artistic currents and themes
and on particular photographers and events.
Dada: photomontages
Dadaism was a nihilistic-anarchistic opposition movement which was initially
formed in 1916 at Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire, in protest against the madness of the
war. In Berlin the movement took on a decidedly political tone. Dadaists were
opposed to everything. After the revolutionary disappointments of the Weimar
Republic, the Dadaists in Berlin polemicised against everything. They were operating on the completely reasonable assumption that nothing would really change.
One pamphlet written in 1919 said, ‘we will blow Weimar up’.
The collage technique of the cubists and the futurists became the signature
mode of expression of the Dadaists and the spirit they incarnated. The world was
in ruins; and it was not only the unity of the world that had been lost but also
its meaning. Metaphorically torn as a result of all of this, the Dadaists “collaged”
themselves back together without any immediately visible coherence. The best
known example of this is Hannah Höch’s 1919 photomontage Schnitt mit dem
Küchenmesser Dada durch die erste Weimarer Bierbauch-Kulturepoche Deutschlands
(Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the First Weimar Beer Belly Cultural
Period of Germany). his is at once a panorama with clear revolutionary overtones
representing a dynamic slice through the irreconcilable divisions of the early
Weimar Republic, and a call to action of the female driving forces of Dadaistic
destruction of the old order.
Raoul Hausmann’s work tends to rather more concision. Dada cino from
1920 – 21 is a good example. Both the utopian references in some of his montages
and the combination of photographic material and typography are reminiscent
of the Bauhaus.
John Heartfield produced some of his first photomontages together with his
friend George Grosz during this period. He was later to become known first and
foremost through his acerbic political photomontages for the Arbeiter Illustrierte
Zeitung (AIZ, The Workers Pictorial Newspaper).
These artists adopted the label ‘monteur’ (a mechanic or fitter) as a means of
countering the middle class perception of art as embodied by the myth of the
creative, likeable artist.
The Dadaists used photographed fragments of reality, which they cut out from
newspapers and magazines, from advertising and from documentary photographs and these fragments served as a medium for the representation of current
affairs. This, aesthetically speaking, apparently destructive approach soon disappeared with the calming of the political situation. It was however important in the
further development of art and of photography in particular.
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Lászlo Moholy-Nagy and the Bauhaus
11 Moholy-Nagy, op. cit., p. 35.
The term ‘photomontage’ was first used in this sense in Moholy-Nagy’s aforementioned book Malerei Fotografie Film. In 1925 he defines the term in this book as,
‘the contemporary art of cutting up photographs and putting the pieces next to
one another. This careful organisation of the pieces is what distinguishes the first
photomontages of the Dadaists from a more developed form of montage, namely
photo-plastic montage.’ 11
As an artist, Moholy-Nagy was completely self-taught. In 1923 he was called
by Walter Gropius to the Bauhaus in Weimar, which had been founded in 1919,
and he taught there until 1928. He was of a rational bent. He saw himself more
as an engineer than an artist. In this he differed from the Dadaists but he was, in
a positive sense, devoted to the ideal of the marriage of art and technology; as
Hannah Höch (1889 – 1978), Section with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly
Cultural Epoch of Germany, 1919/20, collage, 114 x 90 cm, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, © VG Bild-Kunst,
Bonn / Hannah Höch / LITA, Bratislava 2010
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was Gropius in the area of architecture. Moholy’s portrait in monteur’s overalls,
which was taken in 1926 by his wife Lucia Moholy, represents this position.
His book explains, in the manner of a manifesto, the new artistic possibilities
of film and photography. He experimented not only with photo-plastic techniques, but also with camera-less photography, that is to say with photogrammes
and phototypesetting which is a hybrid technique combining typography and
photography. True to life photos, ‘normal’ photos so to speak, were the product of
the skilfully managed interplay of different light intensities, the considered use of
structure and of shadow and also of unusual camera angles.
It was first and foremost about a largely mechanical approach to image
composition and about that most central constitutive element of photography;
light. On the other hand, the previously discussed notion of ‘seeing objectively’
took a back seat to a utopian aim that was gaining more and more importance:
“concordance with a new social order and (striking) a balance between human
existence and the technical world.” 12
While at the Bauhaus, the idea of teaching a photography class never crossed
Moholy’s mind, the technical subject matter of his course being such a natural
means of composing a photograph to him. He did not see himself as a photographer either, but rather as a painter. Straightforward product photography, for
catalogues and for publicity purposes, was carried out at the Bauhaus by reproduction photographers, Lucia Moholy and Erich Consemüller among them. The
advertising photography, which Moholy practised and of which he was a vociferous advocate, was carried out by Herbert Bayer. It was not until 1929, after the
school had moved to Dessau that Walter Peterhans took over the newly founded
photography department. The Bauhaus was closed by the National Socialists in
1933, by which time it had moved to Berlin.
Die Dinge: Albert Renger-Patzsch
Die Welt ist schön (The World is Beautiful) is the title of the book published by
Albert Renger-Patzsch in 1928. This book was more or less considered the bible
of new objectivity photography. We owe the title to the publishers: the photographer himself wanted to call it Die Dinge (Things). 100 photographs – nicely
composed, objective and technically perfect – show the world in isolated snippets from a photographic perspective: plants, animals, people, landscapes and
natural scenes, materials, architecture, industrial products and, for want of a better
term, cultural techniques. At the end of the book there is a photo of hands which
represent the creative person.
