Photographs: Aaron Siskind ‘Harlem Photographs’ 1932-1940

“This is where I think that Siskind was less than happy with the results of his documentary photographs – that they weren’t giving him what he wanted out of his art: that interface of the image and imagination.” Dr Marcus Bunyan

July 2026

Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991)
Boys in Empty Tenement
c. 1935
Gelatin silver print

Image and imagination

I always find it fascinating to view the first few years of an artist’s journey, the golden path they take, for it more than likely informs all that is to come.

In the greatest abstract expressionist photographer the world has known, Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991), his starting point was as a straight documentary photographer, a member of the New York Photo League, a “left-leaning documentary collective, which prioritised using photography to advocate for social change.”

Using a large format camera and tripod Siskind, for his photo project Harlem Document, captured “the vibrancy, harsh realities, and daily life of the Black community in Harlem” – images which had their roots in American social documentary photography of the period and photographers such as Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks and the photographers of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) government program (1935-1944) which documented the struggles of rural Americans during the Great Depression.

As I have written in a 2023 text titled “Transcending reality”, “To my mind American photographers of the 1930s took photographs not only to document but also to honor what was greater and more interesting than they were. Not as a melding of reality-dream … but as an exploration of what is possible through the interface of the image and imagination, the interface as Ansel Adams put it “between the reality of the world and the reality of yourself”.”

This is where I think that Siskind was less than happy with the results of his documentary photographs – that they weren’t giving him what he wanted out of his art: that interface of the image and imagination.

“In working from the documentary approach, I had always tried to find what kind of meaning you could get in a picture of that kind, and was beginning to feel that I was not getting it. I felt I wasn’t getting anything really personal, really powerful and special…. My documentary pictures were very quiet and very formal.”1

Moving into the 1940s Siskind began experimenting with more abstract compositions (with their link to Abstract Expressionist painting). Evidence of this reorientation in his image making can already be seen in some of the documentary photographs in this posting. For example, the photographs Facades (1938, below) and Harlem (1938, below) both propose the flattening of the photographic surface with an interest in the geometry and abstraction of form – circle, oblong, square, diagonal, curve, line – within the pictorial plane, but with an attendant emphasis on light, texture and tone.

“Though he did not create the lines, shapes, rhythms and patterns in his images, he nonetheless expressed the lyricism of their relationships by harmoniously arriving at the perfect composition. And though his abstract photographs possessed undeniable content, he subverted that content by offering new interpretive possibilities based on the feelings the images conveyed.”2

Image and imagination.

Thus, Siskind was intelligent enough, was aware and informed enough, of his feelings towards the world and the cultural developments around him to approach a crossroads in his development as an artist, to recognise, that is the key word, to recognise the path he needed, he wanted to take.

And so we are forever grateful to have his abstract expressionist photographs that his spirit guided him towards, photographs that may also light our own path.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

PS. I have added relevant information on Siskind’s art practice, theatres, and ballrooms where possible and I have also included an extract from Gordon Parks’ forward to Siskind’s book Harlem Document.

1/ Jaromir Stephany unpublished interview with Aaron Siskind, February 1963. This interview is in the private papers of Jaormir Stephany quoted in Marcia Battle. “Harlem: A Document,” in Harlem Document: Photographs 1932-1940. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990, pp. 4-6

2/ Phillip Barcio. “How Aaron Siskind Found Abstraction On The Streets,” on the Ideelart website, Feb 15, 2017 [Online] Cited 17/07/2026

Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“Photography has tremendous social value. Upon the photographer rests the responsibility and duty of recording a true image of the world as it is today. Moreover, he must not only show us how we live, but indicate the logical development of our lives.”

Photo Notes, newsletter of the Photo League, August 1938

Aaron Siskind’s photographs from 1935-1940 form the core of the Harlem Document, a landmark sociological and visual study commissioned by the New York Photo League. Siskind headed the Feature Group of this radical, left-leaning documentary collective, which prioritised using photography to advocate for social change. The images capture the vibrancy, harsh realities, and daily life of the Black community in Harlem during the Great Depression.

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Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991)
Kitchen Scene
1937
Gelatin silver print

From 1937 to 1944, Siskind took pictures in and around Harlem – of its businesses, domestic interiors, religious and social organisations, and nightlife. He did so as a member of the New York Photo League – a documentary photography collective with roots in radical leftist politics – and in collaboration with journalist and sociologist Michael Carter and other photographers as part of a cultural study of Harlem. In 1981 fifty-two of Siskind’s images were published in the book Harlem Document: Photographs 1932-1940 alongside first-person interviews conducted in the late 1930s by writers employed by the Federal Writers Project, including novelist and essayist Ralph Ellison.

MoMA Gallery label from 2024

Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991) 'Apollo Theatre' 1937

Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991)
Apollo Theater
1937
Gelatin silver print

Apollo Theater

Since opening its doors in 1914 and introducing the first Amateur Night contests in 1934, The Apollo has played a major role in the emergence of jazz, swing, bebop, R&B, gospel, blues, and soul – all quintessentially American music genres. Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Sammy Davis Jr., James Brown, Gladys Knight, Luther Vandross, D’Angelo, Lauryn Hill, and countless others began their road to stardom on the Apollo stage. Today, The Apollo is a respected nonprofit presenting concerts, theatrical and dance performances, film screenings, educational programs, and community outreach programs.

The neoclassical theater known today as The Apollo’s Historic Theater was designed by George Keister and first owned by Sidney Cohen. In 1914, Benjamin Hurtig and Harry Seamon obtained a thirty-year lease on the newly constructed theater, calling it Hurtig and Seamon’s New Burlesque Theater. Like many American theaters during this time, African-Americans were not allowed to attend as patrons or to perform.

In 1933, Fiorello La Guardia, who would later become New York City’s Mayor, began a campaign against burlesque, and Hurtig & Seamon’s was one of many theaters that would close down. Cohen reopened the building as the 125th Street Apollo Theatre in 1934 with his partner, Morris Sussman, serving as manager. Cohen and Sussman changed the format of the shows from burlesque to variety revues and redirected their marketing attention to the growing African-American community in Harlem.

Frank Schiffman and Leo Brecher took over The Apollo in 1935. The Schiffman and Brecher families would operate the Theater until the late 1970s. The Apollo reopened briefly in 1978 under new management then closed again in November 1979. In 1981, it was purchased by Percy Sutton, a prominent lawyer, politician, media and technology executive, and a group of private investors. Under Sutton’s ownership, the Theater was equipped with a recording and television studio.

Text from the Apollo Theater website. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991)
Lady In Kitchen
1937
Gelatin silver print

Aaron Siskind’s artistic trajectory parallels broader shifts within mid-20th-century American photography. In the 1930s he cut his teeth as a documentary photographer affiliated with the Workers Film and Photo League, an artists’ cooperative that strove to advance progressive political causes. The following decade saw him turn away from studies of society. For the remainder of his career, he created still lifes that aimed to articulate interior states through near-abstract visual fields. Of this dramatic shift in his practice, the artist said, “For some reason or other there was in me the desire to see the world clean and fresh and alive.”1

Siskind’s documentary work was carefully planned and researched in advance. He honed this approach at the Film and Photo League, which he joined in 1933, only three years after receiving his first camera as a honeymoon gift. Among this community of photographers and filmmakers – many of them, like Siskind, the New York-born children of Jewish immigrants – he found technical guidance and critical feedback. When the League’s photographers broke from its filmmakers to establish the standalone Photo League in 1936, Siskind helped form its Feature Group, a unit dedicated to creating photo essays like those appearing in LIFE magazine and being produced by the Farm Security Administration. Collaborative at its core, the Feature Group prioritised the free exchange of ideas: each project began with a discussion of how to approach photographing its subject and ended with the group assessing their effort collectively. “We discovered a relationship between the clarity of one’s thought and feeling and the clarity of picture-making,” Siskind recalled of these formative dialogues.2

Of the many projects the Feature Group completed during Siskind’s four years of leadership, its most extended and ambitious was Harlem Document. This expansive cultural study of Harlem, undertaken between 1937 and 1940 in close consultation with the sociologist Michael Carter, originally aimed to produce a photographically illustrated book authored by Carter. Although the publication never materialised, Siskind’s photographs for Harlem Document indicate the project’s ambitious scope, depicting street life, domestic interiors, and gathering spots ranging from churches to dance halls to theaters.

Samuel Allen, Curatorial Assistant, The Robert B. Menschel Department of Photography, 2025 on the MoMA website [Online] Cited 14/07/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

1/ Aaron Siskind, “The Drama of Objects,” Minicam Photography 8, no. 9 (June 1945), 23.

2/ Aaron Siskind, “The Feature Group,” Photo Notes (June-July 1940), 7.

Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991)
Lafayette Theatre
1937
Gelatin silver print

Lafayette Theatre

The Lafayette Theatre (1912–1951), known locally as “the House Beautiful”, was one of the most famous theaters in the Harlem neighbourhood of Manhattan in New York City. It was an entertainment venue located at 132nd Street and 7th Avenue. The first major theatre in New York to desegregate, in its early history the theatre was home to the African American repertory theatre company the Lafayette Players. This group was originally founded by Anita Bush as Anita Bush Stock Company in 1914 and became a part of the Lafayette Theatre in 1916 when the theatre bought the stock company. The Lafayette Players was a successful company from the 1910s through the 1930s; after which the company floundered. In 1951 the theatre closed and was sold to the Williams Institutional Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. The structure was demolished in 2013.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991)
Night Club I
1937
Gelatin silver print

Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991)
Peace Meals
1937
Gelatin silver print

Aaron Siskind’s Harlem document, a mirror of my own past, speaks explicitly for itself. It is an ongoing memory of black people living in crowded kitchenettes; suffering the loneliness of rented bedrooms; prating in leftover churches, and grasping a patch of happiness whenever and wherever they could find it. It is a nostalgic look at a kind of past that threatens to hang around Harlem for a long time to come – to doom it to further frustration and unrest. Those same tenements that once imprisoned me are still there, refusing to crumble, holding other restless black boys for sentence without trial.

I remember swarms of slow-moving people, moving close together up on Lenox Avenue – past child shacks, rib joints, funeral parlours and storefront churches- knowing one another but seldom bothering to speak. A city of blackness crammed inside a white city where, when you walked our the door, you became a stranger. …

Harlem has meant a lot of things to a lot of people. For me, in those days, it meant hunger, cultural devastation, unrequited longing and disillusionment. To others it was the swinging, exciting capitol of the entire Black world, the exotic Mecca of melting music, good times and dancing feet. Yet, for some, it was a sanctuary where loftier dreams were fostered; where now and then some of those dreams were realised, but where mostly they were hopelessly spent. To just about everyone who has worked in the vital processes of its survival, whose life has been textured by its tradition, Harlem is a place that won’t give up. Wobbly now under the impact of the past decades, its history mirror those problems its mother country once endured.

Extract from Gordon Parks. “Foreword,” in Harlem Document: Photographs 1932-1940. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991)
Street Scene
1937
Gelatin silver print

Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991)
Wishing Tree
1937
Gelatin silver print

Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991)
Church Interior
1938
Gelatin silver print

Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991)
Facades
1938
Gelatin silver print

Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991)
Harlem
1938
Gelatin silver print

Aaron Siskind’s interest in photography developed after his experiences with both music and poetry when he was an English teacher in the New York public school system. His early pictures were said to have been attempts at transferring musical and poetic concepts into images.2 Later, as a young adult, Siskind did everything from making political speeches on soapboxes in Manhattan to becoming a member of the Junior Young People’s Socialist League (YPSL).3

A friend gave Siskind his first camera in 1930. He soon discovered his attraction for the instrument, and almost simultaneously he discovered and joined the Photo league. At the League he found people who shared his political and social concerns and who were capable and willing to discuss technical information about photography. Many of the members were children of Jewish immigrants and most, like Siskind, were well educated. Their exhibited images documented illiteracy, discrimination, and poverty and called for social reforms on behalf of the working classes. Before joining the League, Siskind had already photographed some of the poverty-stricken areas of Manhattan and was searching for reaction and criticism to these pictures. …

As a photographer Siskind explored symbols and metaphors to create a visual relationship that balanced aesthetic concerns with social documents. Throughout his career the contrast of subject and symbol have dominated. …

With his work in Harlem Siskind’s style may have been changing. “In working from the documentary approach, I had always tried to find what kind of meaning you could get in a picture of that kind, and was beginning to feel that I was not getting it. I felt I wasn’t getting anything really personal, really powerful and special…. My documentary picture were very quiet and very formal.”4

Extract from Marcia Battle. “Harlem: A Document,” in Harlem Document: Photographs 1932-1940. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990, pp. 4-6. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

2/ Carl Chiarenza, Aaron Siskind: Pleasures and Terrors (Little, Brown and Co.,), 6.

3/ Carl Chiarenza, “Form and Content in the Early Work of Aaron Siskind,” The Massachusetts Review 19:4 (Winter 1978): 810.

4/ Jaromir Stephany unpublished interview with Aaron Siskind, February 1963. This interview is in the private papers of Jaormir Stephany.

Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991)
Savoy Dancers
1938
Gelatin silver print

Savoy Dancers

The “Savoy Dancers” refer to the pioneering African American dancers who developed the Lindy Hop and other swing dances at the legendary Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, New York. Open from 1926 to 1958, the integrated ballroom housed iconic performers like Frankie Manning and Norma Miller who defined the “home of happy feet”.

These legendary dancers revolutionised social dancing by bringing athleticism, airborne aerials, and improvisational jazz styling to the Lindy Hop. Their legacy continues to thrive through modern swing dance communities and archival footage preserved in documentaries like The Spirit Moves.

About the Savoy Ballroom

From 1926 to 1958, the Savoy Ballroom stood at 596 Lenox Avenue as one of the first racially integrated public spaces in the United States. Its 10,000-square-foot, spring-loaded dance floor welcomed thousands nightly and launched a global dance phenomenon. The Savoy hosted legendary artists including Chick Webb, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Count Basie, cementing its place at the heart of Harlem’s cultural history.

Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991)
St. Joseph’s House – The Catholic Worker Movement
c. 1939
Gelatin silver print

Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991)
Grocery Store
1940
Gelatin silver print

Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991)
Lady and Lamp
1940
Gelatin silver print

Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991)
Street Scene
1940
Gelatin silver print

Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991)
Watermelon Man
1940
Gelatin silver print

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Exhibition: ‘Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination’ at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York

“There is something so infectious and engaging about these photographs, something that draws you into the transformative freedom of African identities.” Dr Marcus Bunyan

Exhibition dates: 14th December, 2025 – 25th July, 2026

Curator: Oluremi C. Onabanjo, The Peter Schub Curator, with the assistance of Chiara M. Mannarino, Curatorial Assistant, The Robert B. Menschel Department of Photography

Air Afrique
DJIMA RECORDS
1969
Vinyl 45tour Mono
7 1/16 x 7 1/16″ (18 x 18cm)
Air Afrique Collective, courtesy of Lamine Diaoune,
Ahmadou-Bamba Thiam, Djiby Kebe, Jeremy Konko

Of being and becoming

Why do I love African photography so much after the “winds of decolonial change” swept through the continent which “saw the disintegration of colonial territories and the formation of transnational solidarity across the African continent and diaspora.”

Firstly, I love the vibrancy present in photographs of everyday life – at the club, with friends, dancing, drinking. I love the hairstyles, I love the fabrics, I love the way people are proud of themselves and their cultural heritage. Joy, love, exuberance, passion. There is something so infectious and engaging about these photographs, something that draws you into the transformative freedom of African identities.

Secondly, I love the studio photographs that enable the sitter to dream the great dreams of life, to imagine who they want to be before the camera. Here, in a symbiotic relationship between the photographer and the sitter, the “studio becomes a kind of imaginative enterprise. You can go and be who you are, or you can go and be who you want to be.” In Sanlé Sory’s studio his “portraits made possible a particular process of being and becoming for his sitters. He reflected the ideas that they wanted to communicate – whether to friends, lovers, strangers, or themselves.” (Gallery label) The resulting portrait made the sitter feel connected to a cosmopolitan world. Both a world of dreams and aspirations and Africans’ lived experiences and realities.

Thirdly, I love how the photographer turns the camera towards himself, conceptually enacting in a staged theatricality of becoming, envisioning himself as different personalities through the act of constructing identities. Heroes, travellers, intellectuals, philosophers and, in Samuel Fosso’s case, prominent figures from 20th-century Pan-African liberation and American civil rights movements. African spirits and activists, intellectuals, and political leaders who fought for Black emancipation across the globe.

Pan-African modes of image-making after the end of colonisation open up, as curator Oluremi C. Onabanjo so eloquently states, “dazzling modes of Pan-African possibility” where everything is possible in every/body. There is no wringing of the hands here, no use of colonial photographs rehashed for contemporary consumption, just a joy, joy, joy in present and future becoming.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Museum of Modern Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“Imagination is a Magic carpet
Upon which we may soar
To distant lands and climes
And even go beyond the moon
To any planet in the sky
If we came from nowhere here
Why can’t we go somewhere there?

.
Sun Ra, “Imagination,” 1970

The Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination showcases how photographic portraits fuel ideas of Pan-African subjectivity and solidarity. On view from December 14, 2025, through July 25, 2026, the exhibition considers the transatlantic call and response that constructed Africa as a political idea, due to the “winds of decolonial change” that swept the African continent in tandem with the Civil Rights movement in the United States. Ideas of Africa is the third exhibition organised at The Museum of Modern Art in celebration of the 2019 gift of modern and contemporary African art from prolific collector Jean Pigozzi. The exhibition features core works from this gift, alongside a selection of recent acquisitions and key loans.

Text from The Museum of Modern Art website

Air Afrique
Balafon No. 1
1964
Magazine, softcover
10 5/8 x 8 1/4″ (27 x 21cm)
Air Afrique Collective, courtesy of Lamine Diaoune,
Ahmadou-Bamba Thiam, Djiby Kebe, Jeremy Konko

From 1961 to 2002, Air Afrique served as the official transnational carrier for francophone West and Central Africa, providing regular jet service throughout the continent and internationally. The airline was also deeply committed to the production of Pan-African arts and culture. It funded vinyl records, published books on African history, and produced the in-flight magazine Balafon, which reported on events across Africa and beyond. Twenty years after the airline shuttered, a Paris-based artist collective formed to revitalise the spirit of Air Afrique through design collaborations, film programs, and a magazine. Their collection of archival ephemera, on view here, comprises gifts and purchases from former Air Afrique staff.

Inspired by the international activities of Air Afrique, both past and present, this reading table presents issues of the airline’s in-flight magazine, Balafon, one of which features a portrait of the Malian photographer Malick Sidibé on its cover. This table also includes a selection of photobooks, catalogues, and scholarly publications, celebrating the circulation of images and ideas in Africa during the decolonial era. These books are additionally available to browse within the gallery, offering further directions for reading, thinking, dreaming, and imagining.