One also finds themes in Die Welt ist schön, that might be regarded as originating in the pre-war period, albeit without the blurring, as well as some efforts
to imitate painting. There are at the same time some decidedly contemporary
themes and types of photography. Renger-Patzsch is at once modern and
anti-modern. The best example of this duality is an image of an ‘entry wall’, as it
is called in the book. This photo, which prominently features a fire hydrant in the
foreground, does not give an unencumbered view of the building in the background. All one can see is the roof and a chimney. It is a photo of the Fagus factory
in Alfeld an der Leine, one of Walter Gropius’ pioneering industrial buildings in the
modern architectural style. This is a thoroughly modern photograph in its composition and in its laconic style. Moreover, the building in the photo is also a famous
example of modernity and the observer is left wondering how to interpret the
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12 Laszlo Moholy-Nagy in a letter to F. Kalivoda in
June 1934, in, Telehor, Brno, ed. by Franz Kalivoda, No. 1-2, 1936, p. 117, quoted in: Andreas
Haus, “Laszlo Moholy-Nagy”, in Jeannine Fiedler
(Ed.), Fotografie am Bauhaus, Nishen, Berlin,
1990, p. 15 – 18, esp. p. 18.
T h e
14 Siegfried Kracauer, Die Angestellten, Aus dem
neuesten Deutschland, (1929), Suhrkamp,
Frankfurt am Main, 1971, p. 15.
15 Ulrich Keller in August Sander: Menschen
des 20. Jahrhunderts, Portraitphotographien
1892 – 1952, edited by Gunther Sander, text by
Ulrich Keller, Schirmer/Mosel, München, 1980,
p. 34.
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masking out of this quintessentially modern building in this quintessentially
modern photo. Was it deliberate? In other words, can images convey ideology?
In an essay written in 1931 entitled “Kleine Geschichte der Fotografie” (A Short
History of Photography), Walter Benjamin questions the use of photography in
the creation of an aesthetic framework for the world. Citing his friend, photographer Sasha Stone, he declares that the notion of photography as art is a dangerous one to pursue. Then he adds, “the creative aspect of photography lies in its
commitment to fashion. The world is beautiful, that is their motto. This motto
reveals an approach to photography that is able to raise a simple tin to the heavens, while not being capable of grasping the human context within which the tin
appears. Thus, even their most unlikely subjects appear more as the precursors of
their own saleability than of their perception. The true face of this kind of photographic creation is advertising and the conveyance of connotative meaning. For
this reason its true counterpart is exposition or construction.” 13
Sociological Portrait of Society: August Sander
Benjamin was substantially more sympathetic in relation to August Sander’s
project. This photographer, who was born in 1876, decided to do an “inventory”
of 20th century Germans, which he called Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (20th
century people). His plan was to do portraits of a cross-section of society – of all
professions and all social classes. There were to be 45 portfolios, each with 12
photos. Sander, who was a successful photographer during the heyday of fine art
photography, nevertheless found his true calling as an objective photographer
and developed an unmistakable style of his own. He began his Menschen des
20. Jahrhunderts project under the Empire and photographed both horizontal
and vertical portraits, documenting not only the status quo, but also the changes
that occurred in the composition of society as a result of the political and other
changes it was undergoing.
Sander staged all the photographs while at the same time giving his subjects
sufficient freedom to allow them to participate in the staging process. The subjects’ poses are accentuated as a result of Sander’s use of a somewhat antiquated,
large format plate camera with exposure times of between two and four seconds.
In 1929 a selection of 60 photographs, a kind of interim report on his life’s
work, was published under the title Antlitz der Zeit (The face of time). In the
preface to the book, the writer Alfred Döblin emphasised the sociological,
academic approach of the work. “We have here a sort of cultural history or, to be
more precise, a sociological examination of the past thirty years (…). Whereas
comparative anatomy affords us an understanding of organs, this photographer
has pursued comparative photography and in so doing he has enhanced his work
with an academic aspect over and above that achieved by photographers who
lack his broad focus.”
In his classical sociological study Die Angestellten (The Employees) which was
first published in the same year as Sander’s book and which was in some ways
comparable to it, Siegfried Kracauer spoke of a ‘hunger for immediacy, which is no
doubt due to the malnourishment resulting from German idealism.’ 14 The abstract
nature of idealistic thinking leads to a hunger for reportage, for the duplication of
a detail of life. Sander on the other hand, not only revived the image of a whole
epoch through his mosaic of individual portraits, but also a kind of general
human panorama. 15
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August Sander (1876 – 1964), Jobless, 1928, gelatin silver print/glass plate, 16.5 x 12 cm,
Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur,Cologne.
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Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895 – 1946), Kloake in Paris – Sewers of Paris – Paris Drain, 1925, from Foto-Auge, 76 fotos der Zeit,
Collection of Franz Roh and Jan Tschichold (Akademischer Verlag Dr. Fritz Wedekind & Co.), Stuttgart.
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Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895 – 1946), Schocken Department Store, 1925, gelatin silver print,
22 x 16.3 cm Fotografische Sammlung der Berlinischen Galerie, Berlin.
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Here too one comes up against the question of the standpoint of the photographer. Sander wanted to be a neutral observer, to maintain a certain scholarly
objectivity, but it was quite natural that he should have his preferences, for the
peasantry for example. It is interesting to compare his work with other photographers’ conceptions of portraiture. Helmar Lerski’s close-up, extremely strongly
lit images of faces sometimes bear remarkable similarities to Erich Retzlaff’s
glorifying images of blue collar workers. Lerski’s approach was a reflection of
his somewhat sentimental socialism, while Retzlaff’s was clearly a reflection of
the blood and soil ideology of National Socialism. Erna Lendvai-Dircksen was
operating on the basis of a similar standpoint to Retzlaff’s when she produced her
tendentious glorification of the German tribes.
Press Photography
Sasha Stone (1895 – 1940), Files, ca. 1926, from
Foto-Auge, 76 fotos der Zeit, Collection of Franz
Roh and Jan Tschichold (Akademischer Verlag Dr.