Gallery label from Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination, 2025

Air Afrique
Balafon No. 3
1965
Magazine, softcover
10 5/8 x 8 1/4″ (27 x 21cm)
Air Afrique Collective, courtesy of Lamine Diaoune,
Ahmadou-Bamba Thiam, Djiby Kebe, Jeremy Konko

Installation view of the exhibition Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, December 2025 – July 2026 showing at right two Untitled photographs from the series African Spirits (2008, below) by Samuel Fosso (French and Central African born Cameroon, b. 1962)

Samuel Fosso (French and Central African born Cameroon, b. 1962)
Untitled from the series African Spirits
2008
Gelatin silver print
64 1/8 x 48 1/16″ (162.8 x 122cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Family of Man Fund

Installation view of the exhibition Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, December 2025 – July 2026 showing at left photographs by Seydou Keïta (Malian, 1923-2001); and at right, two Untitled photographs from the series African Spirits (2008, below) by Samuel Fosso (French and Central African born Cameroon, b. 1962)

Artist, Silvia Rosi: African Spirit is a series of self-portraits where Fosso transforms himself into key figures of the Pan-African liberation movement of the 1960s and 70s.

I’m Silvia Rosi. I’m an artist working with photography and moving image.

Samuel Fosso started his career taking portraits of people in the studio, where there was always this act of constructing identities through props, poses, and the photographer’s imagination. At the end of each workday, Fosso would turn the camera toward himself.

In this series, he recreates these iconic photographs, taking on the faces of Angela Davis, of Martin Luther King, while at the same time remaining himself. For me, there’s this sense of recognition but also his own presence makes us question what it means to embody these figures.

The lighting and the poses and the composition echo this studio portrait tradition, but there’s always an element of theatricality that keeps you aware of the labor of becoming someone else. He neutralises the scene, removing the backdrop, and we’re forced to look at the subject that we have in front.

Turning the camera inwards can be really revolutionary. I think that’s something that deeply resonates with me, this idea of being in charge of my own representation and giving yourself complexity through images.

Text from the MoMA website

Installation view of the exhibition Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, December 2025 – July 2026 showing five Untitled photographs from the series African Spirits (2008) by Samuel Fosso (French and Central African born Cameroon, b. 1962)

The Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination showcases how photographic portraits fuel ideas of Pan-African subjectivity and solidarity. On view from December 14, 2025, through July 25, 2026, the exhibition considers the transatlantic call and response that constructed Africa as a political idea, due to the “winds of decolonial change” that swept the African continent in tandem with the Civil Rights movement in the United States. Ideas of Africa is the third exhibition organised at The Museum of Modern Art in celebration of the 2019 gift of modern and contemporary African art from prolific collector Jean Pigozzi. The exhibition features core works from this gift, alongside a selection of recent acquisitions and key loans. Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination is organised by Oluremi C. Onabanjo, The Peter Schub Curator, with the assistance of Chiara M. Mannarino, Curatorial Assistant, The Robert B. Menschel Department of Photography.

Conceptually influenced by The Idea of Africa, a landmark publication by the late philosopher V. Y. Mudimbe (1941-2025), the exhibition brings together works by 20th-century photographers such as Seydou Keïta, Malick Sidibé, Jean Depara, Sanlé Sory, and Ambroise Ngaimoko, who worked across key urban centers in West and Central Africa during the “golden age of African portraiture.” Images by James Barnor and Kwame Brathwaite illuminate Pan-African modes of image-making across the African diaspora. Works by contemporary artists of African descent, including Samuel Fosso, Silvia Rosi, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby, alongside ephemera selected from the archive of the artist collective Air Afrique, embody the physical circulation of these ideas across space and time.

“As we continue to witness transformative shifts in the global geopolitical order, it is instructive to revisit a moment in history that saw the disintegration of colonial territories and the formation of transnational solidarity across the African continent and diaspora. This exhibition locates dazzling modes of Pan-African possibility in images made by inventive photographers who registered and beckoned in new worlds,” says Oluremi C. Onabanjo.

Ideas of Africa features a reading room as a tribute to the aspirations of knowledge production and the proliferation of the photographic image in print media during the decolonial era. In the reading room, visitors can access a selection of historical and contemporary photobooks and publications.

On the occasion of the exhibition, MoMA is publishing a richly illustrated catalogue featuring a lead essay by Oluremi C. Onabanjo, contributions by poet Momtaza Mehri and film programmer Yasmina Price, and reproductions of key texts by Brent Hayes Edwards and V. Y. Mudimbe. 140 pages, 105 color illustrations. Hardcover, $50. ISBN: 978-1-63345-171-1.

Press release from The Museum of Modern Art

Installation view of the exhibition Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, December 2025 – July 2026 showing at left, Malick Sidibé Nuit de Noël (Happy Club) [Christmas Eve] (1963, below); and at second left, Malick Sidibé Regardez-Moi [Look at Me!] (1962, below)

Malick Sidibé (Malian, 1936-2016)
Nuit de Noël (Happy Club) [Christmas Eve]
1963 (printed January 2006)
Gelatin silver print
Image: 39 x 39″ (99 x 99.1cm)
Sheet: 47 1/4 x 47 1/4″ (120 x 120cm)
Frame: 53 9/16 x 53 9/16″ (136 x 136cm)
Courtesy The Walther Collection, New York / Neu-Ulm

Malick Sidibé (Malian, 1936-2016)
Regardez-Moi [Look at Me!]
1962 (printed January 2006)
Gelatin silver print
Image: 39 3/8 x 39″ (100 x 99cm)
Sheet: 47 1/4 x 47 1/4″ (120 x 120cm)
Frame: 52 3/16 x 52 3/16 x 1″ (132.5 x 132.5 x 2.5cm)
Courtesy The Walther Collection, New York / Neu-Ulm

Malick Sidibé (Malian, 1936–2016)
Boxeur (Boxer)
1966
Gelatin silver print
Image: 16 15/16 x 16 15/16″ (43 x 43 cm)
Frame: 27 9/16 x 27 9/16 x 9/16″ (70 x 70 x 1.5cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection

For Sidibé, the roving “eye of Bamako,” the city was his studio. Active during the 1960s and ’70s, Sidibé shot on 35mm film and often printed proofs of the exposures he took at weekend parties. He arranged them sequentially on pastel cardstock and displayed them at his studio so that clients might purchase souvenirs of their exploits. Sidibé’s images of youth culture emphatically pushed back against Mali’s normative state attitudes and expectations of decorum. Revelling in effusive gestures and strong poses, he deftly photographed a community full of elegance, style, and sensational flair that staked its claim on a connection to a global African Diaspora.

Gallery label from Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination, 2025

Malick Sidibé (Malian, 1936-2016)
Nuit du 10 octobre 1970 (Night of October 10, 1970)
1970
Twenty-two gelatin silver prints mounted on paper
12 3/4 x 19 3/4″ (32.4 x 50.2cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Judith and Wm. Brian Little Fund

Malick Sidibé (Malian, 1936-2016)
Untitled
July 28, 1973
Twenty-four gelatin silver prints mounted on paper
12 3/4 x 19 3/4″ (32.4 x 50.2cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Judith and Wm. Brian Little Fund

“This wind of change blowing through Africa … is no ordinary wind,” wrote Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, in 1963. “It is a raging hurricane against which the old order cannot stand.” In the 1960s, independence movements swept across the African continent, resulting in the disintegration of colonial territories. These transformative struggles coincided with an exhilarating campaign for civil rights in the United States, forging a transatlantic call-and-response that established “Africa” as a political idea.

Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination examines the role of portrait photography within this emerging sense of Pan-Africanism. It unites portraits by mid-century photographers from across West and Central Africa and works by contemporary artists of African descent, illuminating different modes of image making and forms of transnational solidarity. As the art historian Kobena Mercer has argued, “‘Africa’ has never been a static entity, confined to the boundaries of geography, but has always had a diasporic dimension.” Embedded within the exhibition is a reading room featuring a selection of photobooks, alongside archival ephemera from the Paris-based collective Air Afrique. Following in the wake of the eponymous international airline, the group has continued the circulation of Pan-African culture and ideas into the present day.

Conceptually influenced by the late philosopher V. Y. Mudimbe’s book The Idea of Africa (1994), in which he exposes Western views of Africa as politicised constructions, this exhibition demonstrates how African photographers grappled with Africa as a political idea in their own ways. Presenting subjects for whom the personal was undeniably political, their images assert photography’s unique potential to creatively reflect our surroundings and beckon new worlds. At a time when profound shifts are once again transforming the global geopolitical order, Ideas of Africa attests to the enduring relevance of these themes.

Gallery text from Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination, 2025

Installation view of the exhibition Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, December 2025 – July 2026 showing at left the work of Silvia Rosi (below); and at right, Njideka Akunyili Crosby And We Begin to Let Go (2013, below)

Silvia Rosi (Togolese and Italian, b. 1992)
Disintegrata di profilo (Disintegrated in Profile)
2024
Inkjet print
31 1/2 x 31 1/2″ (80 x 80cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Carl Jacobs Fund

Rosi has said, “I’m not just performing, but reflecting on history.” Through photographic self-portraits, the artist examines personal, familial, and national narratives of migration, memory, and belonging. Deeply informed by the history of West African studio portraiture, Rosi’s images elegantly synthesise the formal strategies of mid-century African photographers, including many of those represented in this exhibition. Rosi often reenacts moments from her family’s past. Disintegrated Waiting, for instance, recalls when her mother first arrived in Italy from Togo. “She once said, ‘I used to be integrated, now I’m disintegrated,'” the artist shared. “To me this phrase is … an expression of the experience of diaspora.”

Gallery label from Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination, 2025

Silvia Rosi (Togolese and Italian, b. 1992)
Sposa italiana disintegrata (Disintegrated Italian Wife)
2024
Inkjet print
31 1/2 x 31 1/2″ (80 x 80cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Carl Jacobs Fund

Njideka Akunyili Crosby (Nigerian, born 1983)
And We Begin to Let Go
2013
Acrylic, acetone transfers, charcoal, pastel, marble dust, and
collage on paper
Sheet: 84 x 105″ (213.4 x 266.7cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Promised gift of Jerry I. Speyer and Katherine Farley

Nigerian-born, Los Angeles-based artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby moved to the US at the age of 17 (after winning the green card lottery in her home town) to train as a painter at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and, later, Yale University. Here, as in many of her portraits, Crosby gives an intimate portrayal of her interracial marriage and day-to-day life in America. She combines photo-transfer processes with painting and collaged fabrics, fusing Nigerian and American materials, images, and cultural traditions.

In her practice, Akunyili Crosby meditates on familial life within a transcultural context. Her large-scale compositions of everyday domestic scenes synthesise drawing, painting, printmaking, and photography. And We Begin to Let Go depicts the artist and her husband, who leans over her shoulder. To make it, Akunyili Crosby drew from Nigerian print media publications and her family’s photographic archive. She united these images’ varied photographic textures through the same formal treatment: acetone transfer, a printmaking technique through which a printed image is transferred onto another surface using an acetone solvent. Images of smiling faces, elaborate coifs, and patterned clothing suffuse the picture plane, accruing on the surfaces this marital encounter.

Gallery label from Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination, 2025

Installation view of the exhibition Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, December 2025 – July 2026 showing at left, Njideka Akunyili Crosby And We Begin to Let Go (2013, above); and at centre, Kwame Brathwaite Untitled (Sikolo with Carolee Prince Designs) (1964-1968, below)

Kwame Brathwaite (American, 1938-2023)
Untitled (Sikolo with Carolee Prince Designs)
1964-1968
Inkjet print, printed 2024
30 x 30″ (76.2 x 76.2cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Committee on Photography Fund

Brathwaite, for whom photography functioned at the nexus of Black artistic, political, and cultural expression, rhythmically documented jazz scenes in Harlem and the Bronx. In 1956 he cofounded the African Jazz-Art Society and Studios (AJASS) in the South Bronx, where he made structured portraits of the Grandassa Models, a group of women who were part of the Black Is Beautiful movement of the 1960s and ’70s. “Black Is Beautiful was my directive … It was a time when people were protesting injustices related to race, class, and human rights around the globe,” Brathwaite said. “I focused on perfecting my craft so that I could use my gift to inspire thought, relay ideas, and tell stories of our struggle, our work, our liberation. … Oppression still exists today, and we must keep fighting, keep on pushing until we are free.”

Gallery label from Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination, 2025

Kwame Brathwaite (American, 1938-2023)
Untitled (Nomsa with Earrings)
1964-1968
Inkjet print, printed 2024
15 x 15″ (38.1 x 38.1cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Committee on Photography Fund

Felix Akinniran Olunloyo (Nigerian)
Untitled
c. 1950-1970
Gelatin silver print
5 1/2 x 3 9/16″ (13.9 x 9cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection. Gift of Jean Pigozzi

Oumar Ka (Senegalese, 1930-2020)
Untitled (Two Women with Thatched Roof House)
1959-1968
Gelatin silver print, printed 2024
17 × 17″ (43.2 × 43.2 cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of Bernard Lumpkin and Carmine Boccuzzi in honor of Darren Walker

Historian, Giulia Paoletti: Getting a portrait done was a serious business, because this single portrait would circulate and stand for this person.

My name is Giulia Paoletti, and I am a researcher on photography and modern art in Africa.

In 1959, Oumar Ka met a photographer who gave him a camera, so he learned by himself. Photography in Senegal was extremely popular. Dozens and dozens of studios existed. But he started going from village to village taking portraits, and then he would go home, develop the negatives, and return the following week with the prints. So, you meet his sitters by their own home, in towns, sometimes in this open landscape. And that is a major distinction from other photographers who worked in a studio.

In this photograph, we see two young women in matching outfits, posing for the camera against a white backdrop attached to this thatched-roof house. The landscape, the architecture, the sky – this is part of who they are and how they want to be perceived. They’re young, they’re serious, they’re confident.

As Senegal is shifting from a colonised place to an independent country, these are sitters that are making visible their experience of modernisation, which looked very different from the experience if someone lived in the capital city. There is often this tendency to flatten what is African modernity, and instead it’s important to show the variety of experiences and subjects at the time.

Text from the MoMA website

Sanlé Sory (Burkinabé, b. 1943)
L’Intellectuel (The Intellectual)
1970-85
Gelatin silver print
8 1/8 x 8 1/8″ (20.6 x 20.6cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Committee on Photography Fund

“Everyone chooses what they want in photography,” Sory once said. First opening his studio, Volta Photo, in Bobo-Dioulasso, Upper Volta (present-day Burkina Faso), in 1960, Sory organised bals poussières (or “dust balls,” named after the dirt clouds that dancers kicked up) in the fields of the nearby Kou Valley. The sound of his Multiblitz flash accompanied the percussion at parties, setting an elusive tone for his reportage de nuit (nighttime journalism). At Volta Photo, Sory’s portraits made possible a particular process of being and becoming for his sitters. He reflected the ideas that they wanted to communicate – whether to friends, lovers, strangers, or themselves.

Gallery label from Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination, 2025

Sanlé Sory (Burkinabé, b. 1943)
Le Voyageur (The Traveller)
1970-1985
Gelatin silver print
8 1/8 x 8 1/8″ (20.6 x 20.6cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Committee on Photography Fund

Historian, Antawan I. Byrd: One of the fundamental principles of studio portraiture, especially as it developed in West Africa, is that the studio becomes a kind of imaginative enterprise. You can go and be who you are, or you can go and be who you want to be.

Hello, I’m Antawan I. Byrd. I am a curator, and my research focuses on photography in West Africa during the mid-20th century.

Sanlé Sory opened up his own photography studio in Bobo-Dioulasso, one of the major cities in present-day Burkina Faso. This is a time right after independence, in 1960, and so there is this sense of optimism and hope about the sovereign nation.

Sory once remarked, “Fun is central to my work.” I think he’s speaking about the dynamics of collaboration. Oftentimes, clients would line up outside of the studio, and Sory would have a sort of menu that they can choose from. They could point and say, “Sory, I’d like this portrait here, and I’d like to pose with that prop there.”

Here we’re looking at six portraits, and they’re assuming different personalities. There’s one figure who appears as the intellectual, reading a newspaper. Another figure standing powerfully with his hands in the air as if he’s a boxer. There’s another wielding a Air Afrique briefcase, suggesting that he is a traveller.

When we think about the studio as a kind of imaginative space, it’s possible that the figure with the briefcase has just come back from a trip. But it’s entirely possible that he’s never left Bobo-Dioulasso at all, and holding that briefcase is a way to signal his ambition to travel.

Text from the MoMA website

J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere (Nigerian, 1930-2014)
Brush Eko Bridge
1973
Two gelatin silver prints
Each 11 x 8″ (27.9 x 20.3cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Family of Man Fund

In 1968 Ojeikere embarked on a monumental project to document the myriad hairstyles worn by women across a newly independent Nigeria. Over the next seven years, he amassed more than one thousand photographs. Together, these rigorously composed images form a portrait of a nation undergoing social and physical transformation – with feminine beauty standards providing the ultimate symbol. In Brush Eko Bridge, clean lines appear across a woman’s carefully parted scalp, her hair threaded to sculptural effect. In profile her hairdo evokes the highways and architectural developments that were then populating the Lagos skyline.

Gallery label from Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination, 2025

Historian, Antawan I. Byrd: The hairstyles project is often described as Ojeikere’s most ambitious body of work, and it’s a body of work that he pursued over nearly half a century.

My name’s Antawan Byrd. I’m an art historian and curator based in Chicago.

J. D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere evolved as a photographer alongside major political shifts in Nigerian history. 1960 is when the country attains independence from British rule. Ojeikere began to attend many of the festivals that were celebrating traditional culture. Hair design was coming back into fashion after a long period of being regarded as retrograde by the colonial government. It was at one of those festivals that he began to make his earliest images of Nigerian hairstyles.

He was so fascinated by the nuances of the designs as you encounter them from different angles. Some of the hair designs are straightforward cornrow styles, whereas others are realised through the use of thread that’s been wrapped around strands of hair.

Many of the hair designs carry references to contemporary bridges and buildings in terms of their architectural design. That’s in part because after independence, the nation is being built, the skyline is being built, the hairstyles are being built. And so I think for Ojeikere, he was conscious of the multiplicity of changes that were happening. It’s simultaneously about hair and the tradition of hair, and yet it’s also about architecture and commerce and trade.

Text from the MoMA website

James Barnor (Ghanaian, born 1929)
Ever Young Studio, Accra
c. 1954-1959
Gelatin silver print, printed 2018-20
9 1/2 x 9 1/2″ (24.1 x 24.1cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired through the generosity of Heidi and Richard Rieger

Artist, James Barnor: Everything that happened in Accra passed through my street, and I call myself Lucky Jim. Anything that was happening, I was there.

I’m James Barnor. I was born on the 6th of June 1929. I had witnessed photography from a very small age because my mother’s brother was a professional photographer. My cousin was practicing in Accra, in Ghana. Because it was in the family, I must have thought, “Ah, this is something I could do in the future.”

Portraiture was number one. People are more important than places. I love people. ’53, I got a studio and I called it Ever Young. I thought about making people young, or even [laughs] better than they were before.

My sister was a nurse, and so I knew some nurses, and Evelyn was at the nursing training college. This is a portrait that I took of her. I had so many different backgrounds. And this was actually drawn on the wall. This is a sky. You can see the clouds. When I look at the different tones, from the white highlight to the black of the hair, it’s so very nice. This is a picture that I like very much.

I’m lucky to be alive and to be telling the story about my work. The inspiration that people get from my work will carry on and inspire others to develop their own way. The future is going to be grander because of photography.

Text from the MoMA website

James Barnor (Ghanaian, b. 1929)
Portrait of Evelyn Abbew, Ever Young Studio, Accra
c. 1954-1959
Gelatin silver print, printed 2018-2020
9 1/2 x 9 1/2″ (24.1 x 24.1cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired through the generosity of Ruth Nordenbrook

Jean Depara (Congolese born Angola, 1928-1997)
Un Jazzeur (Jazzman)
1960
Gelatin silver print, printed later
23 x 19″ (58.4 x 48.3cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection. Gift of Jean Pigozzi

Historian, Sandrine Colard: Depara’s images, when you look at them, you see mostly people partying at nighttime or in his studio. So you don’t directly see people articulating a political discourse, but their bodies are.

My name is Sandrine Colard, and I’m a historian of African art and photography.

Jean Depara was living in Léopoldville, which will become Kinshasa. It was the capital of the Belgian Congo, seen as a very modern city for Africa at that time.

This is a portrait of a Black man in a suit and tie. The way the arms of this man are folded upon themselves – he’s touching himself in a delicate way. Under a colonial system, Black men are seen as a workforce. Your body is to be put into service of colonial power, and so the very fact of dressing up, this delicate relationship to his own body – for pleasure, enjoyment, beauty – is just something that’s radically opposing the construction of Black masculinity in the colonial Congo.

The fact that it’s also entitled Jazzeur makes a connection with music. Jazz is a diasporic language throughout the world, and a musician is definitely not someone who is enlisted into the colonial economy. All of that together, I would say, is really a sort of different portrait being constructed for Congolese masculinity at that time.

Text from the MoMA website

Jean Depara (Congolese, born Angola, 1928-1997)
Una Moziki
c. 1960
Gelatin silver print, printed later
23 x 19″ (58.4 x 48.3cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection. Gift of Jean Pigozzi

Jean Depara (Congolese, born Angola, 1928-1997)
Le Progrès (The Progress)
1975
Gelatin silver print, printed later
15 3/4 x 11 13/16″ (40 x 30cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection. Gift of Jean Pigozzi

Seydou Keïta (Malian, 1923-2001)
Untitled
1954
Gelatin silver print, printed later
46 15/16 x 65 7/8″ (119.2 x 167.3cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection. Gift of Jean Pigozzi

Introduction

Curator, Oluremi C. Onabanjo: I’m Oluremi Onabanjo. I’m the Peter Schub Curator of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art.

This exhibition includes some of the most iconic image-makers working across cities in West and Central Africa, at a moment when the continent was transitioning from European colonial powers to independent nations run by Africans themselves. Within this context, people are really interested in what it means to be themselves. What are the dreams you have, the places you want to go? How do you see yourself? Photographic portraits are the perfect way to wrestle with these questions.

And that’s important for understanding the great Seydou Keïta, who was working in Bamako, in French Sudan, but which became, in 1960, an independent Mali. People who came to Keïta’s studio were interested in being seen as connected to a cosmopolitan world. Keïta was extremely proud of making people look beautiful. He used sunlight for all of his photographs. He had a number of props – watches, radios, rings – to gesture to their investment in this global imaginary that they are constructing with Keïta.

With this exhibition, I encourage you to really think about how a portrait is made. These are deliberately constructed compositions, and when we are attentive to those moves, we might see things anew.

Text from the MoMA website

Seydou Keïta (Malian, 1923-2001)
Untitled (Bamako)
1956-1957
Gelatin silver print, printed 1997
15 9/16 x 22 1/8″ (39.5 x 56.2cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Family of Man Fund

Seydou Keïta (Malian, 1923-2001)
Untitled
1956
Modern gelatin silver print
Image: 22 3/8 x 15 11/16″ (56.8 x 39.8cm)
Frame: 30 3/16 x 23 7/16″ (76.7 x 59.6cm)
Sheet: 23 7/8 x 19 15/16″ (60.7 x 50.7cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection

Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination catalogue cover

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Exhibition: ‘August Sander’s People of the 20th Century’ at the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, Part 2

“I feel the heavy weight of history permeating Sander’s almost melancholy portraits, portraits that emanate from a generations long uncertain cultural landscape.” Dr Marcus Bunyan

Exhibition dates: 27th February - 28th June, 2026

Curator: Judy Ditner, the Richard Benson Curator of Photography and Digital Media

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Painter [Heinrich Hoerle]
1928, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 7/8 in. (25.9 x 20cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

Heinrich Hoerle (1 September 1895 – 7 July 1936) was a German constructivist artist of the New Objectivity movement.

Generations

There have been so many words written about one of the most important photographers of the 20th century, August Sander (German, 1876-1964), his magnum opus People of the 20th Century (Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts) (1892-1954) – which consists of over 600 photographs organised into seven categories and 49 portfolios – and his influence on social realist photographers such as Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, and the later typologies of conceptual photographers such as Bernd and Hiller Becher … what else is there left to say?

We know of his use of an “old fashioned” large-format camera, tripod, glass negatives and long exposure times used for the crispness and detail obtainable in the final print. We observe the many scenarios in which Sander took his photographs, from staged studio portraits, to seemingly impromptu photographs “on the road”, from closely cropped portraits, to medium distance group photos, to group photographs out in the Westwald or the Eifel or basket weavers embedded in the landscape. From low depth of field to high depth of field. From seriously “dead pan” to romantically engaged. We know of the influence of New Objectivity (known in German as Neue Sachlichkeit) on his frontal, unsentimental, realist portraits – his fascinating cast of personages, characters modulating the personal into universal typologies: the farmer, the skilled tradesman, the woman, the artists, etc… character templates that picture archetypes in German history.

All this is known and given. What else can be said?

Personally I feel the heavy weight of history permeating Sander’s almost melancholy portraits, portraits that emanate from a generations long uncertain cultural landscape:

~ The photographs from 1912-1913 in the first posting on this exhibition, such as Farmer Couple – Propriety and Harmony (1912, printed c. 1990-1999), Country Band (1913, printed c. 1990-1999), Country Lads from the Westerwald (1912, printed c. 1990-1999), and Farm Children (c. 1913, printed c. 1990-1999) emerge from a society facing “significant social and political unrest prior to World War I, driven by rigid class hierarchies, rapid industrialisation, and a growing labour movement. The landed aristocracy held significant political power, which bred resentment among the working and middle classes.”

In these four photographs by Sander we have an elderly farmer couple of propriety and harmony facing the prospect of old age and experiencing severe, devastating food shortages during World War I as conscription of agricultural workers and the requisitioning of draft horses for the Imperial German Army paralysed domestic food production, poor harvests and harsh winters further eroding the civilian diet, and inflation making even basic items unaffordable for many (the government taking away or strictly controlling the food produced by farmers during the war) – while the young men in the country band and country lads from the Westerwald would have become machine gun fodder on the fields of Europe.

The children would have had to live through this. The Burgfrieden (civil truce) which had brought political unity and the cessation of strikes at the beginning of the war fell apart during it.1 Revolution in 1918 led to “the downfall of the House of Hohenzollern, the dissolution of the German army, and the demise of the old German social order.”2 General Erich Ludendorff, defacto military commander resigned in October 1918; Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated in November 1918; Prince Max of Baden Chancellor of Germany resigned in November 1918; and King Ludwig III of Bavaria was overthrown in November 1918. Shootings and murders were the order of the day in Berlin.

“In November 1918 … the old regime of Kaiser Wilhelm II was swept away by a revolution. It ended the First World War and led to the establishment of democracy in Germany. The Weimar Republic was born out of the struggle for a new social order and political system.”3

Tumultuous times.

From the outset the new Weimar Republic was always under pressure as the cabaret of cultural life continued its unstable rollercoaster of protests, strikes, murders and social and political upheaval during the interwar years.

“During the interwar years, Germany experienced frequent, deadly street battles between communists and right-wing groups, which bordered on low-intensity civil war:

~ Following World War I, communist uprisings – such as the 1919 Spartacist Uprising in Berlin – were brutally suppressed by far-right volunteer paramilitaries known as the Freikorps.

~ Both sides formed official, heavily armed paramilitary wings. The Communist Party (KPD) utilised the Red Front Fighters’ League (Roter Frontkämpferbund or RFB). Their primary right-wing antagonists were the Nazi Party’s Stormtroopers (Sturmabteilung or SA), alongside the nationalist Stahlhelm and the Social Democratic Reichsbanner.

~ Violence peaked as the Weimar Republic collapsed. Nazi paramilitaries regularly marched directly into working-class, communist strongholds (such as the Wedding and Neukölln districts in Berlin) to intentionally spark brawls. Clashes escalated from brawls to armed gunfire, claiming hundreds of lives on both sides.” (multiple sources)

The great Wall Street Crash of 1929 ramped up the instability, causing severe economic depression in Germany and rampant inflation. “Millions of Germans faced severe hunger and malnutrition because the economic collapse left them without the income to buy food.” This was the era of political violence in Germany (1918-1933) before the fall of the Weimar Republic (1930-1933) when the expansive creativity of artists, the small, hard won civil liberties and the sense of liberal freedom were all swept away by the Nazis in the 1930s.

Tumultuous times.

NOW

You look at the photographs by Sander of human beings from the interwar years and you overlay this knowledge onto them and a kind of melancholy realism descends on you as you appreciate the import of historic events that they were caught up in, the maelstrom, malevolence and disaster of the Second World War that was quickly approaching.

I think of the farm children photographed in 1913 – in 1939 they will be in their thirties and will, most likely, be serving in the German armed forces during the second conflagration. I look at the Peddler (1930, printed c. 1990-1999 below) and the Itinerant Mason (c. 1927, printed c. 1990-1999) and wonder what they did during the war and whether they survived it. I flinch looking at the “Aryan” doppelgängers in Farmers Playing Cards (c. 1920, printed c. 1990-1999) as I imagine them in SS uniforms. And I look at the men in Workers’ Council from the Ruhr Region (1929, printed c. 1990-1999 below) and wonder whether they were later pressed into the army or, perhaps, the Volkssturm (national militia) at the end of the Second World War made up of the young, the injured, the old, to defend the Fatherland from the Russians. To refuse the call invited execution.

I wonder about the Country Girls, Westerwald (1925, printed c. 1990-1999) and how many babies they produced for the Reich and what medals they received. I think about the black man in Circus Performers (1926-1932, printed c. 1990-1999). I think about the persecuted, the Jews and the political prisoners including Sander’s son Political Prisoner [Erich Sander] (1941-1944, printed c. 1990-1999 below) “who was a member of the left wing Socialist Workers’ Party (SAP), was arrested by Nazis in 1934 and sentenced to 10 years in prison, where he died of an untreated ruptured appendix in 1944” (Wikipedia) because the guards couldn’t care less … and I imagine the pain and heartache that his father August went through at the time, loosing his eldest son.

I gaze at the faces of The Last People, the stare of an Inmate of an Asylum (1926-1930, printed c. 1990-1999) and the faces of Blind Children (c. 1930, printed c. 1990-1999) and wonder whether they were all killed as part of the Nazis euthanasia program (code-named Aktion T4) “which was a systematic campaign of mass murder that targeted institutionalised people with physical and intellectual disabilities in Germany and annexed territories (between 1939-1945).”4

A tear rolls down my cheek.

And then you think of the persecution of Sander himself, the destruction in 1936 of all the publishers copies of his first book Face of Our Time (Antlitz der Zeit), published in 1929, the destruction of the printing plates and the confiscation of his negatives – because the portrayal of all strata of German society did not fit with right wing eugenics and defied the regime’s rigid ideology of the “master race”.

Finally, I think of the courage of Sander to keep on photographing, to keep on recording his people of the 20th century no matter who they were, no matter the peril he was in. What else could he do? Give in to oppression? To survive the vicissitudes of the Second World War only then to loose 25,000 to 30,000 of his negatives, part of his life’s work, destroyed in an accidental basement fire in Cologne in 1946.

AND NOBODY SAYS ANY OF THIS.

But in his photographs we can see and feel how …

“The faces of those he photographed show traces of this collective historical experience.”

Through the generations.

As I observed in a 2013 paper Transgressive Topographies, Subversive Photographies, Cultural Policies, “Photography has always opened up to artists the possibility of offering the viewer images open to interpretation, where the constructed personal narratives of the viewer are mediated through mappings of identity, body and place that challenge how the viewer sees the world and the belief systems that sustain that view.”5

Thus, we are trans/fixed (trans, derived from Latin, “trans-” means to go across, beyond, or through) by the photographs of August Sander, for in understanding their history and their gestures (the hands of the blind children, the outstretched arm of the farmer sowing), their behaviour, social interactions, and psychological tension6 we may go beyond the here and now, transcending a belief system that sustains a limited world view, embracing identities that are constantly shifting and evolving. In this way, Sander’s photographs change human consciousness.

They undermine Volksgemeinschaft, a German term translating to “people’s community” or “national community”,7 a central ideological concept in Nazi Germany used to describe a supposedly classless, racially unified society where the interests of the individual were strictly subordinated to the needs of the nation … for within the archetype there is always the individual, choice, difference, freedom of expression, freedom to say no. Enough. No matter what the cost.

Through individual and archetype, gesture and pose, Sander’s art becomes impervious to time, a guiding light for generations.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

For more information on August Sander please see my text A portent of things to come… on ‘Germany / 1920s / New Objectivity / August Sander’, August 7, 2022. See Part 1 of the posting on this exhibition.

Footnotes

1/ “The right saw the Burgfrieden as a sign of support for the authoritarian state while the left expected their sacrifices to be rewarded by social changes after the end of the war.”

Anonymous. “Burgfriedenspolitik,” on the Wikipedia website Nd [Oline] Cited 18/06/2026

2/ Harry Graf Kessler, diary entry from November 9, 1918

3/ Text from the catalogue to the exhibition Berlin in the revolution 1918/19. Verlag Kettler, Kunstbibliothek Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2018

4/ Anonymous. “Aktion T4,” on the Wikipedia website Nd [Oline] Cited 18/06/2026

5/ Marcus Bunyan. “Transgressive Topographies, Subversive Photographies, Cultural Policies,” on the Art Blart website, October 2013 [Oline] Cited 16/06/2026

6/ “Identity however is constantly evolving, shifting, and even fragmenting, while gesture signals shifts in human consciousness, behaviour, social interactions, and psychological tension.”

Associate Professor James McArdle. “Entwine,” on the On This Date in Photography website 15/06/2026 [Online] Cited 16/02/2026

7/ “A central concept in Nazi ideology, “Volksgemeinschaft” (community of the People) was the name given to the fictional notion of a classless community of all “racially pure” Germans as a unified people, supposedly bound together by blood and culture as well as common experiences and beliefs. The idea of the “Volksgemeinschaft” was intended to evoke a strong identification of the majority of Germans with the Nazi regime and to promote their sense of obedience. Central was the exclusion of certain groups, such as Jews, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, political opponents and people persecuted for being “antisocial”. They were all labelled as “aliens to the community”. Many were arrested and deported to concentration or death camps.”

Anonymous. “Volksgemeinschaft / Lit. Community of the People,” on the Bildungsportal Ns-Zwangsarbeit website Nd [Online] Cited 18/06/2026

Many thankx to the Yale University Art Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. All photographs were printed by Gerd Sander (German, 1940-2021). Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. See Part 1 of the posting.

“The stark reminder that there was a person behind the lens, who suffered loss along with so many during that time, only makes People of the 20th Century more remarkable in its monumental intimacy. Each image is its own stunning portrait. Cumulatively, they have the power to leave the viewer in a daze, awestruck at the way someone with a clear eye and a loudly beating heart could show us how to connect with people from three generations ago…”

Brian Slattery. “Photographer Gives Everyone Their Dignity,” on the Midbrow website 30 March, 2026 [Online] Cited 03/06/2026

“Seen together, Sander’s images form a pictorial mosaic of inter-war Germany. Rapid social change and newfound freedom were accompanied by financial insecurity and social and political unrest. By photographing the citizens of the Weimar Republic – from the artistic, bohemian elite to the Nazis and those they persecuted – Sander’s photographs tell of an uncertain cultural landscape. It is a world characterized by explosions of creativity, hyperinflation and political turmoil. The faces of those he photographed show traces of this collective historical experience.

Anonymous. “Five things to know: August Sander,” on the Tate website Nd [Online] Cited 18/06/2026

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Painter [Marta Hegemann]
c. 1925, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/8 x 7 11/16 in. (25.7 x 19.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

Marta Hegemann (14 February 1894 – 28 January 1970) was a German artist associated with the Dada movement and with the Cologne Progressives.

Cologne Progressives

The Cologne Progressives was an art movement and were an informal group of artists based in the Cologne and Düsseldorf area of Germany. They came together following the First World War and participated in the radical workers’ movement.

History

The group was founded by Gerd Arntz, Heinrich Hoerle and Franz Wilhelm Seiwert. The group related their attitude to art to their political activism. As Wieland Schmied put it, they “sought to combine constructivism and objectivity, geometry and object, the general and the particular, avant-garde conviction and political engagement, and which perhaps approximated most to the forward looking of New Objectivity […] “. They originated Figurative Constructivism.

Other artists and designers associated with this group include Wilhelm Kleinert, Marta Hegemann, Angelika Hoerle, Anton Räderscheidt, and Gottfried Brockmann. Many members had come from the Stupid (art movement).

Key concepts – Reversibility

This concept comes from their concern not merely to communicate social and political necessities, but also to ensure that their artworks could be turned toward the viewers sensible reality and become tenable as an argument. This is tied to their political commitment to proletarian culture in the specific context of the Rhineland during the tumults of the 1920s.

Text from the Wikipedia website

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Painter [Willi Bongard]
1922-1925, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 1/2 in. (25.5 x 19cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Paper Manufacturer and His Wife
1932, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 15/16 × 7 11/16 in. (25.3 × 19.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Peddler
1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 5/16 in. (25.8 x 18.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Philosopher [Max Scheler]
c. 1925, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 5/16 in. (25.8 x 18.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

Max Ferdinand Scheler (German: [ˈʃeːlɐ]; 22 August 1874 – 19 May 1928) was a German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. Considered in his lifetime one of the most prominent German philosophers, Scheler developed the philosophical method of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology.