Fritz Wedekind & Co.), Stuttgart.
16 See Dirk Halfbrodt, „Entwicklungsgeschichte
der deutschen Illustrierten und der Pressefotografie 1895 – 1914“, in Philipp Kester
– Photojournalist, New York – Berlin – Munich
1903-1935, edited by Dirk Halfbrodt and Ulrich
Pohlmann, Nicolai, Berlin, 2003, p. 40 – 43.
17 See. Bernd Weise, „Fotojournalismus, Erster
Weltkrieg – Weimarer Republik“, in Deutsche
Fotografie, Macht eines Mediums 1870 – 1970,
exhibition catalogue Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn,
DuMont, Cologne, 1997, p. 72 – 87.
Photo journalism has existed since the 1880s or 1890s. The thing that made it
possible was the discovery of autotype in 1882, a half tone relief printing process
which made the printing of photographs possible. The difficulty of getting
autotype images to stay on the plate cylinder of a rapid printing press was not
overcome until 1901 by the Scherl-Verlag’s Der Tag newspaper. Photographic
illustrations were in general only to be seen in magazines and on inserts in daily
newspapers. While offset printing was first introduced about 1910, the First World
War put an end to all experimentation in this area. As a result, the first dailies with
photographs did not appear until the mid 1920s. 16
Early newspaper photography was relatively static because of the cumbersome plate cameras with low aperture lenses. That changed in 1925 with the
introduction of a light, manageable camera with a high speed lens, the Ermanox.
Glass plate negatives still had to be used because of the nature of the available
film, but indoor photographs without a flash had become possible. The Leica was
brought out in the same year. This was the first high speed, small image camera.
The negatives were twice the size of a cinematographic image, namely 24 by 36
millimetres and one could take 36 exposures in a row. It took a few years for the
Leica to break through because many chief editors did not regard it as a serious
tool worthy of a professional, owing to its small size and the small format of its
negatives.
The presentation in the media of politicians within a private context, which is
common today, did not catch on until after the war. An early example of this was
a page one presentation on
24th August 1919 by the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung (BIZ), of Germany’s president Friedrich Ebert and his minister for the military Gustav Noske, wearing
bathing costumes on their summer holidays. The Social Democrats condemned it
as tasteless but the BIZ’s circulation was certainly not harmed. 17
All in all the times were too unsettled with too many things happening one
after the other, for photo journalists to appreciate the journalistic value of the
things that were going on around them, many of which would even have been
of interest abroad. It was not until after the inflationary period, after 1924, that
photo journalism began to develop in a significant way.
The best known German photojournalist was Erich Salomon. Originally a lawyer, he began his career in 1926 as an amateur photographer and, not surprisingly,
court reporter. Salomon became famous for the fact that he would sneak into
political conferences, even international ones, and photograph the participants
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Lucia Moholy (1894 – 1989), Portrait of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, 1926, gelatin silver print, 22.4 x 15.4 cm, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin / ©
VG Bild-Kunst Bonn / Lucia Moholy / LITA, Bratislava 2010.
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18 See Ute Eskildsen, Jan-Christopher Horak, Film
und Foto der zwanziger Jahre, Eine Betrachtung der Internationalen Werkbundausstellung
„Film und Foto“ 1929, Hatje, Stuttgart,1979.
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when they thought they were not being observed. The French foreign minister at
the time, Aristide Briand called him “the king of the pryers”. In 1931 he published
a collection entitled Berühmte Zeitgenossen in unbewachten Augenblicken (Famous
Contemporaries in Unobserved Moments).
Salomon’s circle included many younger press photographers, such as Hans
Baumann, a press illustrator who had become a photojournalist who went under
the name of Felix H. Man. Working closely with photo editor Stefan Lorant, Man
initiated the modern form of photo journalism which consists of a sequence of
images. The best known example of this was a 1931 series about Il Duce, Benito
Mussolini. After emigrating to England, Lorant and Man founded the Picture Post,
the forerunner of the magazine Life.
Some of the best photographers of the period worked as photojournalists.
There was Martin Munkacsi who came from Budapest in 1927 to join the UllsteinVerlag who had begun as a sports photographer, the Bauhaus photographer
Otto Umbehr, known as Umbo, and Sasha Stone who came from St. Petersburg
(marketing slogan: ‘Sasha Stone sees even more’), to name but a few.
Contrary to the experience of the end of the 19th century, the amateur movement experienced a renaissance through an initiative of the left wing Arbeiter
Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ). In 1925, its readers were invited to become active as
photo journalists and to depict their working as well as their social lives. 1926 saw
the emergence of a German association of worker-photographers with its own
publication, Der Arbeiter-Fotograf (The Worker-Photographer). This was an initiative of John Heartfield, whose photomontages, with their acerbic class warfare
statements, often graced the front page of the AIZ.
The FiFo 1929
A gigantic exhibition devoted to modern communication techniques called
Pressa was held in Cologne in 1928. It had photo journalism as one of its themes.
Another exhibition called.
Neue Wege der Fotografie (New Ways of Photography) was held by the Jenaer
Kunstverein (Jena Art Society) in the same year and in 1929, the FolkwangMuseum in Essen held its Fotografie der Gegenwart (Photography of the present)
exhibition, which later toured Germany. The highlight of these exhibitions, which
presented photography as a contemporary medium, was the Film und Foto exhibition of the Internationale Werkbund, known as the FiFo. 18
It had ten display areas, and almost 1000 exhibits. It offered an overview of the
international situation in new photography and its various fields of application.