The German photographer August Sander (1876-1964) is one of the most significant and influential photographers of the 20th century. This exhibition presents Sander’s ambitious and groundbreaking portrait series Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (People of the 20th Century) (1892-1954), a canonical work in the history of photography. The presentation – of over 600 prints from the series – represents the most comprehensive installation of his life’s work.

For this monumental archive of modern humanity, Sander photographed German citizens from all classes and backgrounds, organising them into categories such as “The Skilled Tradesman,” “The Farmer,” “The Artist,” and “The Woman.” Sander conceived of the project in the 1920s, during the Weimar Republic, but included in it photographs he had made as early as 1892. His portrayal of marginalised individuals, including people with disabilities and the unemployed, provided visibility to those often excluded from mainstream representations and drew the ire of the Nazis. Striking for their unflinching realism and skilful observations of character, his images reflect the changing social landscape of Germany in the first half of the 20th century.

Text from the Yale University Art Gallery website

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Political Prisoner
1941-1944, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 7/16 x 7 3/4 in. (24 x 19.7cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Political Prisoner
1941-1944, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 13/16 x 7 11/16 in. (25 x 19.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Political Prisoner [Erich Sander]
1941-1944, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 7/8 x 7 3/8 in. (25.1 x 18.7cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

Erich Sander (1903-1944) was the eldest son of Anna and August , an intellectual, political activist and member of the Resistance who was introduced to photography by his father, with whom he worked. In Cologne, with his comrade Ernst Ransenberg, he took over the leadership of the local section of the SAP party (Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschland – Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany), writing and publishing leaflets against the Nazi party in power. In 1934, Erich was arrested and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment for high treason. He worked as a photographer for the prison administration and managed to smuggle in a camera that enabled him to take portraits of himself and his fellow prisoners, whom he managed to smuggle out of the prison. He left a substantial correspondence with his family (some letters written in secret ink), which constitutes essential documentation on life in prison during National Socialism. …

Erich Sander did not live to see the end of the war. He died on 23 March 1944, after his severe abdominal pain was ignored for days by the prison authorities.

Marie-Édith Agostini. “Portraits of a Time by August and Erich Sander,” on the Wer Ist Walter? website Nd [Online] Cited 03/06/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Political Prisoner [Erich Sander]
1943, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 15/16 x 7 3/8 in. (25.3 x 18.8cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Political Prisoner [Marcel Ancelin]
1943, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 5/8 x 7 11/16 in. (24.5 x 19.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

One of his fellow prisoners was Marcel Ancelin, born in Paris in 1923. A member of the Front National de Lutte pour la Libération et l’Indépendance de la France (National Front for the Fight for the Liberation and Independence of France) and later the FTP (Francs-Tireurs et Partisans), he was arrested by the French police on 13 August 1941. Handed over to the German authorities and sentenced to hard labour, he spent several years in camps and prisons in Germany, among them in Siegburg where he met Erich Sander. Ancelin was finally liberated from a camp near Frankfurt with other inmates by American troops in April 1945, and returned to France. On 8 November 1956, he received the official title of “deported resistance fighter”. Marcel Ancelin died in 2003, having never told his family or friends about his heroic past.

Erich Sander wrote of him in a letter to his parents: “One of the three (French men) has some very striking features, which is sure to give father some pleasure […] Very intelligent chap, by the way. He wants to come and visit me after the war.” However, Erich Sander did not live to see the end of the war. He died on 23 March 1944, after his severe abdominal pain was ignored for days by the prison authorities.

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Proletarian Mother
1927, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 3/8 in. (25.5 x 18.8cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Raoul Hausmann as a Dancer
1929, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 in. (25.6 x 17.8cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Red Cross Nurse
1924, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/8 x 7 5/8 in. (25.7 x 19.4cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Road Workers in the Ruhr Region
c. 1928, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/8 x 7 3/16 in. (25.7 x 18.2cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Rural Bride
1920-1925, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 1/2 in. (25.8 x 19cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Rural Brother and Sister
1925-1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/4 x 7 3/16 in. (26 x 18.3cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

In the history of photography, few projects have proven as groundbreaking as People of the 20th Century. August Sander (1876-1964) developed his ambitious series over more than six decades, capturing the diverse social fabric of his home country of Germany during a period marked by cultural upheaval and change. A new exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery showcases over 600 prints from this landmark work, inviting viewers to experience the breadth and depth of Sander’s vision. Never before has his output received such comprehensive treatment in a museum display.

Sander undertook to photograph people from all walks of life and organise them into groups, whether by class, gender, profession, or other traits – resulting in a sociological archive of Germany in the first half of the 20th century. The installation at the Gallery draws its structure from the typology he established: The Farmer; The Skilled Tradesman; The Woman; Classes and Professions; The Artists; The City; and The Last People. Each of Sander’s portraits at once represents an individual and a social archetype, exploring the tension between public identity and personal uniqueness. As he explained, “The individual does not make the history of his time, but he both impresses himself on it and expresses its meaning.”

In one image, the photographer’s eldest son, Erich, poses with his fellow working college students. He appears again in a photograph taken surreptitiously while imprisoned for leftist activity. Such reoccurrences make clear that Sander’s categories are not as fixed as they may at first appear, with many individuals and motifs showing up across different classifications. Further challenging the project’s claim to offer a neat and neutral study of social types is the deeply personal character of some of the pictures. Indeed, People of the 20th Century incorporates intimate portraits of Sander’s family, including the poignant My Wife in Joy and Sorrow showing his wife, Anna, with their twin infants, one of whom did not survive.

Sander was steeped in the avant-garde movements of early 20th-century Germany as he cultivated a realistic style aimed at portraying life as it was, without romanticisation. Among these influences were the Cologne Progressives, a collective of artists deeply invested in labor activism, and the New Objectivity, which countered the era’s prevailing Expressionism with a manner of ostensible impartiality or resignation. This turn away from subjective expression in art shaped Sander’s approach to framing his subjects. He situated figures carefully within their environments such that their surroundings tell parts of their stories: as in the above-mentioned Political Prisoner, the individual becomes inextricable from the context.

Following the rise to power of the National Socialist party in 1933, Sander remained in Germany and faced professional constraints due to the nature and content of his artwork. Defying the representational mandates imposed by Nazi ideology, he photographed marginalised peoples – those with disabilities, the unemployed, and the persecuted. Even when an early version of the project was destroyed by the regime, Sander persisted, documenting the stories of those often overlooked by society. Through his lens, every subject was given dignity and importance, creating a stark contrast to the dehumanising rhetoric of this period.

Judy Ditner is the Richard Benson Curator of Photography and Digital Media

Yale University Art Gallery Spring 2026 Magazine

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Street Photographer
c. 1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 7/8 in. (25.8 x 20cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
“Test Your Strength” Showman
1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 7/16 in. (25.6 x 18.9cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
The Architect Couple [Dora und Hans Heinz Lüttgen]
1926, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
8 × 9 3/8 in. (20.3 × 23.8cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

Hans Heinz Lüttgen (actually Theodor Heinrich Lüttgen; born 16. November 1895 (according to another source 1898) in Düsseldorf; died July 1976 in New York) was a German architect, interior designer and artist. According to his designs, the Sartory rooms and settlement buildings in Riehl were built in Cologne, as well as a series of single-family houses and villas in Wuppertal, which can be attributed to the style of the New Building of the 1920s and 1930s and now have “cult status”.

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
The Dadaist Raoul Hausmann [with Hedwig Mankiewitz and Vera Broïdo]
1929, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/4 x 7 1/2 in. (26 x 19cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

Hedwig Mankiewitz (also known as Hedwig Hausmann, 1893–1974) was a German painter and a vital, yet frequently under-appreciated, figure in the European avant-garde and Dada art movements. She is best known as the second wife, muse, and collaborator of the influential Dadaist Raoul Hausmann. Mankiewitz played a crucial role in providing emotional and financial support to Hausmann, especially during the tumultuous years when he was classified as a banned artist under the Nazi regime.

Vera Broïdo (7 September 1907 – 11 February 2004) was a Russian-born writer and a chronicler of the Russian Revolution, as one who grew up through it and lost her mother to its aftermath…

During her time in Berlin in the 1920s, Broido met avant garde artist and Dadaist turned society photographer Raoul Hausmann and became his lover and muse, living in a ménage à trois with him and his wife Hedwig in the fashionable Charlottenburg district of Berlin between 1928 and 1934.

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
The Industrialist [Max Spindler]
1929, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 3/16 in. (25.5 x 18.2cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
The Notary
1924, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 5/16 in. (25.6 x 18.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
The Painter Couple [Martha und Otto Dix]
1925-1926, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
7 15/16 x 9 7/16 in. (20.2 x 24cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

Martha Dix (née Lindner; other married name Koch; July 19, 1895 – March 6, 1985) was a German goldsmith and silversmith who was the wife of the painter Otto Dix.

Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (German; 2 December 1891 – 25 July 1969) was a German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of German society during the Weimar Republic and the brutality of war. Along with George Grosz and Max Beckmann, he is widely considered one of the most important artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit.

Martha Dix and the renowned German painter Otto Dix formed one of the most creatively documented couples of the Weimar era. She was a trained goldsmith and silversmith, and was her husband’s primary muse.

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
The Person of the Soil
1910, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 5/16 in. (25.5 x 18.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
The Sage
1913, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 5/16 in. (25.6 x 18.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Three Generations in a Fairground Caravan
1926-1932, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 5/8 in. (25.5 x 19.3cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Three Generations of the Family
1912, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
6 15/16 x 10 1/16 in. (17.6 x 25.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Unemployed
1928, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 6 3/8 in. (25.5 x 16.2cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Unemployed Sailor
1929, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 1/16 in. (25.5 x 18cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Usherettes
1926-1932, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/8 x 7 3/8 in. (25.7 x 18.8cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Varnisher
c. 1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 1/16 in. (25.8 x 18cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Victim of an Explosion
c. 1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 5/16 in. (25.9 x 18.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Victim of Persecution
c. 1938, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 7/8 in. (25.6 x 20cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Victim of Persecution [Miss Oppenheim]
c. 1938, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/8 x 7 7/8 in. (25.7 x 20cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Victim of Persecution [Margarete (Grete) Trier Oppenheim]
c. 1938, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 7/16 in. (25.5 x 18.9cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Victim of Persecution [Mr. Leubsdorf]
c. 1938, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 3/16 in. (25.6 x 18.2cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

The twelve portraits in this series were taken by the German photographer August Sander in Cologne and nearby towns around 1938, at the height of Hitler’s power. Although Sander’s Jewish subjects were probably friends and neighbours, he labelled these photographs simply “Persecuted Jews.” It is possible that Sander, who was not Jewish, made the photographs to help desperate German Jews obtain exit papers. Sander himself had been a victim of Nazi persecution in 1934 when many of his plates were destroyed by the authorities and his eldest son was imprisoned for his antifascist activities.

Text from The Jewish Museum website

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Village Schoolteacher
1921, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/8 x 7 3/8 in. (25.7 x 18.7 cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Woman from a Fairground Caravan
c. 1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/8 x 6 1/8 in. (25.7 x 15.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Wholesale Merchant and His Wife
1923, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 1/16 x 7 3/8 in. (23 x 18.7cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Woodcutter
1931, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 5/16 in. (25.8 x 18.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Workers’ Council from the Ruhr Region
1929, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
7 1/16 × 10 1/16 in. (18 × 25.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Working Students [Erich Sander, far left; Richard Creutzberg, center left]
1926, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
7 1/2 x 10 in. (19 x 25.4cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Vagabonds
1929-1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 5/16 in. (25.6 x 18.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Young Farmer
1912-1913
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 7/8 in. (25.5 x 20cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Young Farmers
1914, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 5/16 in. (25.9 x 18cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Young Farmers
1925-1927, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 3/8 in. (25.6 x 18.7cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Young Mother, Middle-Class
1926, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
7 3/8 x 8 in. (18.8 x 20.3cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Young Photographer [Gunther Sander]
1929, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 15/16 x 7 1/2 in. (25.3 x 19.1cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

Yale University Art Gallery
1111 Chapel Street (at York Street)
New Haven, CT

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Exhibition: ‘August Sander’s People of the 20th Century’ at the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, Part 1

Exhibition dates: 27th February - 28th June, 2026

Curator: Judy Ditner, the Richard Benson Curator of Photography and Digital Media

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Artist’s Party
c. 1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 3/8″ (25.8 x 18.7cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

A huge two-part posting on one of the most important photographers of the 20th century, an extravaganza of 77 photographs by August Sander (German, 1876-1964) from his magnum opus People of the 20th Century (Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts) (1892-1954) which consists of over 600 photographs organised into seven categories and 49 portfolios (see below).

There are many photographs I have never seen before in the two postings.

I have ordered the photographs in the postings by alphabetical title not by Sander’s classificatory system. It’s just much easier for me to make the postings this way (which takes many hours). As the text from the curator Judy Ditner makes clear, “Sander’s categories are not as fixed as they may at first appear, with many individuals and motifs showing up across different classifications.”

“What makes Sander’s work so powerful is the tension: each portrait is at once a deeply personal image and a window into a broader social type.”

Comment to follow in Part 2 of the posting.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

“The individual does not make the history of his time, but he both impresses himself on it and expresses its meaning.”

August Sander

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Beggar
1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 5 5/8 in. (25.5 x 14.3cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

Categories and portfolios

1/ The Farmer

This category serves as the foundation of his taxonomy, celebrating the “earthbound man” and rural life.

~ Portfolio of Archetypes
~ The Young Farmer
~ The Farmer’s Child and the Mother
~ The Farmer’s Family
~ The Farmer—His Life and Work
~ Farming Types

2/ The Skilled Tradesman

This volume highlights individuals in specialized professions and manual labor.

~ The Skilled Tradesman
~ The Apprentice / Journeyman
~ The Workshop and Factory
~ The Technician and Inventor

3/ The Woman

Dedicated to women in various life stages, social roles, and occupations.

~ The Woman
~ The Family
~ The Woman at Work
~ The Intellectual and Practical Occupation
~ The Elegant Woman

4/ Classes and Professions

This category spans the socio-economic hierarchy, from physical laborers to the political and business elite.

~ The Working Youth
~ The Soldier
~ The Student
~ The Scholar and Academic
~ The Clergy
~ The Jurist / Official
~ The Teacher and Educator
~ The Doctor and Pharmacist
~ The Artist (Performing Arts)
~ The Businessman
~ The Industrialist / Banker
~ The High Nobility

5. The Artists

This group focuses entirely on the creative and bohemians fields.

~ The Musician
~ The Poet
~ The Painter and Sculptor
~ The Architect

6. The City

An exploration of urban environments, public life, and various services or entertainment figures.

~ The City
~ The Representative of the City
~ The City Dweller
~ The Street Life
~ The Waiter / The Publican / The Cook
~ The Entertainer / The Showman
~ The Travel / The Circus / The Fairground
~ The Types and Originals
~ The Sportsman (Winter/Summer)
~ The Soldier
~ The Emigrant

7. The Last People

This poignant category focuses on the margins of society, specifically the themes of old age, sickness, and death.

~ Old Age
~ The Blind
~ The Sick
~ The Insane / Idiots
~ The Dying / The Dead

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Blacksmith
c. 1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 13/16 x 7 3/4 in. (25 x 19.7cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Blacksmiths
1926, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 3/4 in. (25.8 x 19.7cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Blind Children
c. 1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
7 9/16 x 10 1/16 in. (19.2 x 25.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Blind Miner and Blind Soldier
c. 1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 13/16 x 7 15/16 in. (24.9 x 20.1cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Blind People
c. 1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/8 x 7 15/16 in. (25.7 x 20.2cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

Text from the Yale University Art Gallery website

Installation view of the exhibition 'August Sander's People of the 20th Century' at the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, February - June, 2026

Installation views of the exhibition August Sander’s People of the 20th Century at the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, February – June, 2026

August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Boxers. Paul Röderstein and Hein Hesse. Köln' 1929

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Boxers [Paul Röderstein and Hein Hesse]
1929, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 6 1/2 in. (25.8 x 16.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Candy Seller
1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 5/16 in. (25.6 x 18.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Circus Performers
1926-1932, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
8 1/16 x 10 1/16 in. (20.5 x 25.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Confirmation Candidate
1911, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/4 x 7 7/16 in. (26 x 18.9cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Cook
1928, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 x 7 1/2 in. (25.4 x 19.1cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Country Band
1913, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
7 3/8 x 10 1/8 in. (18.8 x 25.7cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Country Girls
1923, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 15/16 x 7 11/16 in. (25.2 x 19.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Country Girls, Westerwald
1925, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 3/8 in. (25.8 x 18.8cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Country Lads from the Westerwald
1912, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 7/8 in. (25.9 x 20cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

The Westerwald (German pronunciation: [ˈvɛstɐvalt]; literally ‘Western forest’) is a low mountain range on the right bank of the river Rhine in the German federal states of Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia. It is a part of the Rhenish Massif (Rheinisches Schiefergebirge or Rhenish Slate Mountains). Its highest elevation, at 657 m above sea level, is the Fuchskaute in the High Westerwald.

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Daughter of a Painter
c. 1926, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/8 × 7 5/16 in. (25.7 × 18.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Disabled Miner
1927-1928, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 1/16 in. (25.5 x 18cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Dock Workers
c. 1929, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/8 × 8 1/4 in. (25.7 × 21cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Farmer
1920-1928, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 8 1/8 in. (25.9 x 20.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Farm Children
c. 1913, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 3/4 x 7 5/16 in. (24.7 x 18.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Farmer Couple – Propriety and Harmony
1912, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 5/16 in. (25.8 x 18.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Farmer from the Eifel
1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 6 3/4 in. (25.8 x 17.2cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

The Eifel (German: [ˈaɪfl̩]; Luxembourgish: Äifel, pronounced [ˈæːɪ̯fəl]) is a low mountain range in western Germany, eastern Belgium and northern Luxembourg. It occupies parts of southwestern North Rhine-Westphalia, northwestern Rhineland-Palatinate and the southern area of the German-speaking Community of Belgium.

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Farmer on his Way to Church
1925-1926, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/8 x 6 3/8 in. (25.7 x 16.2cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Farmer Sowing
1952, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/8 x 7 7/8 in. (25.7 x 20cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Farmers Playing Cards
c. 1920, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
8 1/8 x 10 1/16 in. (20.7 x 25.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

The Yale University Art Gallery announced August Sander’s People of the 20th Century, an ambitious exhibition showcasing the work of one of the most influential photographers of the modern era.

August Sander (1876-1964) devoted decades of his career to capturing and cataloguing the sociocultural spectrum of German life. In his groundbreaking series, Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (People of the 20th Century) (1892–1954), he attempted to create a comprehensive sociological archive by photographing individuals from various classes, occupations, and backgrounds and then arranging the images into archetypal groups and subgroups, such as “The Skilled Tradesman,” “The Farmer,” “The Artist,” and “The Woman.” The Gallery’s presentation retains his original organisational framework.

Taken in sum, Sander’s portraits show his keen observation of Germany’s shifting cultural landscape in the first half of the 20th century. The extensive project encompasses independent works, commissioned sittings, and scenes of family life. They reflect a diverse nation rooted in tradition yet transformed by war and increasing urbanisation. Each photograph presents not just a generalised type but an individual, highlighting the tension between social conformity and personal identity. Sander’s categories, while systematic, also reveal an inherent fluidity, as certain types and individuals appear across different groupings, challenging strict classification.

Heavily influenced by the Cologne Progressive and New Objectivity art movements, Sander adopted a representational style free from idealisation. His inclusion of marginalised groups, such as people with disabilities and the unemployed, asserted the value of each individual, subverting the exclusionary ideologies of National Socialism. In 1936 the Nazi regime destroyed an early version of his work. Undeterred, Sander continued to photograph throughout World War II, subsequently adding portfolios titled “Foreign Workers,” “The Persecuted” (depicting German Jews), and “Political Prisoners” (with images that his son Erich smuggled out of prison, where he was serving a 10-year sentence for anti-Nazi activities).

Although Sander produced tens of thousands of negatives for this project, the majority were destroyed during World War II and in a 1946 house fire. The gelatin silver prints in the exhibition were created from surviving original glass-plate negatives by Gerd Sander, the artist’s grandson, in the 1990s, guided by vintage prints and the artist’s extensive notes. These prints are recent acquisitions by the Yale University Art Gallery, made possible through the Société Anonyme Acquisition Fund and the Katharine Ordway Fund.

The exhibition comprises the full set of 619 prints, making it the most comprehensive museum presentation of Sander’s landmark project to date. By expanding the boundaries of portraiture into social commentary, exploring the concept of collective belonging, and experimenting with the artistic potential of the archive, Sander’s work remains remarkably resonant and impactful today.

Press release from Yale University Art Gallery

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Farming Family
1913-1914, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
7 5/16 x 9 1/4 in. (18.5 x 23.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Foundrymen
1926, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 3/16 in. (25.8 x 18.3cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Girl in a Fairground Caravan
1926-1932, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 × 7 11/16 in. (25.8 × 19.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Gymnastics Teacher
1925, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 6 13/16 in. (25.5 x 17.3cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Gypsy
c. 1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 1/16 in. (25.5 x 18cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Hamburg Carpenters
c. 1929, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 1/16 in. (25.8 x 18cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Inmate of an Asylum
1926-1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 5 15/16 in. (25.9 x 15.1cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Inmate of an Asylum
1926-1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 6 15/16 in. (25.6 x 17.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Inventor and Dadaist [Raoul Hausmann]
1929, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 1/2 in. (25.5 x 19cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

Raoul Hausmann was an Austrian artist and writer. One of the key figures in Berlin Dada, his experimental photographic collages, sound poetry, and institutional critiques would have a profound influence on the European Avant-Garde in the aftermath of World War I.

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Itinerant Basket Weavers
1929, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
7 15/16 x 10 1/16 in. (20.2 x 25.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Itinerant Mason
c. 1927, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 3/8 in. (25.6 x 18.7cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Machine Operator
1926, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 × 7 1/16 in. (25.6 × 18cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Magician
1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 6 1/8 in. (25.8 x 15.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Married Beggar Couple, Neuwied
1928, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 1/2 in. (25.5 x 19cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Master Mason (Building a Chimney)
1926-1932, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 13/16 in. (25.5 x 19.8cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Match Seller
1927, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
7 1/2 × 8 11/16 in. (19 × 22cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Member of a Rural Gymnastics Club
1912, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 in. (25.9 x 17.8cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Middle-Class Married Couple
1922, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 15/16 × 7 5/8 in. (25.3 × 19.3cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Mother and Daughter, Farmer’s Wife and Miner’s Wife
1912, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 13/16 x 7 3/8 in. (24.9 x 18.7cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Mother and Daughter [Helene Abelen with Daughter Josepha]
c. 1926, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 11/16 in. (25.6 x 19.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
My Wife in Joy and Sorrow [Anna Sander with twins, Sigrid and Helmut Sander]
1911, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 11/16 in. (25.5 x 19.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

Further challenging the project’s claim to offer a neat and neutral study of social types is the deeply personal character of some of the pictures. Indeed, People of the 20th Century incorporates intimate portraits of Sander’s family, including the poignant My Wife in Joy and Sorrow showing his wife, Anna, with their twin infants, one of whom did not survive.

Judy Ditner is the Richard Benson Curator of Photography and Digital Media

Yale University Art Gallery Spring 2026 Magazine

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Exhibition: ‘Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997)’ at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam

Ontworpen wereld: Door de ogen van Tata Ronkholz (1940–1997)

Exhibition dates: 14th February – 21st June, 2026

Curator: Gabriele Conrath-Scholl, Director of Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur in Cologne

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Trinkhalle / Kiosk, Düsseldorf, Sankt-Franziskus-Straße 107
1977
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

In a nutshell:

Large format camera
Front on, realist, sharply defined objective documentary photographs of architectural structures of the urban landscape
In series

In reality:

Structures cut from the fabric of existence
Isolated by the subjective eye of the photographer and the lens of the camera
What to include or exclude

(In the contemporary photographs of the spaces in the posting, the shops are surrounded by trees and vegetation, they have transformed from kiosk to shuttered shop, from boutique to florist: the architecture remains but traces of previous incarnations are visible only in these photographs. Nothing is permanent except change).

In the photographs of kiosks, corner shops and industrial gates, it is the minutiae of existence (not as mere decoration) that gives these supposedly objective photographs their subjective power. For example, “the photo Trinkhalle, Köln-Nippes – with its ice cream and newspaper advertisements and vending machines for chewing gum and cigarettes” is more than amusing and engaging – it depicts vital, archaeological evidence of the transitory nature of human existence in the pyschogeography of the urbanscape.1

In Ronkholz’ photographs of the terrain (from the Latin terra, earth/land) of the city, her exploration of urban environments emphasises interpersonal connections to places – and testify “to social, cultural, and economic change and shows how people shape the world around them.” (Press release)

This is the fluid boundary that these photographs so beautifully and incisively depict: the interface between architecture and human, between order (form/surface) and chaos (placement of insolent signs), between utopian perfection and dystopian unruliness – the one coexistent with the other.

This confluence of pattern and randomness, objective and subjective, is what gives these photographs of the everyday a lasting significance.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Guy Debord (November 1956). “Theory of the Dérive”. Les Lèvres Nues (9). Translated by Ken Knabb.

Many thankx to Huis Marseille, Amsterdam for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Sankt-Franziskus-Straße 104-107 Düsseldorf

Installation view of the exhibition Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997) at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, February - June, 2026

Installation views of the exhibition Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997) at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, February – June, 2026

Installation view of the exhibition Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997) at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, February – June, 2026 showing at left, Tata Ronkholz’s Düsseldorf Harbor (1980)

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997) 'Wallpaper store' 1964 (installation view)

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Wallpaper store (installation views)
1964
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997) 'Cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence' 1975 (installation view)

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence (installation view)
1975
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Santa Maria Assunta, Dom / Cathedral, Volterra
1975
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Palazzo dei Vescovi (Museo dell’Antico), Pistoia
1975
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997) 'Industrial Gate' Nd (installation view)

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Industrial Gate (installation view)
Nd
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
ECT. Rotterdam/Prinses Beatrixhaven, Reeweg
1977
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Firma/Company Tromm, Tor Gleisanschluss/Gate railway siding, Köln-Niehl
1983
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Firma/Company ROW, Hafen, Tor/Gate Nr. 0930, Wesseling-Godorf
1984
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz was one of the first students in Bernd and Hilla Becher’s famous photography class at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Her fellow students included Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth, all of whom became artists of world renown. Oddly enough Tata Ronkholz’ work is only now receiving the same international acclaim. The retrospective Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997), on show at Huis Marseille from 14 February until 21 June 2026, is the first large-scale tribute to this many-sided artist.

Objective-documentary photography

Tata Ronkholz was a photographer, product designer, and interior architect. Her photographic series lie within the tradition of objective, documentary photography, a tradition which was decisively shaped by the artist couple Bernd and Hilla Becher. Like theirs, Ronkholz’ work is characterised by clear compositions, a serial approach, and a documentary focus on architectural structures and everyday architectures. Using a large-format camera she produced sharply defined and realistic photographs in which the subject matter, rather than the individual style of the artist, takes centre stage. Her work is predominantly in black and white, although colour images also appear, demonstrating her ambition to engage with the artistic colour photography that emerged in Germany during the 1970s and ’80s, following the example set by the New Color Photography introduced by the American photographers Stephen Shore and William Eggleston.

Kiosks and corner shops

Tata Ronkholz became known for her appealing series of kiosks (Trinkhallen) and small shops that capture typical moments of urban everyday culture. These were photographed between 1977 and 1985, particularly in neighbourhoods of Cologne and Düsseldorf, in the Ruhr area, as well as in Leverkusen and Krefeld. For example, the photo Trinkhalle, Köln-Nippes – with its ice cream and newspaper advertisements and vending machines for chewing gum and cigarettes – is as amusing and engaging as Boutique, Köln-Mülheim in which, according to the store sign, alongside clothing records were also for sale. The photographs illustrate the extent to which product offerings, decoration, and advertising in public spaces has been transformed. Tata Ronkholz’ choice of subject means that her work indirectly testifies to social, cultural, and economic change and shows how people shape the world around them.

Industrial gates

Another significant series is dedicated to industrial gates, photographed between 1977 and 1985. The sober black-and-white images of these gates, with their grids and frameworks, offer glimpses into the interiors of industrial areas. In the photographs the gates function as interfaces between private and public space, between interior and exterior, and between activity and calm. Their aesthetic, reminiscent of abstract artworks, imbues the everyday with a new significance.

Collaboration with Thomas Struth

In 1979 Ronkholz, together with her fellow student Thomas Struth, began work on an impressive documentary series on Düsseldorf’s Rheinhafen. The project originated from the planned redevelopment of this historic harbour area – a site that, in its original form, was considered an industrial area of significant urban historical and architectural importance. Together they set out to document the harbour in its entirety, capturing its historic buildings, technical installations, and operational structures. In carefully composed images they recorded façades, interiors, silos, warehouses, crane structures, and harbour basins, before these elements partially disappeared or were fundamentally altered during the restructuring.

Tata Ronkholz as product designer

Between 1961 and 1965 Ronkholz studied at the Werkkunstschule Krefeld (an academy of applied art) with a focus on furniture design, and subsequently worked as a freelance designer until 1977. The exhibition also explores this aspect of Ronkholz’ oeuvre, including depictions of geometrically shaped furniture and lighting fixtures as well as designs for office and cafeteria furniture. Ronkholz’ designs are characterised by clear forms and functional elegance. Finally, the retrospective also presents early photographs of architectural forms created in 1975/76 in Italy and France, revealing her strong affinity for aspects of the ‘designed world’ across different areas of life.

Ronkholz’ estate, acquired in 2011 by VAN HAM Art Estate in Cologne, forms the basis of the exhibition alongside the holdings of Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf. Significant contributions have also been made from the in-house collections of Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur – who also curated the exhibition – and through loans from private collections.

Book

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, Tata Ronkholz: Gestaltete Welt. Eine Retropektive (2025, Schirmer/Mosel Verlag GmbH), with texts in German and English. It is available from the Huis Marseille museum shop (€49.90).

Text from the Huis Marseille website

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Imbissstube/Snack bar, Düsseldorf-Rath, Linienstraße 141
1977
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Trinkhalle/Kiosk, Ratingen, Volkardeyer Straße 25
1977
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Trinkhalle/Kiosk, Köln-Nippes, Merheimer Straße 294
1983
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Merheimer Str. 294, Köln-Nippes

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Insurance office, Leverkusen-Schlehbusch
1970s-1980s
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Imbissstube/Snack bar, Köln-Mülheim, Berliner Straße 120
1979
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Boutique, Köln-Mülheim, Berliner Straße 120
1980
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Berliner Str. 120, Köln, Germany

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Friseur/Hairdresser, Köln-Ehrenfeld, Philippstraße 30
1980
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Lagerhalle mit Löwenwappen/Warehouse with lion crest
1979
From the series Rheinhafen/Rhine harbor Düsseldorf, 1979-1981
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Im Düsseldorfer Hafen / In Düsseldorf harbor
around 1980
From the series Rheinhafen/Rhine harbor Düsseldorf, 1979-1981
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Im Düsseldorfer Hafen/In Düsseldorf harbour
around 1980
From the series Rheinhafen/Rhine harbor Düsseldorf, 1979-1981
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Technik und Kräne/Technology and cranes
Nd
From the series Rheinhafen/Rhine harbor Düsseldorf, 1979-1981
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954) 'Zollhafen / Customs harbor' 1979

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
Zollhafen/Customs harbour
1979
From the series Rheinhafen/Rhine harbor Düsseldorf, 1979-1981
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
Getreidespeicher, Rhenus seitlich / Grain silo, Rhenus lateral
1979
From the series Rheinhafen/Rhine harbor Düsseldorf, 1979-1981
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Technik und Kräne / Technology and cranes
Nd
From the series Rheinhafen/Rhine harbor Düsseldorf, 1979-1981
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
Rheinhafen/Rhine harbor (Berger Hafen v. d. VHS/from Adult education center), Düsseldorf
1979
From the series Rheinhafen/Rhine harbor Düsseldorf, 1979-1981
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Charles Wilp (German, 1932-2005)
Tata Ronkholz
c. 1979

View of the exhibition poster for 'Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997)' at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, February - June, 2026

View of the exhibition posters for Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997) at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, February – June, 2026

Huis Marseille
Keizersgracht 401
1016 EK Amsterdam
Phone: +31 20 531 89 89

Opening hours
Tue – Sun, 11 – 18 h

Huis Marseille website

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Vale Duane Michals (American, 1932-2026) – storyteller

June 2026

Duane Michals (American, 1932-2026)
What is Time?
1994
Gelatin silver print
16 × 19 7/8 inches (40.6 × 50.5cm)
Gift of Duane Michals
The Morgan Library & Museum

“Time is the duration of everything, and life is an event, a fluttering of wings.”

Duane Michals

There is no time

Vale the transcendent Duane Michals – storyteller.

Magician, poet, philosopher and dreamer.

An artist, like Joseph Cornell, who I have always felt a special affinity / infinity towards.

I wrote in earlier postings on his work:

“As he says, his work goes beyond description, beyond surfaces, to reveal the subject – not as it looks but as it feels. In his sequences he usually achieves this by posing a question that has no answer, a question that is like a Zen koan… what is the sound of one hand clapping? The grandfather ascends smilingly to heaven with little wings on his back as the child waves goodbye (if youth knew, if age could); the man as human condition turns into a galaxy; and the spirit leaves the body as it was left before. …

Michals staged, narrative scenes take us on a journey into his reality, one which “has entered a realm beyond observation.” He poses difficult questions that force us to examine ideas beyond the world of phenomena, beyond the world of surfaces. He challenges our repressed inner lives and our idealised image of ourselves, disturbing the boundaries of personality, ego, and identity.”1

And

“Duane Michals is one of the greatest photographic storytellers of the twentieth century. His parables – seemingly simple stories used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson – resonate, vibrate, with energy, and insight into, the human condition. They are as profound as the air we breathe but cannot see – expressing the invisible, presencing the spiritual. I feel, I know these stories, intimately. Those things-for-which-there-are-no-words. …

There are things here not seen in this photograph. The spirit leaves the body. William Blake and Duane Michals. Enchanted melancholy. The mysterious / music. In swift embrace. In love. In memory. In death. The fluidity of the line of the artist. Things are queer. The world implodes and ravages itself. Paradise is reborn. The letter, and love, from my father that I, also, never did receive. The nature of reality. Truth? … When I was young. What was time?”2

It was Michals great skill as an artist and a human being that enabled us the possibility of accessing some aspect of the mystery of our existence.

Stepping beyond … his spirit has left his body.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Marcus Bunyan. “Exposing your/self,” on the exhibition ‘Storyteller: The Photographs of Duane Michals’ at Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, November 2014 – February 2015 on the Art Blart website January 30, 2015 [Online] Cited 11/06/2026

2/ Marcus Bunyan. “The things-for-which-there-are-no-words,” on the exhibition ‘Illusions of the Photographer: Duane Michals at the Morgan’ at The Morgan Library & Museum, October 2019 – February 2020 on the Art Blart website January 24, 2020 [Online] Cited 11/06/2026

Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“I write with this photograph not to tell you what you can see, rather to express what is invisible.”

Duane Michals 1966 in Johnson, B. (ed.,) 2004, ‘Photography speaks: 150 photographers on their art’, Aperture, New York p. 150

Duane Michals (American, 1932-2026)
The Human Condition
1969
© Duane Michals via DC Moore Gallery
The Morgan Library & Museum

“The nature of consciousness is always the central question,” he asserted. In The Human Condition, his panel of six photographs from 1969 begins with a man standing on the 14th Street subway platform; the train arrives and he is bathed in a halo of light; the light becomes a swirl and in the last frame he is swept into a white disc the size of a galaxy passing through the night sky. From the immediate to the universal in six frames.

Philip Gefter. “Duane Michals Searches the Morgan and Finds Himself,” on The New York Times website Oct 29, 2019 [Online] Cited 14/11/2019

Duane Michals (American, 1932-2026) 'Things are Queer' 1973

Duane Michals (American, 1932-2026)
Things Are Queer
1973
Nine gelatin silver prints
Images: 5 × 7 inches (12.7 × 17.8cm) each
Gift of Duane Michals
The Morgan Library & Museum

Duane Michals (American, 1932-2026) 'The Spirit Leaves The Body' 1968

Duane Michals (American, b. 1932)
The Spirit Leaves the Body
1968
Gift of Richard and Ronay Menschel
The Morgan Library & Museum

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Exhibition: ‘FOR YOUR EYES ONLY: Miniatures from the Romantic Era’ at Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg

Exhibition dates: 6th February – 7th June, 2026

Curator: Sabine Zorn (Head of Conservation/Restoration of Graphic Art and Photography, Hamburger Kunsthalle); Guest Curator: Dr. Bernd Pappe (Freelance restorer and art historian specialising in portrait miniatures)

Heinrich Jakob Aldenrath (German, 1775-1844)
Caroline Mohrmann (geb. Wortmann)
c. 1815
Watercolour and gouache on ivory
6.3 x 4.9cm
Hamburger Kunsthalle
© Hamburger Kunsthalle, Foto: Birgitt Schmedding

A bonus posting for the weekend.

I discovered this exhibition while surfing online and I couldn’t miss it before it closes tomorrow. Resistance is futile, especially for an avid collector of object d’arts.

I love miniatures, their sensitivity, their sensuality, their size. The fact they were held in the hand and carried close to the heart. Portraits of the self, relying on mirrors to capture the artist’s own reflection, portraits of loved ones, artists, anonymous men and women.