Moholy-Nagy played an important role in developing the concept. Not only was
a whole room devoted to his work, he was also responsible for the arrangement
of the entrance area which was done in keeping with the ideas in his previously
mentioned book Malerei Fotografie Film. The various applications of photography
were presented as follows: photo journalism, technology and science, photographic composition, photography and advertising.
At the height of the new vision, it was concluded that this exhibition should
be considered a retrospective, bearing in mind the historical events that followed
it. Two books with a strong connection to the exhibition were published at that
time. One was foto-auge (photo-eye) by art historian Franz Roh and typographer
Jan Tschichold. The other was Es kommt der neue Fotograf (The New Photographer
is on his Way) by Werner Graeff. Whereas Graeff’s work was a sort of recapitula-
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tion of the formal possibilities of the new photography, Roh and Tschichold went
further with their work. They produced visual shocks by juxtaposing images on
double page spreads and they included surreal works by people such as Max
Ernst who were not represented at the exhibition.
Franz Roh wrote in the preface that people who could not use a camera would
soon become the new illiterates. Like Benjamin’s work, this book also contains an
apology of heterogeneous, reality-based photography as well as a jibe at RengerPatzsch: “our book does not only mean to say ‘the world is beautiful’, but also: the
world is exciting, cruel, and weird. therefore pictures were included that might
shock aesthetes who stand aloof.” 19
19 foto-auge, 76 Fotos der Zeit, zusammengestellt von Franz Roh und Jan Tschichold,
Akademischer Verlag, dr. Fritz Wedekind & Co,
Stuttgart, 1929, p. 5, english translation in the
original text p. 16.
Photography as an epistemological aid: Aby Warburg
Art and culture historian Aby Warburg defined himself as a “picture historian”.
His main focus was the relationship between antiquity and the renaissance and
with the relationship between magic and science in those periods. Not only was
he interested in old works of art, he also developed an iconography analysing
the themes of antiquity, of the renaissance, and of the time from the renaissance
Erich Salomon (1886 – 1944), Ah – there he is! The king of prying, 1931, gelatin silver print, 15.3 x 20.4 cm, Fotografische Sammlung der Berlinischen Galerie,
Berlin, bkp/Erich Solomon, © Erich Salomon-Archiv/Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.
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Hitler like not being known. 100 Image Documents from the Life
of the Leader, 1932, book cover, Contemporary History-Verlag,
Kulturprojekte Berlin, German Historical Museum, Berlin.
20 Aby Warburg, Der Bilderatlas MNEMOSYNE,
Eds. Martin Warnke in cooperation with
Claudia Brink, 2nd edition, Akademie Verlag,
Berlin, 2003, p. 7.
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Heinrich Hoffmann (1885 – 1957), Leaders and Followers – the
Witness of True National Community, cover of the Münchner
Illustrierten Presse, No. 37, 13. September 1934, Fotomuseum
im Münchner Stadtmuseum, München.
through to his own period. His analyses concerned the changes and the historical
and cultural context in which they occurred.
Language not being an adequate medium to express the notions of his
complex research, he came up with the idea of working with photographic
material to create associative references through a kind of collage or montage in
which themes could be grouped in a systematic fashion. “Black flax was draped
over wooden boards and photographs were attached to the boards; pictures and
reproduction photos from books or pictorial material from newspapers and other
sources from everyday life were all used. The images were arranged in such a way
as to make the different thematic divisions clear.” 20
Warburg called this image atlas Mnemosyne (Memory). It is only by reproducing the individual tables as a whole that the context can be conveyed. However,
given that the individual elements on the boards can be moved around, the
representation always remains a work in progress. Warburg worked on the project
from 1924 until his death in 1929, while at the same time working on another
project based on the same principle, the subject matter of which was the history
of astrology and astronomy. Interestingly, this visually based epistemological
exercise using photographic images – a bona fide artistic technique – was being
carried out at the time of the publication of the book foto-auge. This was also the
period when the surrealists in France were pursuing their subversive activities,
whose aim was to torpedo and undermine supposed realisations and certainties.
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Photography under National Socialism
After the world economic crisis of 1929, cracks began to appear in the first
German republic. The number of unemployed grew rapidly. Emergency edicts
were issued in response to the catastrophic economic situation. The parliament
was dissolved and new elections were held on 14th September 1930, from which
the National Socialists emerged as the second force after the Social Democrats.
Repressive action against independents and left wing artists increased. The exo-
John Heartfield (1891 – 1968), Hurray, the Butter is All!, 1935, rotogravure print/ rephotographed montage with typography, 38.4 x 26.7 cm, cover of Das Illustrierte Volksblatt, 19 December, 1935, Collection
of Barbara Morgan, George Eastman House, Rochester.
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21 On this subject, see Rolf Sachsse, Die Erziehung
zum Wegsehen, Fotografie im NS-Staat, Philo
Fine Arts, Dresden, 2003.
22 Rudolf Herz, Hoffmann und Hitler, Fotografie
als Medium des Führer-Mythos, exhibition
catalogue Fotomuseum im Münchner
Stadtmuseum, Munich, 1994.
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dus of German artists and intellectuals began: Kurt Tucholsky, Herwarth Walden,
Georg Lukacs, Carl Einstein and many others left the country.
In 1932, the 84 year-old Paul Hindenburg won the presidential elections
against Adolf Hitler. The National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi Party)
came out strongest of the parliamentary election that followed. Fear of the
increasingly powerful Communists was one of the reasons that led Hindenburg to
appoint Hitler chancellor on 30th January 1933.
An emergency decree signed by Hindenburg was issued following the burning of the German parliament in 1933. This decree largely set aside the constitution and did away with basic rights. Terror set in. Shortly thereafter, the so-called
enabling laws were passed, which moved the moderate right wing parties to
disband, and which led to the banning of the Social Democratic Party and the
Communist Party. Hitler followed this up with the killing of all the SA leadership in
order to secure his mastery over the Reichswehr, the army. The SA was replaced by
the SS.