“Many master miniaturists (like Daguerre himself) used optical tools like the Camera Obscura to map proportions before painting. Using early cameras felt like a natural mechanical extension of this process.” (Wikipedia)

“Portrait miniaturists were already experts at arranging subjects for flattering, highly personalised, and dignified depictions. They brought these same framing, angling, and lighting rules – such as emphasising the face – to the camera.” (Wikipedia)

“As miniature painters attempted to mimic the technical precision of daguerreotypes, they lost the intimate, distinct appeal of their art form. As the former Metropolitan Museum scholar Harry Wehle put it in 1927, “The miniature in the presence of the photograph was like a bird before a snake; it was fascinated – even to the fatal point of imitation – then it was swallowed”.” (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

For me, there is a delicacy and romanticism to the painted miniature which can never be matched by the photographic miniature. Despite both being housed in small, protective leather and wood cases, each are constructed realities of a different aspect – one created through the eye and creativity of the painter, the other created through the eye and creativity of the photographer and the maximal, granular reality of the camera.

Where possible I have added bibliographic and other pertinent information for the artists in the posting.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to Hamburger Kunsthalle for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (1749-1803)
Self-portrait
c. 1774
Aquarell und Gouache auf Elfenbein
10.3 x 8.4cm
The Tansey Miniatures Foundation, Celle
© Foto: Birgitt Schmedding

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (French, 1749-1803)

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (née Labille; 11 April 1749 – 24 April 1803), also known as Adélaïde Labille-Guiard des Vertus, was a French miniaturist and portrait painter. She was an advocate for women to receive the same opportunities as men to become great painters. Labille-Guiard was one of the first women to become a member of the Royal Academy, and was the first female artist to receive permission to set up a studio for her students at the Louvre.

Adélaïde Labille was born on 11 April 1749 in Paris. Her father, Claude-Edme Labille (1705-1788) was a haberdasher.

Labille-Guiard became a master at miniatures, pastels, and oil paintings. Little is known about her training due to the practices of the 18th century which dictated masters (who were predominately male) should not take on female pupils. During this time, women were perceived as incapable to follow instruction alongside men. During her adolescence, Labille-Guiard studied miniature painting with oil painter François-Élie Vincent and her early work was exhibited at the Académie de Saint-Luc.

Labille-Guillard married Louis-Nicolas Guiard in 1769, but separated from him eight years later, already able to support herself through her artwork. She apprenticed with the pastel master Quentin de la Tour until 1774. From 1776 to 1780, she began to study oil painting with her childhood friend François-André Vincent (the eldest son of François-Élie Vincent), who would later become her husband.

Exhibitions at the Académie de Saint-Luc

Labille-Guiard was admitted to the Académie de Saint-Luc in 1767 when she was twenty years old. Her admission piece has since disappeared and sadly no records of its existence survive today. The Académie de Saint-Luc provided Labille-Guiard with a space to practice art professionally. In 1774, she exhibited her work at its Salon. This show was so successful that the Royal Academy took offence, and with the backing of the monarchy, issued an edict in March 1776 abolishing “guilds, brotherhoods, and communities of arts and crafts”, forcing the Académie de Saint-Luc to close its doors in 1777. However, this did not stop Labille-Guiard’s ambitions as an artist.

Becoming a member of the Royal Academy

Once the Académie de Saint-Luc closed its doors, Labille-Guiard began to learn oil painting, so she could apply to the Royal Academy which required her to present at least one oil painting for admission. During the late 1770s, she painted several portraits of leading academicians, creating contacts with the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture.[6]

Labille-Guiard chose to display some of her work at the Salon de la Correspondance in 1779 and 1783. This included her self-portrait in pastel and oil portraits, which were well received by critics. Labille-Guiard’s talent as an oil painter and pastellist was quickly noticed, and she received national recognition, ultimately leading to her acceptance into the Royal Academy. On 31 May 1783 Labille-Guiard was accepted as a member of the French Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. Her rival, Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun, was also elected on that day; the two of them were the first women to be inducted. Both Labille-Guiard and Vigée Le Brun were immediately criticised following their admission by those who were furious at women’s entry; Labille-Guiard suffered attacks against both her art and character. One anonymous pamphlet Suite de Malborough au Salon 1783, accused Labille-Guiard of exchanging sexual favours for help with painting. The pamphlet punned on François-André Vincent’s name (though still unmarried, he was her rumoured paramour), saying that Labille Guiard had “vignt cents” (twenty-hundreds, or two thousand) lovers. Still, becoming accepted into the Royal Academy opened doors for Labille-Guiard as she gained patronage from the royal family. …

Style and context

Labille-Guiard often did not fit comfortably within the boundaries of feminine virtue in the 18th century. In order to appeal to a wide variety of viewers including upper-class men and women, she often incorporated recent fashions into her paintings, which allowed her to showcase her artistic ability. She was good at rendering details, such as showing luxurious folds and layers of complex skirts that were in fashion at the time. However, often she painted with a twist such as having women face directly at the viewer or with a low neckline, which was an uncommon practice in the 18th century when portraying women.

Further evidence of Labille-Guiard’s boldness can be seen in her self-portraits, which leave her exposed slightly more than usual, but not enough to evoke allegations of promiscuous behaviour. This is seen in her painting Self-Portrait with Two Pupils. Unlike some other paintings of female artists in the 18th century, Labille-Guiard chose to depict herself actively working rather than passive and at rest. Labille-Guiard also pushed against other restrictions, such as those that limited the number of females that could attend the Royal Academy. By depicting two female students in Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, Labille-Guiard suggests more women should be allowed in to the Royal Academy. In this sense, Labille-Guiard was daring, but not too daring as to sabotage her reputation and lose the respect she worked hard to gain within the art world.

At the time, female artists were frequently related to the goddess Minerva. Therefore, Labille-Guiard and her rival Vigée Le Brun were both referred to as “modern Minervas.” Their rivalry was encouraged by both academicians and patrons at court.

Today, Labille-Guiard’s masterpiece, Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, hangs in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, after the Louvre rejected it in a final dismissal of the artist’s talent.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Friedrich Karl Gröger (German, 1766–1838)
Self-portrait
c. 1800
Watercolour and gouache on ivory
7.1 x 5.3cm
Hamburger Kunsthalle
© Hamburger Kunsthalle, Foto: Birgitt Schmedding

Friedrich Carl Gröger was a north-German portrait painter and lithographer. One of the most respected portraitists of his time in northern Germany, his works are to be found in several museums, including the Hamburger Kunsthalle, as well as in north German, Holstein and Danish private collections.

Domenico Bossi (German born Italy, 1767–1853)
Dr. med Paul Hinrich Büsch
c. 1795
Watercolour and gouache on ivory
6cm (Durchmesser)
Hamburger Kunsthalle
© Hamburger Kunsthalle
Foto: Birgitt Schmedding

Johann Dominik Bossi, also known as Domenico Bossi, was a painter. Bossi, a student of Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, was born in Trieste and worked primarily as a miniaturist in Germany, Austria, Sweden and Russia before he settled down in Munich, where he lived at Theresien Straße 19 in Munich around 1850.

Carl Friedrich Demiani (German, 1768-1823)
Man on sofa
1799
Watercolour and gouache on ivory
15.1 x 12.5cm
The Tansey Miniatures Foundation, Celle
© Foto: Birgitt Schmedding

Carl (Karl) Friedrich Demiani was born in 1768 in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), and died in 1823 in Dresden. He studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and specialised in portrait miniatures.

Unknown maker
Monogram “JMJ” on hair braid (back of a gentleman’s portrait)
c. 1800
Gold-plated metal on hair
5.3cm
Hamburger Kunsthalle / ARTOTHEK
© Hamburger Kunsthalle
Foto: Birgitt Schmedding

Joseph Nocolaus Peroux (German, 1771 -1849)
Mother and child
1815
Watercolour and gouache on ivory
Schloss Kemnade, Hattingen (Sammlung Rudowski)
© Foto: Fotostudio Eric Jobs, Hattingen

Joseph Nicolaus Peroux was born in 1771, in Ludwigsburg. He was a well-known German miniature painter, etcher and lithographer of the Romantic era.
Peroux was a student of the “Peintre du Duc de Wurtemberg” (first painter at the Württemberg court) Nicolas Guibal, who taught at the Académie des Arts and the Hohen Karlsschule in Stuttgart until his death in 1784. Peroux initially worked in Frankfurt am Main (from 1795) and in Hamburg from 1800, where he exhibited a portrait of Emma Hamilton and a self-portrait in 1803. He then opened an art school in Lübeck and became the young Friedrich Overbeck’s first drawing teacher. The turmoil of the French Period brought him back to Frankfurt in 1806. Accordingly, his works can be found primarily in the museums in Frankfurt, the Hamburger Kunsthalle and in the Behnhaus in Lübeck. The artist died in 1849, in Frankfurt am Main.

Text from the Wikipedia website translated from the German

Carl Ferdinand Stelzner (German, 1805-1894)
The miniature painter Caroline Stelzner (1808-1875)
1843
Daguerreotype
10.8 x 8.1cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe
© Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe

[Stelzner] was the stepson of the portrait and miniature painter Carl Gottlieb Stelzner, who trained him in painting. In 1825 he traveled through Schleswig-Holstein and painted portraits of peasants and citizens. At the end of the 1820s he made study trips to Hamburg, Stockholm , Copenhagen and then to Paris where from 1831 to 1834 he was mentored by prominent miniature painters Jean-Baptiste Isabey and Claude Marie Dubufe. On return to Hamburg in 1837 he opened a studio, painting portrait miniatures.

Hearing of the new technique of photography, Stelzner returned quickly to Paris in 1839 to learn in person from Louis Daguerre how to make daguerreotypes. He then opened a daguerreotype studio in Hamburg with Hermann Blow (1804-1850). The partnership was short-lived and in 1843 he returned to his old studio to become the first daguerreotypist in Schleswig-Holstein and ultimately one of the best in Germany. His output was mainly portraits. His first wife Anna Caroline Stelzner (above), a miniaturist artist who was also his half-sister, coloured many of them and did the rephotography of the plates, since copying was the only way to reproduce the daguerreotype.

Despite the constraints of his medium, Selzner’s portraits rarely appear ‘frozen’. The position of Caroline’s arms and her sideways gaze are reinforced by the position of props such as the book on the table as a counterpoint to the one in her hand which infers movement, and the framing of the foliage of pot plants, repeated in the fabric of her dress and the tablecloth.

You can see Selzner experimenting with his own pose in these two self-portraits [one of which you can see below] on which Caroline no doubt assisted. Though these two images are dated five years apart on the Hamburg Art Museum website, the photographer’s clothing, hair and the background are identical. The only change is in the pose and a lowering of the camera to provide a more regal impression in the second image.

Associate Professor James McArdle. “December 30: Action,” on the On This Date In Photography website 30/12/2016 [Online] Cited 05/06/2026

Carl Ferdinand Stelzner (German, 1805–1894)
Self-portrait
1855
Daguerreotype
5.9 x 4.8cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

With FOR YOUR EYES ONLY: Miniatures from the Romantic Era, the Hamburger Kunsthalle is presenting the first major exhibition devoted to the multifaceted art of miniature painting in Hamburg, from its heyday circa 1800 to the 1840s, when it was replaced by early photography. These miniature portraits, usually measuring around 6 to 10 cm and artfully painted in watercolour and gouache on wafer-thin ivory plates, backed in some cases with silver foil, still fascinate us even today. A total of over 250 objects will be on view.

The show is based on portrait miniatures from the Kunsthalle’s own collection that were restored and catalogued in 2023–24. Around 60 of these miniatures will be shown for the first time here, together with some 200 works on loan from European and private collections, some of them also making their public debut.

These small portraits set in frames, brooches or cases were among the most personal and intimate likenesses people had painted of themselves. They were intended only for the eyes of the recipient and could be worn – often directly over the heart – and viewed at will. The portraits were a way to keep memories alive in the event of a long separation or to provide comfort after the loss of a loved one.

Portrait miniatures were widespread in Europe around 1800. Often made for the nobility, they also became popular with the aspiring bourgeoisie – including in Hamburg, which experienced an economic boom in the late eighteenth century that impacted the art world. Private collections were formed, the Kunstverein was founded, and exhibitions, liberal auction laws and new techniques such as the daguerreotype and lithography contributed to Hamburg’s emergence as an important art centre. Internationally renowned miniaturists such as Domenico Bossi and Pierre-Louis Bouvier lived and worked for a time in the Hanseatic city, which itself produced outstanding artists including Heinrich Jacob Aldenrath, Friedrich Carl Gröger, and Ferdinand and Caroline Stelzner.

Text from the Hamburger Kunsthalle website

Pierre-Charles Hénard (French, 1756-1813)
Lady with straw hat and puppy
c. 1795
Watercolour and gouache on ivory
7.3cm
The Tansey Miniatures Foundation, Celle
© Foto: Birgitt Schmedding

Hénard was born in Bourg-en-Bresse on 11 February 1756. He was the son of the goldsmith Vincent Hénard and of Elisabeth Cadet. After having studied with Taraval, Hénard worked in both France and England. He exhibited at London’s Royal Academy from 1785 to 1800, and in Paris in 1791 and from 1806 to 1812. He worked in Hamburg from mid-1796 to the spring of 1797. After emigrating to the United States in 1811 on board of the Susquehanna, he lived in Baltimore and showed some of his works in 1812 and 1813 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Text from The Tansey Miniatures Foundation website

Domenico Bossi (German born Italy, 1767–1853)
Lady in a white dress with blue trim
c. 1800
Watercolour and gouache on ivory
6.2cm
The Tansey Miniatures Foundation, Celle
© Foto: Birgitt Schmedding

With FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. Miniatures from the Romantic Era, the Hamburger Kunsthalle is presenting its first major exhibition devoted to the multifaceted art of miniature painting in Hamburg, from its heyday circa 1800 to the 1840s, when it was replaced by early photography. The show is based on portrait miniatures from the Kunsthalle’s own collection that were restored and catalogued in 2023-2024. Around 60 of these miniatures will be shown for the first time here, together with some 150 works on loan from European and private collections, some of them also making their public debut. Accompanying the miniature portraits are a number of paintings, drawings, prints and photographs, for example a self-portrait by the painter and miniaturist Bernhard Peter von Rausch (1793-1865). This material sheds light on how miniatures were made as well as their special function and the technical modifications they required. In total, over 250 objects are on display in the Harzen Cabinet that tell of an era marked by social transformation, European exchanges and technological innovations.

Even today, people still like to carry a likeness of a loved one on their person. Before the advent of photography, such miniature portraits were precious one-offs that took hours to paint. Their small format – usually around 6 to 10 cm – and skilled execution in watercolour and gouache on wafer-thin ivory plates, sometimes backed with silver foil, hold an enduring fascination. Set in frames, brooches or cases, these miniatures were among the most personal and intimate likenesses people had painted of themselves. The miniaturists held several sittings with their clients, painting “ad vivum” [from life], often on specially developed painting desks. One such desk from the estate of the miniaturist Jean-Baptiste Jacques Augustin (1759-1832) is exhibited here for the first time, along with painting utensils and measuring instruments such as a pantograph for the true-to-scale reduction of drawings. These aids illustrate the traditional technique used to produce minia-tures on ivory and white-primed paper as well as reproduction methods devel-oped in the late eighteenth century known as Bou-Magie and Physionotrace.

The commission to make a miniature arose from an intimate relationship between two people. The likeness was intended only for the eyes of the recipient, who might wear it as jewellery – often directly over the heart – and could admire it at will. Often, such portraits were designed to keep memories alive in the event of a long separation or to provide comfort after the loss of a loved one. Added locks of hair, artful plaits, inscriptions or symbolic messages hidden in the portrait in the form of flowers, objects or animals underscore the personal nature of these works while offering a glimpse of the emotional climate in the period around 1800.

Portrait miniatures were widespread in Europe during that era. No longer reserved for the nobility, they enjoyed increasing popularity among the aspiring bourgeoisie – including in Hamburg, which experienced an economic upswing in the late eighteenth century. After the setbacks of the Napoleonic era, a prolonged period of prosperity would have a lasting influence on the arts scene in the Hanseatic city. The first private collections were formed, the Kunstverein was founded in 1817, and exhibitions, liberal auction laws and new techniques such as lithography and later daguerreotype contributed to Hamburg’s rapid rise as an important northern art centre.

Internationally renowned miniaturists such as Giovanni Domenico Bossi (1767-1853), Carl Friedrich Demiani (1768-1823), Pierre-Louis Bouvier (1765-1836), Charles Hénard (1756-1813), Jan Gottlieb Jannasch (c. 1755-1804) and Edmé Quenedey (1756-1830) lived and worked in Hamburg for a time. And the Hanseatic city itself produced some outstanding artists during this period, including Leo Lehmann (1782-1859), Ernst August Abel (1720-1790), Karl Friedrich Kroymann (1781-1849) and Christopher Suhr (1771-1842). Friedrich Carl Gröger (1766-1838) and Heinrich Jakob Aldenrath (1775-1844) were particularly influential.

With the invention of photography in 1839, a medium rose to popularity that would take over the function of the portrait miniature and eventually replace it completely. The daguerreotype (also known as helio-graphy) made it possible to produce small-format portraits that were not only more realistic but also sig-nificantly faster to realise. A sitting for a miniature portrait soon took less than a minute. Thanks to the low cost of production, artists could now attract a new clientele. Carl Ferdinand Stelzner (1805-1894) from Hamburg and his wife Caroline (1808-1875) initially painted miniatures before Carl Ferdinand in particular successfully turned his attention to portrait photography in 1842. And yet, the portrait miniature did not go completely out of fashion. The artist Enrichetta Fioroni-Narducci (1806-1892), who worked in Rome, and her sister Teresa Fioroni (1799-1880), for example, augmented their income with miniature versions of famous paintings that were extremely popular with mid-nineteenth-century travellers. The Kunsthalle is home to five of their works, on display in the exhibition.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication (Michael Imhof Verlag, edited by Sabine Zorn and Bernd Pappe, approx. 160 pages), which is available in the museum shop or at http://www.freunde-der-kunsthalle.de for a price of 29 euros, as well as in bookstores.

Press release from Hamburger Kunsthalle

Carl Friedrich Demiani (German, 1768-1823)
Man in blue coat, 1805
1805
Watercolour and gouache on ivory
8.8 x 7.4cm
The Tansey Miniatures Foundation, Celle
© Foto: Birgitt Schmedding

Bernhard Peter von Rausch (German, 1793-1865)
Self-portrait in the studio in Munich
c. 1830
Oil on canvas
37.8 x 29.8cm
Hamburger Kunsthalle, © Hamburger Kunsthalle / ARTOTHEK
Foto: Christoph Irrgang

Bernhard Peter von Rausch was a German painter and lithographer.

Carl Ferdinand Stelzner (German, 1805-1894)
Ulla, the dog in the Stelzner household
1850-1865
Daguerreotype
7.3 x 6.3cm
© Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

Among all of the daguerreotypes produced before the advent of the wet-plate swept it aside, it is rare to see pictures of animals. Slezner’s portrait of his dog stands out as a tribute to his attaining an unusual facility in his medium.

No doubt obedient, Ulla the dog has nary a muscle during the long exposure, which, even if by 1860 Slezner was achieving high speeds with his lens and by pimping the daguerreotype process, would have still run into tens of seconds. It is quite a feat; a faint double image of snout and then only the slightest movement around the collar and end of the nose, due to a dog’s rapid breathing, can be discerned.

Associate Professor James McArdle. “December 30: Action,” on the On This Date In Photography website 30/12/2016 [Online] Cited 05/06/2026

Carl Ferdinand Stelzner (German, 1805-1894)

Carl Ferdinand Stelzner was a began his career as a lithographer and engraver, but became interested in photography in the early 1840s. He learnt the daguerreotype process from Louis Daguerre himself and opened his own studio in Berlin in 1845.

Stelzner quickly became known for his high-quality daguerreotypes, which were prized for their clarity and detail. He used a large-format camera that allowed him to capture images with incredible precision, and he experimented with different lighting techniques to create dramatic effects.

As well as his technical skill, Stelzner was also known for his artistic ability. He often posed his subjects in carefully composed scenes and was adept at capturing their personalities and emotions.

Stelzner’s work was exhibited widely throughout Europe and he won numerous awards for his photography. He continued to work as a photographer until his death in 1894 at the age of 88.

Today, Stelzner’s daguerreotypes are highly prized by collectors and museums around the world. They offer a fascinating glimpse into the early days of photography and continue to inspire photographers today.

Text from the Picryl website [Online] Cited 05/06/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

Unknown photographer
Mr. Crowe
c. 1845
Daguerreotype, framed by braided hair, on a brooch
5.5 x 6.5cm
Sammlung Gummersbach
© Foto: Jakob Schnetz

Hamburger Kunsthalle
Glockengießerwall 5
20095 Hamburg

Opening hours:
Monday – Thursday 10am – 3pm
Friday 10am – 2pm

Hamburger Kunsthalle website

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Exhibition: ‘Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography’ at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York

Exhibition dates: 28th June, 2025 – 21st June, 2026

Curators: Ron Magliozzi, Curator, with Katie Trainor, Film Collections Manager and Cara Shatzman, Collection Specialist, Department of Film.

Bob Beerman (American)
Rock Hudson
c. 1953
Sheet: 9 15/16 x 8″ (25.2 x 20.3cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

Silhouetting the celebrity

MoMA always puts on interesting photography exhibitions and this one is no exception. Of course, they have a huge collection to draw from, but it still takes intelligence and curatorial inspiration to bring it all together.

It took me a long time to compile the posting. There were not many media images available but with a bit of digging around on the MoMA collection web pages, and searching online, I managed to find enough photographs to illustrate the exhibition / plus the installation photographs / and the addition of movie posters and magazines to illuminate the films the still photographs were taken from (please note: not in the exhibition). While many of the publicity shots were taken by unknown stills photographers, I have also added bibliographic information for the known photographers where possible.

This would be my only criticism of the exhibition: the inability of the viewer to visualise how these “covered with masking tape, marked up with crayon, or reconfigured with ghostly halos of white-out” photographs were actually used (in the press in everyday life) to create the fantasy ideals of Hollywood glamour stars. Perhaps this was a deliberate curatorial strategy, to concentrate on the pre-production rather than the post-production, to concentrate just on the still photos, without the distraction of further stimuli. And I can understand that decision.

In this posting I can show you three examples of how these still photographs were used: the untouched photograph Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in “This Earth is Mine”] by an unknown photographer (1959, below) has then been colourised and used on the front cover of the DVD release of this film; the Limehouse Blues movie poster (1934, below) features a white-out around George Raft’s head, similar to the white-out around Joan Crawford or Rock Hudson (above); and the hair of Elsa Manchester in Elsa Lanchester [in “The Bride of Frankenstein”] by an unknown photographer (1935, below) is graphically stylised and coloured in the The Bride of Frankenstein movie poster (1935, below).

Silhouetting, in-painting, masking, sectioning, and collage were all hands-on practices that readied the photographs for the press whilst in press they promoted the desirous ideal of the glamorous movie starlet, heroic action man, the fantasy ready and available for consumption by the reading public: the beautiful heroine available to the male gaze, aspirational for so many young women.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to MoMA for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“Though Iris Barry, who in 1935 became the founding curator of The Museum of Modern Art’s Film Library, aimed to preserve the history of moving images as an art form, she didn’t stop at moving images. “She was trying to save the record of film history,” explains Ron Magliozzi, a curator in what is today known as the Department of Film. “When the department was founded, the silent period had just ended. And its whole history was considered irrelevant and of no interest. That’s why she was so aggressive in collecting it. Films were the most important thing, and images from film history were second.”

Today, the Museum’s Film Stills Collection includes well over a million publicity photos, production stills, and more – and it’s not all pristine, glossy prints. In the current exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography, many of the images are covered with masking tape, marked up with crayon, or reconfigured with ghostly halos of white-out. It’s an occasionally startling reminder that the manipulation of photographs – and of celebrity itself – long predates Photoshop and Instagram.”

Jason Persse, Assistant Director, Content Team, MoMA

The Museum of Modern Art announces Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography, the first major exhibition of Hollywood studio portraiture to be drawn from the Museum’s film stills archive since 1993. On view in the Titus and Morita Galleries, the exhibition will offer a revisionist look at the Department of Film’s photographic archive, examining the evolution of editorial practice before the digital age, AI technology, and social media reshaped the experience of celebrity.

Face Value will feature over 200 works from 1921 to 1996, including studio photography of Louis Armstrong, Harry Belafonte, Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Katharine Hepburn, Dennis Hopper, Lena Horne, Bela Lugosi, Carmen Miranda, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross, Barbara Stanwyck, Elizabeth Taylor, Spencer Tracy, Oprah Winfrey, and many others.

Text from the MoMA website

Installation view of the exhibition 'Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography' at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 - June 2026

Installation views of the exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 – June 2026 showing in the left hand block of 9 photographs of the bottom image, from left to right top row to bottom row: Ray Jones’ Margaret Sullavan c. 1939 (below); Clarence Sinclair Bull’s Hedy Lamarr c. 1940; Adolph L. “Whitey” Schafer’s Rosalind Russell c. 1940; Ray Jones’ Mischa Auer c. 1940; Unknown photographer Harry Belafonte [in “The Angel Levine”] 1970; Irving Lippman’s George Raft c. 1933; Hal Phyfe’s Miriam Hopkins c. 1930; Unknown photographer Dorothy Gish c. 1929; and Imandt’s Joan Bennett c. 1939
Photos: Jonathan Dorado

Ray Jones (American, 1901-1947)
Margaret Sullavan
c. 1939
Sheet: 13 7/8 x 10 7/8″ (35.2 x 27.6cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

Installation view of the exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 – June 2026 showing at right in the bottom image at third left in top row, Unknown photographer Jackie Robinson c. 1950
Photos: Jonathan Dorado

Unknown photographer
Jackie Robinson
c. 1950
Sheet: 10 x 8″ (25.4 x 20.3cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

The Museum of Modern Art announces Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography, the first major exhibition of Hollywood studio portraiture to be drawn from the Museum’s film stills archive since 1993. On view in the Titus and Morita Galleries from June 28, 2025, through June 21, 2026, the exhibition will offer a revisionist look at the Department of Film’s photographic archive, examining the evolution of editorial practice before the digital age, AI technology, and social media reshaped the experience of celebrity.

Face Value will feature over 200 works from 1921to 1996, including studio photography of Louis Armstrong, Harry Belafonte, Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Katharine Hepburn, Dennis Hopper, Lena Horne, Bela Lugosi, Carmen Miranda, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross, Barbara Stanwyck, Elizabeth Taylor, Spencer Tracy, Oprah Winfrey, and many others.

Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography is organised by Ron Magliozzi, Curator, with Katie Trainor, Film Collections Manager, and Cara Shatzman, Collection Specialist, Department of Film.

“Face Value will encourage viewers to see through the facade of glamour at how celebrity is fabricated and exploited,” says Ron Magliozzi. Showcasing work by over 58 photographers, the exhibition will juxtapose “untouched” images like Otto Dyar’s Carole Lombard (c. 1933) with those altered through traditional press practices such as silhouetting, in-painting, masking, sectioning, and collage, like James Manatt’s Joan Crawford portrait for the film Letty Lynton (1932). Face Value examines how these methods shaped representations of not only film stars but also sports figures, socialites, and politicians, from Jackie Robinson to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Eleanor Roosevelt. Presented in thematic suites, the installation highlights radical editing techniques, stylised visual motifs, and the gendered aesthetics embedded in the system, offering a revealing perspective on the fabrication of glamour and fame.

Since the Museum’s founding, photography has played a vital role in how it has documented the history of motion pictures. Face Value traces the origin of this early initiative to MoMA’s first film curator, Iris Barry, whose archival efforts led to the acquisition of editorial collections from Photoplay (1911-1980) and Dell (1921-1976), two leading publications that helped define Hollywood’s star system. The exhibition includes images of comic stars Buster Keaton, W. C. Fields, Lupe Velez, and Mae West; pioneering actress Hattie McDaniel with Ruby Berkley, the first Black accredited Hollywood correspondent; famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart on a Hollywood film set; and the last photo shoot with Marilyn Monroe.

Featuring promotional portraits crafted to cultivate celebrity personas, such as Ray Jones’s Anna May Wong portrait for the film Limehouse Blues, Soul of a Dragon (1934), the exhibition explores how these images were manipulated for public consumption through hands-on editing techniques long before digital tools became standard.

Press release from MoMA

Installation view of the exhibition 'Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography' at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 - June 2026 showing a video still from 'Edie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga, Benedetta Barzini, Ingrid Superstar, Nat Finkelstein: Danny Williams footage of unknown documentary film shoot' c. 1965, processed 2024

Installation views of the exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 – June 2026 showing in the bottom two photographs, video stills from Edie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga, Benedetta Barzini, Ingrid Superstar, Nat Finkelstein: Danny Williams footage of unknown documentary film shoot c. 1965, processed 2024 (below)
Photos: Jonathan Dorado

Edie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga, Benedetta Barzini, Ingrid Superstar, Nat Finkelstein: Danny Williams footage of unknown documentary film shoot
c. 1965, processed 2024
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

Edie Sedgwick dances in Andy Warhol’s Silver Factory during a photoshoot

Installation view of the exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 – June 2026 showing at top centre, Jacqueline Kennedy with Caroline Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Jr. 1960s; and a bottom centre, Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher with Michael Wilding Jr. and Christopher Wilding 1960s
Photo: Jonathan Dorado

Installation view of the exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 – June 2026 showing from top left to right, top to bottom, Unknown photographer Harry Belafonte and Joan Fontaine 1957 (below); Gene Lester (American, 1910-1994) Dean and Jeannne Martin 1958; Bob Beerman (American) Rock Hudson c. 1953 (top of posting); Unknown photographer Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in “This Earth is Mine”] 1959 (below); Unknown photographer Jean Simmons [in “The Big Country”] 1958; Unknown photographer Elizabeth Threatt and Dewey Martin [in “The Big Sky”] 1952; Unknown photographer Dorothy Malone and Anthony Quinn 1957; Unknown photographer André De Toth and Veronica Lake 1944; Unknown photographer Edmund O’Brien and Tom D’Andrea [in “Fighter Squadron”] 1948; Unknown photographer Ward Bond and Ida Lupino [in “On Dangerous Ground”] 1951; Unknown photographer Aldo Ray and Katharine Hepburn [in “Pat and Mike”] 1952
Photo: Jonathan Dorado

Unknown photographer
Harry Belafonte and Joan Fontaine [in “Island in the Sun”]
1957
Sheet: 6 15/16 × 9 1/16″ (17.6 × 23 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

Unknown photographer
Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in “This Earth is Mine”]
1959
Sheet: 8 x 9 15/16″ (20.3 x 25.2cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

This Earth is Mine (1959) DVD cover

Otto Dyar (American, 1892-1988)
Carole Lombard
c. 1933
Sheet: 13 7/8 x 10 1/2″ (35.2 x 26.7cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

Hollywood stills photographers like Dyar “were not mirroring life, but illusion; their subjects were not humans but gods – of love, of allure, of luxury, perfection incarnate from the golden age of Hollywood glamor”

John Kobal (ed), Hollywood glamor portraits, Courier Corporation, 1976, p.V on the Wikipedia website

Otto Dyar was a prominent stills photographer who began his career at the Paramount studios in the 1920s. Initially working as an assistant on major film productions such as the 1927 ‘Wings’, Dyar quickly rose through the ranks to become one of Hollywood’s most notable image-makers.

During the 1930s and 40s, Dyar developed his own, highly dramatic style of lighting and photography that deviated from the neoclassical glamor of the 1920s. Edgy and expressionistic, Dyar’s photographs pushed the iconic features of movie stars like Carole Lombard, Cary Grant, Kay Francis and Joan Crawford to a grittier place that was more in accord with the aesthetics of films made in those decades. Of particular note are Dyar’s star portraits taken outside of the studio, an unusual and daring step at the time.

Despite all the high-contrast lighting, skewed angles and often tiny ‘surrealist’ interventions that point to the influence of photographers like Man Ray, Dyar faithfully accomplished the task of elevating the studio stars to the realm of deities. Like his peers George Hurrell, Ted Allen and Clarence Sinclair Bull, Dyar was not concerned with the psychologies of his sitters. What interested him was amplifying and consolidating the image the stars exuded in their roles, which was usually so powerful that it eclipsed the ‘real’ person that was in front of the camera.

Vigen Galstyan. “Dyar, Otto,” on the Lusadaran: Armenian Photography Foundation website 2015 [Online] Cited 02/04/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

Otto Dyar (American, 1892-1988)
Louise Brooks
c. 1927
Sheet: 13 15/16 x 10 15/16″ (35.4 x 27.8cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

Otto Dyar (American, 1892-1988)
Anna May Wong
1930s
Sheet: 13 7/8 x 10 7/8″ (35.2 x 27.6cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

Ray Jones (American, 1901-1947)
Anna May Wong [in “Limehouse Blues”]
1934
Sheet: 12 7/8 x 10″ (32.7 x 25.4cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

Limehouse Blues (1934) movie poster

Unknown photographer
Anna May Wong
c. 1934
MoMA Film Stills Archive
Sheet: 8 x 6″ (20.3 x 15.2cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

Unknown photographer
Myrna Loy [in “Across the Pacific”]
1926
Sheet: 11 x 14″ (27.9 x 35.6cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

Advertisement for the American romantic adventure film Across the Pacific (1926) with Monte Blue and Myrna Loy, on pages 6 and 7 of the October 26, 1926 Film Daily

John Miehle (American, 1902-1952)
Dolores del Rio and Edmund Lowe [in “The Bad One”]
1930
Sheet: 13 7/8 x 10 15/16″ (35.2 x 27.8cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

John Miehle was born on August 7, 1902 in Los Angeles, California. Being born so close to Hollywood Miehle went to work as an assistant camera man on the 1931 movie “Delicious” starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell.

He then worked exclusively in the Camera and Electrical Department doing uncredited still photography on some of the best known films, such as “What Price Hollywood?,” “Rain,” “Little Women,” “Top Hat,” “Kitty Foyle,” “Rope” and “Portrait of Jennie.”

He photographed many of the greats as well including Constance Bennett, Joan Crawford, Irene Dunne, Ginger Rogers, Ann Harding, William Powell, Joel McCrea, Katherine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Delores Del Rio, Randolph Scott, James Stewart, Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Ruth Hussey, Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Ethel Barrymoore, Laraine Day, Franchot Tone, Ann Blyth, Farley Granger, and Dana Andrews…

In addition, he did many publicity shots of such stars as Carole Lombard, Marilyn Monroe, and Lucille Ball.

Don’t Forget The Illustrator! “The Classics and “Ginger Rogers” photographer John Miehle,” on the Vintage Movie Star Photos blog Thursday, March 28, 2013 [Online] Cited 12/05/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

The Bad One (1930) movie poster

William Walling Jr (American, 1904-1983)
Carole Lombard
c. 1933
Sheet: 13 7/8 x 11 15/16″ (35.2 x 30.3cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

William Richard Walling, Jr. (October 6, 1904 – December 11, 1983) was an American actor, inventor, and portrait photographer for film studios.

Robert Coburn (American, 1900-1990)
Vera Zorina [in “The Goldywyn Follies”]
c. 1937
Sheet: 13 13/16 x 10 15/16″ (35.1 x 27.8cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

Eva Brigitta Hartwig (January 2, 1917 – April 9, 2003), known professionally as Vera Zorina, was a German-Norwegian ballerina, theatre and film actress, and choreographer, chiefly remembered for her films choreographed by her husband George Balanchine. They include the Slaughter on Tenth Avenue sequence from On Your Toes, The Goldwyn Follies, I Was an Adventuress with Erich Von Stroheim and Peter Lorre, Louisiana Purchase with Bob Hope, and dancing to “That Old Black Magic” in Paramount Pictures’ Star Spangled Rhythm.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Robert Coburn was one of the most influential portrait photographers working in the major Hollywood movie studios from the 1930’s to 1960’s. His star subjects included Rita Hayworth, Joan Crawford, Kim Novak, Carole Lombard, William Holden, Glenn Ford, and Orson Welles. Coburn’s most infamous portraits immortalised Hollywood’s greatest icons and helped to define this era as the Golden Age of Cinema. In 1940, Robert Coburn began a twenty-year career with Columbia Pictures as the head of the still production department and the studio’s chief portrait photographer for many landmark films including “Picnic”, “Gilda”, and “The Big Heat”.

Text from the Fahey/Klein Gallery website

Goldwyn Follies (1937) movie poster

Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography Introductory text

For MoMA’s founding film curator, Iris Barry, building an archive of images that documented the history of motion pictures was second only to collecting films. Photographs from the study collection that she created were among the first works exhibited in MoMA’s theater gallery. Barry’s initiative eventually led to the acquisition of editorial archives from Photoplay (1911-1980) and Dell (1921-1976), leading fan magazine publishers supporting the Hollywood star system. The portrait photography featured in these publications was produced by film studios to promote the glamorous celebrities under contract to them. Face Value looks at these images and surveys how they were manipulated for public consumption in the decades before digital tools, AI technology, and social media revolutionized the process.

Over sixty photographers are represented in this installation, which intermingles images that survive untouched with those that show evidence of the hands-on practices that readied them for the press. The standard techniques used – silhouetting, in-painting, masking, sectioning, and collage – were applied not only to photographs of entertainers but to sports figures, socialites, and politicians as well. Organised in suites that highlight radical editing practices, stylised visual motifs, and the gender stereotypes inherent in the studio system, the exhibition offers a demystifying perspective on the glamour of celebrity.