The years 1934 to 1937 were a period of relative calm. Above all though,
these years saw an enormous economic upturn and full employment. This was in
large measure due to the massive armament programme. During this period the
regime had a unique opportunity with the Berlin Olympics, to showcase itself on
the world stage.
The attack on avant-garde art had already begun before the Machtergreifung
and was being carried out aggressively. The pamphlet Kunst und Rasse (Art and
Race) by Paul Schultze-Naumburg was published in 1928 and one year later,
Alfred Rosenberg, Heinrich Himmler and other National Socialists founded the
Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (Fighting League for German Culture). In 1933, the
first degenerate art exhibitions were held and this series of exhibitions culminated with the Munich exhibition in 1937.
One of Hitler’s principal instruments of domination was the media control
exercised by the Reichsministerium für Volkserklärung und Propaganda (Ministry of
Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda) under Joseph Goebbels. Taking a different approach from the one adopted in the campaign against modern art, Goebbels sought to create the impression among the population that a safe world was
possible, an idyllic world, but only through the actions of the new regime. The
economic upturn supported this perspective.
This strategy had a very subtle and varied effect on photography. One can
no more speak of a total Gleichschaltung (“bringing into line”) of photography
prior to 1938 than one can speak of a total Gleichschaltung of the press. It is true
that the subject matter was often similar to that of pre-war fine art photography:
idyllic rural scenes with traditional looking locals, or working people and scenes
of industrial achievement all presented with the same, self-affirming, heroic gloss.
However, with the exception of the Party magazine Der illustrierte Beobachter (The
Illustrated Observer), there was no immediately identifiable peddling of ideology
involved. Even today, there is the difficulty that we misunderstand these images
purely as illustrations of our own biased view of history 21. Discussions about this
question concerning the work of the aforementioned Erich Retzlaff and Erna
Lendvai confirm this.
Given that the whole state was tailor-made to suit the requirements of one
man, Hitler, it is clear that public photographic propaganda was also tailored to
fit in with him. Photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, who accompanied Hitler for
many years, played a key role in Hitler’s marketing as a “charismatic leader” in the
media. 22 His company not only produced magazine covers and other material for
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Albert Renger-Patzsch (1897 – 1966), Entrance Wall, published in Die Welt ist Schön, © VG Bild-Kunst,
Bonn / Albert Renger-Patzsch Archiv.
the German press including the Illustrieter Beobachter, it also published postcards
and books. Hoffmann’s role was far more that of an executive, who saw to it that
things were carried out, than that of a consultant whose role was to provide ideas.
There was one exception to this: the “private” Hitler was an invention of
Hoffmann’s. It was also a perfectly staged continuation of a trend that had begun
in press photography under the Weimar Republic.
Hoffmann’s photographs moulded Hitler’s image, and Hitler appreciated the
importance of his media image more than anybody. The cult surrounding the
Autobahns, the Nuremberg rallies, the Berlin Olympics and Leni Riefenstahl’s
films, all constitute examples of the importance of stage management in the
creation of an aura of power.
In an essay about artwork in the age of reproduction which was written in
French and published in 1936 in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (Journal for
Social Research), Walter Benjamin sought to examine this question. Looked at in
its historical context, one can see in this text a desire to destroy the aura of Hitler
through the use of the reproduction technologies employed by the media. What
was taking place however, was the exact opposite of this and Benjamin was well
aware of it. “Fascism”, he wrote, boils down to an aestheticization of political life.”
He also saw with equal clarity what was to follow a few years later. “All efforts to
aestheticise politics culminate at the same point. That same point is war.” 23
Translated from German to English by Peter Strauss
259
23 Walter Benjamin, Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter
seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit,
(Suhrkamp, Frankfurt) 1981, p. 42
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Biographical Notes:
Arning, Eduard (Manchester, 1855 – 1936)
learned photography during a study
trip to the Hawaiian Islands in the
service of the Preussische Akademie
der Wissenschaften where as a medical
doctor he was to study leprosy and
build an ethnographic collection.
He was one of the early members of
the fine art photography movement
in Hamburg and was for many years
a board member of the Gesellschaft zur
Förderung der Amateurfotografie.
Kunstphotographie um 1900. Die
Sammlung Ernst Juhl, Exhibition
catalogue, Museum für Kunst und
Gewerbe Hamburg, Hamburg, 1989.
Bayer, Herbert (Upper Austria, 1900 –
1985) studied at the Bauhaus from
1921 to 1925 and then began taking
photographs. From 1925 to 1928 he
managed the Werkstatt für Druck und
Reklame, which later became known
as the Werkstatt für Typographie und
Werbsachengestaltung, the printing
workshop that produced the Bauhaus’
printed material. From 1928 he worked
as a freelancer for agencies and set up
exhibitions and in 1938 he emigrated to
the USA and was involved in exhibitions
there, including Bauhaus exhibitions at
the MoMA in New York and others. He
also worked for numerous American
companies.
Cohen, Arthur A., Herbert Bayer, The
Complete Work, MIT Press, Cambridge,
Mass., London, 1984.
Consemüller, Erich (Bielefeld, 1902 –
1957) completed an apprenticeship
as a cabinet maker and then studied
at the Bauhaus from 1922 to 1927
and worked until 1929 as assistant
manager of the construction
division under Hannes Meyer. He
produced photo documentation
for the Bauhaus from 1925 to 1929.
He then worked as a teacher in the
architecture department of the
Kunstgewerbeschule Halle, Burg
Giebichenstein, until 1933. After World
War II he became a town planner in
Halle.
Herzogenrath, Wulf and Kraus, Stefan,
Erich Consemüller, Fotografien Bauhaus
Dessau, Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, 1989.
Dührkoop, Rudolph (Hamburg, 1848
– 1918) worked initially as a railway
employee and salesman but opened
a photo studio in 1883. He was
active as a portrait photographer
and favoured the use of natural
environments as amateurs did. He
also specialised in theatre and dance
photography and was a member
of the Linked Ring and the Royal
Photographic Society, among other
associations.
Erfurth, Hugo (Halle/Saale, 1874
– 1948) started a photography
traineeship in 1892 while studying
at the Kunstakademie in Dresden
and then took over the Dresden
studio of Schröder, the court
photographer. A professional, modern
photographer, he was involved in
many amateur exhibitions. He taught
at the Buchgewerbeakademie in
260
Leipzig until 1914 and then adopted
a more objective style after World
War I. He was a significant portrait
photographer and a founding
member of the Gesellschaft Deutscher
Lichtbildner (GDL).
von Dewitz, Bodo and Karin SchullerProcopcvici, Hugo Erfurth, Fotograf
zwischen Tradition und Moderne,
Wienand, Cologne, 1992.
Eugene, Frank (Frank Eugene Smith)
(New York, 1865 – 1936) began taking
photographs in 1885 and studied
painting from 1886 to 1894 at the
Kunstakademie in Munich. Afterwards
he returned to New York where he
worked as a portrait painter, mainly
painting well-known theatre actors.
He returned to Germany in 1901 and
taught from 1907 to 1913 at the Lehrund Versuchsanstalt für Fotografie
in Munich and from 1913 at the
Königliche Akademie für Graphische
Künste und Buchgewerbe in Leipzig.
He was a member of the London
Camera Club, the Linked Ring and
a founding member of the PhotoSecession movement in New York.
Pohlmann, Uhlrich (Ed.), Frank Eugene,
The Dream of Beauty, Exhibition
catalogue. Fotomuseum in Münchner
Stadtmuseum, Nazraeli Press, Munich,
1995.
Graeff, Werner (Wuppertal, 1901 –
1978) began taking photographs
as a schoolboy and briefly attended
the Bauhaus in 1921/22 and was
a member of the De Stijl group in
Weimar. He wrote a screenplay with
experimental filmmaker Hans Richter
T h e
H i s t o r y
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G e r m a n y
in 1929 and worked on the concept of
the FiFo exhibition in Stuttgart. From
1930 he wrote books on photography
and worked as a lecturer and then
moved to Switzerland via Spain in
1934. He returned to Germany in 1951
and taught at the Folkwangschule
in Essen. From 1959 he worked as an
independent sculptor and painter.
Winkler, Richard G., Werner Graeff und
der Konstruktivismus in Deutschland
1918 – 1934, Doctoral dissertation,
Technische Hochschule Aachen, 1981.
Hausmann, Raoul (Vienna, 1886 – 197)
studied at the Staatliche Lehranstalt
des Kunstgewerbemuseums in Berlin
where he met Hannah Höch in Emil
Orlik’s class. He published work in
various avant-garde magazines and
was one of the initiators of Dadaism
in Berlin. His photomontages were
a visual form of intellectual expression
drawing on diverse media such as
photography, film, typography and
dance. He photographed on a regular
basis after 1927 and rebelled against
the formalism of the new vision.
Der deutsche Spießer ärgert sich: Raoul
Hausmann, 1886 – 1971, Exhibition
catalogue. Berlinische Galerie, Berlin,
Hatje, Ostfildern, 1994.
Heartfield, John (Helmut Herzfelde)
(Berlin, 1891 – 1968) studied at the
Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich and in
Berlin from 1908 to 1914. He founded
the magazine Neue Jugend with his
brother Wieland Herzfelde in 1916 and
founded the Malik-Verlag publishing
house in 1917, for which he created
book covers. He produced montages
in 1919 with George Grosz under the
name “Monteur-Dada” and also did
some theatre work for Erwin Piscator
and Max Reinhardt. He began creating
political photomontages in 1924 and
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worked for the Arbeiter Illustrierte
Zeitung from 1930 to1938. He was
exiled to Prague in 1933 and moved
to London in 1938, returning to East
Berlin in 1950.
John Heartfield, Exhibition catalogue.
Akademie der Künste zu Berlin,
DuMont, Cologne, 1991.
Hilsdorf, Jacob (Bingen, 1872 – 1916)
learned photography from his
father and after working for Nicola
Perscheid, he took over his father’s
studio. He focused on portraits
of important dignitaries from
aristocracy, politics, high finance and
culture and was recognised as the
best known portraitist of the imperial
era. His unconventional approach to
portraiture was reminiscent of fine art
photography.
Nicola Perscheid, Theodor und Jacob
Hilsdorf, August Sander, der rheinlandpfälzische Beitrag zur Geschichte der
Photographie, Exhibition catalogue,
Landesmuseum Mainz, Schmidt,
Mainz, 1989.
Höch, Hannah (Gotha, 1889 –
1978) began her studies at the
Kunstgewerbeschule in 1912 and
studied at the Staatliche Lehranstalt
des Kunstgewerbemuseums Berlin
under Emil Orlik from 1915. She
met Raoul Hausmann in 1918 and
at the same time began producing
photomontages, taking part in the
Internationale Dada Messe in Berlin in
1920. She had contact with De Stijl
artists during the 1920s. After World
War II she devoted herself mostly to
painting.
Burmeister, Ralf (ed.), Hannah Höch:
aller Anfang ist Dada!, Exhibition
catalogue, Berlinishe Galerie, Hatje
Cantz, Ostfildern, 2007.
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Hoffmann, Heinrich (Fürth, 1885 – 1957)
worked for several photographers
and then settled in Munich in 1906,
opening his own studio in 1908 and
working as a press photographer.
He founded a stock photography
agency in 1913. He joined the
National Socialist Party in 1926 and
co-founded the Party newspaper
Illustrierter Beobachter. He produced
photographic propaganda for Hitler
and the Nazi Party and had significant
involvement in the Nazis’ theft of art.
Herz, Rudolf, Hoffmann und Hitler,
Fotografie als Medium des FührerMythos, Exhibition catalogue,
Fotomuseum im Münchner
Stadtmuseum, Munich, 1994.
Hofmeister, Oscar (Hamburg, 1868 –
1943) and (Hamburg 1871 – 1937)
were the most significant of the
German fine art photographers who
both began taking photographs
about 1890 and became members of
the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der
Amateurfotografie in Hamburg. There
they exhibited their jointly-produced,
large format, mostly colour, offsets.
They carefully prepared preliminary
studies of their pictures. One of their
images was included in the collection
of Alfred Stieglitz because they were
the only fine art photographers in
Germany,
Lendvai-Dircksen, Erna (Wetterburg,
1883 – 1962) studied painting in Kassel
and then trained as a photographer in
Berlin in 1910 and 1911, opening her
own portrait photography studio in
1916. She produced representations
from 1917 of the “face of the German
T h e
people” and from 1929 she worked on
a series of photographs representing
German tribes which was published in
1935 by the National Socialist Party’s
own publishing house Gauverlag
Bayreuth. She also photographed
landscapes. She was a member of the
National Socialist Party from 1930 and
continued working in Coburg after
1945.
Philipp, Claudia Gabriele, “Erna LendvaiDircksen, Verschiedene Möglichkeiten,
eine Fotografin zu rezipieren” in
Fotogeschichte, Beiträge zur Geschichte
und Ästhetik der Fotografie, Marburg, Vol.
7, 1983, pp. 39 – 56.
Lerski, Helmar (Israel Schmuklerski)
(Strasbourg, 1871 – 1956) worked in
a bank in Zurich and then moved to
the USA in 1893 where he worked
as an actor in Milwaukee and in New
York. He opened his own photo
studio in Milwaukee, specialising in
theatre portraits. He moved to Berlin
in 1915 where he worked for the
film Berlin. From 1929 he worked in
portrait photography and in 1931 he
published Köpfe des Alltags. In the
same year he emigrated to Palestine
where he worked in film and on the
Verwandlungen durch Licht project
(1936), returning to Zurich in 1948.
Helmar Lerski, Lichtbildner, Exhibition
catalogue, Museum Folkwang, Essen
1982.
Man, Felix H. (Hans Baumann) (Freiburg,
1893 – 1985) studied history of art and
painting in Berlin and Munich but his
studies were interrupted by the war.
He produced his first photographic
essays on the western front and then
worked as a press illustrator and, from
1928, as a freelance photo journalist for
the Berlin press and for the Deutscher
Photodienst (Dephot). He emigrated to
H i s t o r y
o f
E u r o p e a n
London in 1934 and worked as chief
reporter for the Picture Post.
Man with Camera, Photographs from
Seven Decades by Felix H. Man, Secker
and Warburg, London, 1983.
Moholy, Lucia (Karlin bei Prag, 1894 –
1989) studied to become a teacher
of German and English, then studied
art history and philosophy at the
University of Prague. She met Laszlo
Moholy-Nagy in Berlin in 1920 and
married him in 1921, attending the
Bauhaus in Weimar in 1923 along with
her husband. She was a photography
trainee in 1923 and 1924, followed
by work for the Bauhaus doing
objective photography. She taught
at the Akademie für Graphische
Künste und Buchgewerbe in Leipzig
in 1925-26. She separated from
Moholy-Nagy in 1929. She succeeded
Umbo as a photography teacher
at the Itten-Schule in Berlin and
emigrated to London via Prague and
Paris where she worked from 193334 as a photographer and lecturer
until 1958. From 1959 she worked as
a freelance publicist in Zurich.
Sachsse, Rolf, Lucia Moholy, Marzona,
Düsseldorf, 1985.
Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo (Bárcbasód,
Hungary, 1895 – 1946) began studying
law in 1913 and then did his military
service after which, in 1918, he began
painting. In 1919 he moved to Vienna
and one year later he moved to
Berlin where, in 1922, he had his first
individual exhibition at Der Sturm
gallery. He taught at the Bauhaus from
1923 to 1928 where he published
the Bauhaus books with Walter
Gropius. He ran a graphic design
studio in Berlin from 1928 to 1934
and then emigrated to Amsterdam
and in 1935 to London. He founded
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the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937
which later became the School of
Design and, in 1947, the Institute of
Design. He is the author of: Malerei
Fotografie Film, Bauhausbücher Band
8, München, 1925; von Material zu
Architektur, Bauhausbücher Band 14,
München 1929; and Vision in Motion,
Chicago, 1947.
Haus, Andreas, Moholy-Nagy, Fotos
und Fotogramme, Schirmer/Mosel,
München, 1978.
Munkácsi, Martin (Márton Marmelstein)
(Kolozsvár, Hungary, 1896 – 1963)
began working at the age of 18 as
a sports photographer in Budapest
and achieved fame there. He was
employed by the publisher Ullstein
Verlag in 1927 and became very
well-known as a photo journalist.
He emigrated to New York in 1934
where he revolutionised fashion
photography with his natural, photo
journalistic style.
Gundlach, F.C. (Ed.), Martin Munkácsi,
Exhibition catalogue. Haus der
Photographie, Deichtorhallen,
Hamburg, Steidl, Göttingen, 2005.
Perscheid, Nicola (Moselweis bei
Koblenz, 1864 – 1930) completed
a photography traineeship and then
opened a studio in Görlitz, which he
moved to Leipzig in 1894. In 1906 he
moved to Berlin where he founded
a school for fine art portrait and
landscape photography. He was one
of the best known professional fine art
photographers.
Cornwall, James E., In vornehmen
Kreisen, Nicola Perscheid, Verlag
Gerhard Knülle, Herrsching/
Ammersee, 1980.
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H i s t o r y
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G e r m a n y
Peterhans, Walter (Frankfurt am Main, 1897
– 1960) studied mathematics, philosophy
and history of art in Munich and
Göttingen from 1920 to 1923 and then
learned reproduction photography at
the Staatliche Akademie für Graphische
Künste und Buchgewerbe in Leipzig. He
took the master craftsman’s examination
in Weimar in 1926 and opened his
own studio in Berlin in 1927. He was
a Master at the Bauhaus from 1929 to
1933 and head of the new photography
course there. He also taught at Werner
Graeff’s photography school and at the
Reimann-Schule in Berlin after 1933 and
was a professor at the Illinois Institute
of Technology in Chicago from 1938 to
1960 as well as a guest lecturer at the
Ulmer Hochschule für Gestaltung which
taught the Bauhaus traditions.
Peterhans, Fotografien 1927-38, Exhibition
catalogue, Museum Folkwang, Essen,
1993.
Renger-Patzsch, Albert (Würzburg, 1897
– 1966) was a self-taught photographer
who studied chemistry until 1922 in
Dresden. He managed the picture
collection of the Folkwang-Archiv in
Essen and of the publishing house
Auriga-Verlag in 1922 and became
an independent photographer in Bad
Harzburg in 1925. He moved to Essen in
1928 and taught at the Folkwangschule
for one year in 1933. He moved to
Wambel in 1944 and published many
books.
Wilde, Ann and Jürgen (ed.), Albert
Renger-Patzsch, Meisterwerke, Exhibition
catalogue, Sprengel Museum, Hannover,
Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, 1997.
Retzlaff, Erich (1899 – 1993) worked as
a photographer in Düsseldorf from 1926
and showed sympathy for the National
Socialist movement from 1930 and
joined the party in 1932. He published
19 0 0
–
19 3 8
several photographic volumes with
Nazi-style patriotic themes and then
was a portrait photographer in Diessen
am Ammersee from 1945.
Salomon, Erich (Berlin, 1886 – 1944)
studied law and then joined the
publisher Ullstein Verlag in 1925
after which he worked as a photo
journalist both for the Berline Illustrierte
newspaper and as a freelancer.
His work, which also appeared
in international newspapers and
magazines, afforded him star status
as a press photographer. He came to
be seen as the founder of modern
photo journalism. He emigrated to
The Hague in 1933 where, in 1940, he
was betrayed and taken to Auschwitz
where he and his family were killed
in 1944. The estate was discovered by
his only surviving son. He published
Berühmte Zeitgenossen in unbewachten
Augenblicken, Engelhorns Nachf.,
Stuttgart, 1931.
Frecot, Janos, Erich Salomon, Mit Frack
und Linse durch Politik und Gesellschaft,
Photographien 1928–1938, Schirmer/
Mosel, Munich, 2004.
Sander, August (Herdorf, 1876 – 1964)
took up photography after having
worked as a miner and opened his
own studio in Linz, Austria in 1904. He
moved to Cologne in 1910 and worked
on the Menschen ohne Maske project
after World War I, which led to the
development of the Menschen des 20.
Jahrhunderts portfolio project. He had
contact with the Kölner Progressiven,
a group of painters that included
Franz W. Seiwert and Heinrich Hoerle.
He published Antlitz der Zeit in 1929
but the work was seized and banned
by the National Socialists in 1934. He
turned to landscape and architectural
photography in 1935.
263
Sander, Gunther (Ed.), text by Ulrich
Keller, August Sander: Menschen des 20.
Jahrhunderts, Portraitphotographien
1892-1952, Schirmer/Mosel, Munich,
1980.
Stone, Sasha (Aleksander Serge Steinsapir)
(St. Petersburg, 1895 – 1940) trained
in various fields and held a range of
jobs in Warsaw and New York and then
studied at the fine arts academy in Paris
from 1920 to 1922. In 1922 he moved
to Berlin where in 1924 he opened
a studio specialising in advertising and
industrial photography. He worked
as a photo journalist from 1925 to
1928, produced montages with Umbo
between 1926 and 1928 and for Walter
Ruttman’s film Berlin as well as theatre
work for Erwin Piscator. He opened
a studio in Brussels in 1931.
Köhn, Eckhardt (Ed.), Sasha Stone,
Fotografien 1925-1939, Nishen, Berlin,
1990.
Umbo (Otto Umbehr) (Düsseldorf,
1902 – 1980) studied at the Bauhaus
from 1921 to 1923 and then worked
alongside Sasha Stone producing
photomontages for Walter Ruttman’s
film Berlin. He worked as a photo
journalist and portrait photographer
from 1926 and was a founding
member of the Agentur Dephot
(German stock photography
agency) in 1928. He was a freelance
photographer and photo journalist
from 1933 and his photo archives were
destroyed in a bomb attack in 1943. He
later worked as a photographer for the
Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hannover and
as a photography teacher from 1948.
Molderings, Herbert, Umbo: Otto
Umbehr 1902-1980, Richter Verlag,

History of EuropEan photography, 1900

Transcription

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