Wall text from the exhibition

George P. Hommel (American, 1901-1953)
Clara Bow
c. 1929
Sheet: 14 x 11″ (35.6 x 27.9 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

Overshadowed by the work of 1920s Paramount colleagues Donald Biddle Keyes and Eugene Robert Richee, stillsman George P. Hommel crafted thoughtful portraits highlighting both the beauty and sorrow of those he photographed. Like Keyes, the peripatetic Hommel always looked for new challenges, new opportunities, keeping him on the move. Unobstrusive and elegant, Hommel’s work reveals hidden depths in those he shot. …

Hommel’s straightforward portraiture captured the vulnerability of his sitters, revealing a wistful and often melancholic look in their expressive eyes. His pensive work focused on serious matters, not straining to create fleeting moods but revealing the heart of those he photographed. Employing simple, dark-textured background, Hommel focused on the eyes and lips, creating a sharp image with an often soft-focus background. His portraits often feature shadows and strong angular lines, creating dramatic composition. Hommel could also capture the sometimes insouciant or even overly exuberant emotions of sitters, often covering their vulnerability and pain, such as in his Pierrot portraits of Clara Bow as clown.

lmharnisch. “Mary Mallory / Hollywood Heights: George P. Hommel, Pensive Photographer,” on The Daily Mirror website, July 27, 2020 [Online] Cited 12/05/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

James Manatt (American, 1896-1989)
Joan Crawford [in “Letty Lynton”]
1932
Sheet: 13 x 10″ (33 x 25.4cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

Letty Lynton (1932) movie posters

Elmer Fryer (American, 1898-1944)
Lili Damita [in “The Match King”]
c. 1932
Sheet: 14 1/16 x 11″ (35.7 x 27.9cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

The Match King (1932) movie poster

Bert Longworth (American, 1893-1964)
Amelia Earhart with Helen Hayes [on set of “A Farewell to Arms”]
1932
Sheet: 13 15/16 x 10 7/8″ (35.4 x 27.6cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

As the studio system came into place with the advent of talkies, studios hired many stillsmen to take scene stills, off-camera images, and candids of both above and below the line talent. Photographers took massive amounts of stills around the lot, at public events, premieres, at homes, in posed shots, to be widely distributed to magazines and newspapers for free publicity promoting upcoming films, new talent, and established stars. The journals, fan magazines, and newspapers splashed these images throughout their pages, building awareness and star popularity.

Bert “Buddy” Longworth was one of the stills photographers taking these images. Longworth began his career shooting scene stills at MGM for Greta Garbo’s first three films, including “Flesh and the Devil,” with Longworth capturing the passion of Garbo and John Gilbert as they fell in love. He was employed for a short time at Paramount, but from 1929 on, he worked at Warner Bros. as an action specialist, working on Busby Berkeley’s spectacular musicals, crime pictures, off-set candids, as well as portraits. Scholar David Shields calls him “Hollywood’s foremost expressionist, often using unusual perspective, occasional use of multiple exposures.”

lmharnisch. “Mary Mallory / Hollywood Heights: Bert Longworth and ‘Hold Still, Hollywood’,” on The Daily Mirror website, June 26, 2023 [Online] Cited 12/05/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

A Farewell To Arms (1932) movie poster

Unknown photographer
Elsa Lanchester [in “The Bride of Frankenstein”]
1935
Sheet: 13 1/2 x 9 3/16″ (34.3 x 23.3cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) movie poster

I want to talk more about the edited photographs. In many of the photos white-out has been used to separate the subject’s head or face – and in one notable case, their bare legs – from the rest of the image. What are some ways in which these disembodied segments were used by the studios and by the magazines?

RM: We know they were from Photoplay magazine, so if we have a still that’s been edited for Photoplay, Cara went and looked for the issue that published the photograph to see how it was used. It might have been a feature on women’s legs, so that’s why they only focused on the legs.

There’s one grouping of photographs, I call it the “eat face grouping,” where the stars are very close up. There’s a photograph of someone eating someone’s chin. Those were all taken for a particular issue of Photoplay – that’s why they’re all edited in the same way.

With research and detective work you can determine how they were actually used in print. The floating heads, they would attach to biographies. They call that silhouetting, with the white-out.

CS: A lot of the uses I found were very gossipy, which was interesting, a lot of rumor columns. And then of course, like Ron said, highlighting certain aspects of celebrities’ bodies or features.

Back in 1980 MoMA’s exhibition Hollywood Portrait Photographers, 1921 to 1941 actually used a couple of the same images that appear in this show. But that nnnexhibition celebrated the artistry and glamor of these images. Why did you choose to focus more on the ways that these images have been manipulated and edited?

RM: The audience for photographs like this has changed. In 1980 there was a whole generation of people who knew who these performers were, who appreciated them as performers and appreciated their celebrity. Nowadays, younger audiences, in many cases, have no idea who these folks are. Even we sometimes have trouble identifying everyone. Displaying them in that way seemed dated. We wanted to mount them in a way that reflected how visitors today would need to look at them.

The photographs in 1980 were all matted in a very formal way that encouraged appreciation for the beauty of the photograph. I wasn’t interested in how beautiful the images were. I wasn’t interested in the celebrities. We’re mostly interested in the photographs. I wanted them to look like working photographs, and that’s reflected in the way they’re displayed. We did ours on plexi traps, which turned out to be very elegant, but the notion was that it would be a less precious way of mounting them so we would look at them in a less precious way.

The other thing we did differently was to have large numbers of photographs grouped in very dense clusters. To me that reflects social media today. The way we encounter images daily is so dense, and we’re forced to sort through a lot of images that come our way in any one moment. So I wanted visitors to have a contemporary view. It was meant to reflect a digital-age perspective, because analog-versus-digital was a subtext of the show in our heads.

There were two shows that were touchstones for this one: the Hollywood Portrait show of 1980, and the Fame After Photography show, a wonderful show in 1999 that MoMA’s Photography department mounted. They borrowed a lot of film stills for that show, which was also investigating celebrity and fame.

Ron Magliozzi, Cara Shatzman, Jason Persse. “Cropped, Chopped, and Silhouetted: Taking Celebrity at Face Value,” in the MoMA magazine on the MoMA website Sep 17, 2025 [Online] Cited 10/05/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

Unknown photographer
Louis Armstrong [in “Cabin in the Sky”]
1943
Sheet: 8 x 10″ (20.3 x 25.4 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

Cabin in the sky (1943) movie poster

Unknown photographer
Hattie McDaniel and Ruby Berkley Goodwin
c. 1948
Sheet: 9 1/16 x 7″ (23 x 17.8cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

“[Ruby Berkley Goodwin] was also Hattie McDaniel’s publicist. And she was Ethel Waters’s publicist. She was the first Black American to have a syndicated newspaper column. She wrote this very famous autobiography called It’s Good to Be Black that was very, very popular. She was a poet. She was a fascinating person, and I was not familiar with her. That was a great aspect of learning about all of these people in these photographs.”

Ron Magliozzi, Cara Shatzman, Jason Persse. “Cropped, Chopped, and Silhouetted: Taking Celebrity at Face Value,” in the MoMA magazine on the MoMA website Sep 17, 2025 [Oline] Cited 10/05/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

Unknown photographer
Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis
c. 1950 (detail)
Sheet: 8 1/16 x 10″ (20.5 x 25.4cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

Elvis Presley [Fans’ Star Library magazine, No. 13]
1959
Sheet: 7 x 5 1/8″ (17.8 x 13cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian born Mardin, Ottoman Empire (now Turkey), 1908-2002)
Anna Magnani
1959
Sheet: 20 x 15 15/16″ (50.8 x 40.5cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

Anna Maria Magnani (Italian, 1908-1973)

Anna Maria Magnani (Italian; 7 March 1908 – 26 September 1973) was an Italian actress. She was the first Italian woman to win an Academy Award.

Born and raised in Rome, Italy or Alexandria, she worked her way through Rome’s Academy of Dramatic Art by singing at night clubs. During her career, her only child was stricken by polio when he was 18 months old and remained disabled. She was referred to as “La Lupa”, the “perennial toast of Rome” and a “living she-wolf symbol” of the cinema. Time described her personality as “fiery”, and drama critic Harold Clurman said her acting was “volcanic”. In the realm of Italian cinema, she was “passionate, fearless, and exciting”, an actress whom film historian Barry Monush calls “the volcanic earth mother of all Italian cinema.” Director Roberto Rossellini called her “the greatest acting genius since Eleonora Duse”. Playwright Tennessee Williams became an admirer of her acting and wrote The Rose Tattoo (1955) specifically for her to star in, a role for which she received an Academy Award for Best Actress.

After meeting director Goffredo Alessandrini, she received her first screen role in The Blind Woman of Sorrento (La cieca di Sorrento, 1934) and later achieved international attention in Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (1945), which is seen as launching the Italian neorealism movement in cinema. As an actress, she became recognised for her dynamic and forceful portrayals of “earthy lower-class women” in such films as L’Amore (1948), Bellissima (1951), The Rose Tattoo (1955), The Fugitive Kind (1960) and Mamma Roma (1962). As early as 1950, Life had already stated that Magnani was “one of the most impressive actresses since Garbo”.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Unknown photographer
Carlo Ponti and Sophia Loren
c. 1963
Sheet: 8 x 10″ (20.3 x 25.4cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

Ray Wilson
Mia Farrow [in “Rosemary’s Baby”]
c. 1967
Sheet: 12 x 8 3/16″ (30.5 x 20.8cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

Rosemary’s Baby (1968) movie poster

Kathleen Ballard
Lena Horne
1975
Sheet: 13 1/16 x 9″ (33.2 x 22.9cm)
The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street
New York, NY 10019
Phone: (212) 708-9400

Opening hours:
10.30am – 5.30pm
Open seven days a week

MoMA website

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Exhibition: ‘From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years’ at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington

Exhibition dates: 20th June, 2025 – 7th June, 2026

Curator: Ann Shumard, Senior Curator of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington

Mathew B. Brady (American, 1822-1896) 'John C. Calhoun' 1849 from the exhibition 'From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography's Formative Years' at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 2025 - June 2026

Mathew B. Brady (American, 1822-1896)
John C. Calhoun
1849
Whole-plate daguerreotype
Image/Sight: 20.2 x 15cm (7 15/16 x 5 7/8″)
Mat (brass): 24.3 x 19.4cm (9 9/16 x 7 5/8″)
Frame: 35 x 30 x 2.5cm (13 3/4 x 11 13/16 x 1″)
Case closed: 5.8 x 34.3 x 39.7cm (2 5/16 x 13 1/2 x 15 5/8″)
Case open: 5.8 x 72.7 x 39.7cm (2 5/16 x 28 5/8 x 15 5/8″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Gift of Stephan Loewentheil

Mathew Brady’s mastery of the whole plate is on full display in this compelling portrait – the last daguerreotype made of Senator John C. Calhoun before his death in 1850. A contemporary praised the portrait as one of “the best which Mr. Brady has taken himself,” adding, “So perfect was it regarded by the family [of Calhoun], that several copies of it have been made at their request.” Commenting on his subject’s most notable feature, Brady observed, “Calhoun’s eye was startling, and almost hypnotised me.” A painting based on this daguerreotype was commissioned by Brady and now hangs in the U.S. Senate.

Text from the National Portrait Gallery website

High-class portraits

Eight white men (all whole-plate daguerreotypes) and one black woman (whole-plate tintype) – sounds about right.

“To put the era’s pricing in context, a year’s supply of coal for a working-class family in 1850 cost $15 – the minimum price for a Southworth & Hawes whole-plate daguerreotype. The whole plate was therefore too expensive for most consumers… A whole-plate tintype was likely priced from $.75 to $1 in the 1860s, when the average daily wage of a labourer was only $2.”

Picture and price / detail and scale / delicacy of lights and shadows / beauty of execution – execution being the operative word, considering the upcoming devastation of the American Civil War.

Thus, from unapologetic enslaver (Calhoun) who “staunchly defended chattel slavery and its expansion beyond the American South” and whose painting based on Brady’s daguerreotype hangs in the American senate (really!) – to an unidentified literate Black woman, birthplace unknown, born May 10, 1811 taken by an unknown photographer.

I know which one I would rather honour.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the National Portrait Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“Competition prompted photographers such as Mathew Brady and Southworth & Hawes to produce advertisements that provided a wealth of detail about the services offered by their respective establishments … I am inclined to think that word of mouth may well have played a greater role in motivating patronage. In the case of Brady and Southworth & Hawes, the knowledge that these studios counted national celebrities among their clientele could have been a strong inducement for the general public to patronise them as well. …

While the National Portrait Gallery’s collection of early photography is substantial, it’s the rare whole-plate daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes that stand out for their detail and scale. This exhibition allows visitors to consider how new photographic processes impacted the quality and appeal of the medium … As an aside, the impetus for ‘From Shadow to Substance’ was the extraordinary gift to the museum in 2023 of Mathew Brady’s iconic whole-plate daguerreotype of the powerful antebellum senator John C. Calhoun. A subsequent review of other whole-plates in the Portrait Gallery’s collection sparked consideration of the format’s staying power as a top-of-the-line offering through the succession of early photographic processes. This is the story the exhibition seeks to illuminate.”

Ann Shumard, Senior Curator of Photographs quoted in Kate Garibaldi. “How Portrait Photography’s ‘Grand-Scale’ Origins Changed History,” on the Petapixel website Aug 01, 2025 [Online] Cited 26/02/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing Mathew B. Brady (American, 1822-1896) John C. Calhoun 1849 (above)

Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing Francis D’Avignon (French, 1813 – c. 1871) Copy after Mathew B. Brady (American, 1823? – 15 Jan 1896) John Caldwell Calhoun, 18 Mar 1782 – 31 Mar 1850 1850

Francis D’Avignon (French, 1813 – c. 1871)
Copy after
Mathew B. Brady (American, 1822-1896)
John Caldwell Calhoun, 18 Mar 1782 – 31 Mar 1850
1850
Lithograph on paper
Sheet: 56.7 x 40.6cm (22 5/16 x 16″)
Book: The Gallery of Illustrious Americans
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

During the first half of the nineteenth century, John C. Calhoun held sway as one of the nation’s most influential politicians. While serving as a senator from South Carolina (1832-1843; 1845-1850), he was unyielding in his advocacy for Southern interests. Under the banner of states’ rights, he supported the concept of nullification. This doctrine maintained that states had the authority to ignore federal laws by declaring them null and void. An unapologetic enslaver, Calhoun staunchly defended chattel slavery and its expansion beyond the American South. Though he died more than a decade before the Civil War began, his views were widely embraced in the Southern states. They ultimately provided justification for secession from the Union. Mathew Brady’s daguerreotype of Calhoun, on view nearby, is faithfully reproduced in this print. It is one of twelve lithographic portraits in a portfolio published by Brady and titled The Gallery of Illustrious Americans.

Text from the National Portrait Gallery website

Installation views of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026

Photographers seeking customers during the medium’s early years often urged the public to “Secure the shadow, ere the substance fade.” Hinting at life’s fragility, this tagline underscored photography’s ability to capture a fleeting likeness and preserve it for posterity. Portraits in the impressive whole-plate format – measuring 8.5 x 6.5 inches – were among the premier offerings of the nation’s leading photographic studios.

Drawing on the National Portrait Gallery’s extensive early photography collection, this exhibition traces the evolution of the grand-scale, whole-plate format from the high-end daguerreotype to the mid-range ambrotype to the more affordable tintype. Examples of whole plates in each of these mediums illustrate how the format evolved as new photographic processes were introduced. Featured works include daguerreotypes representing U.S. senators Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun, as well as papal nuncio Gaetano Bedini; an ambrotype portrait of American landscape artist John Frederick Kensett; and a tintype likeness of an unidentified African American woman.

Text from the National Portrait Gallery website

Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing Southworth & Hawes’ Issac P. Davis 1771-1855 and William Hickling Prescott 1796-1859 c. 1850 (below)

Southworth & Hawes (active 1843-1862)
Albert Sands Southworth (American, 1811-1894)
Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, 1808-1901)
Isaac P. Davis, 7 Oct 1771 – 13 Jan 1855
William Hickling Prescott, 4 May 1796 – 28 Jan 1859
c. 1850
Whole-plate daguerreotype
Image/Sight: 20.3 x 15.2cm (8 × 6″)
Mat (brass): 23.6 x 18.6cm (9 5/16 x 7 5/16″)
Case open: 25.3 x 40.2 x 2.3cm (9 15/16 x 15 13/16 x 7/8″)
Case closed: 25.3 x 20.7 x 3.5cm (9 15/16 x 8 1/8 x 1 3/8″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Purchase funded by the photography acquisitions endowment established by the Joseph L. and Emily K. Gidwitz Memorial Foundation

Isaac P. Davis, 7 Oct 1771 – 13 Jan 1855
Born Plymouth, Massachusetts

William Hickling Prescott, 4 May 1796 – 28 Jan 1859
Born Salem, Massachusetts

This portrait depicts two prominent Bostonians who enjoyed considerable success in their respective careers and were also known for their philanthropy. Isaac P. Davis (left) amassed a sizeable fortune in manufacturing and real estate. An original member of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, which Paul Revere helped found, he was also a patron of American artists, including Gilbert Stuart. Historian William H. Prescott (right) first earned international acclaim for his three-volume History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic (1838). Blind in one eye and with low vision in the other, Prescott was a generous supporter of Boston’s Perkins Institute for the Blind.

Text from the National Portrait Gallery website

Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 Southworth & Hawes’ Lemuel Shaw 1787-1861 c. 1851 (below)

Southworth & Hawes (active 1843-1862)
Albert Sands Southworth (American, 1811-1894)
Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, 1808-1901)
Lemuel Shaw, 9 Jan 1781 – 30 Mar 1861
c. 1851
Whole-plate daguerreotype with silver-plated copper sheet support
Plate (sight): 21.5 x 16cm (8 7/16 x 6 5/16″)
Case Open: 23.4 x 36.3 x 0.9cm (9 3/16 x 14 5/16 x 3/8″)
Case Closed: 23.4 x 18.2 x 1.8cm (9 3/16 x 7 3/16 x 11/16″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Conservation made possible by a grant from the Smithsonian’s Collections Care and Preservation Fund

Lemuel Shaw, 9 Jan 1781 – 30 Mar 1861
Born Barnstable, Massachusetts

The impact of rulings by Lemuel Shaw, chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court (1830-1860), extended well beyond the borders of his home state. Particularly in cases affecting business and industry, his decisions influenced commercial law interpretation in courts throughout the nation. He also rendered judgments in key cases concerning the fate of those who had escaped from their enslavers. Though personally opposed to slavery, Shaw believed it was “too deeply interwoven in the texture of society to be wholly or speedily eradicated.” In 1851, he issued the principal opinion supporting the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

Text from the National Portrait Gallery website

Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing showing Southworth & Hawes’ Jonas Chickering 1853 (below)

Southworth & Hawes (active 1843-1862)
Albert Sands Southworth (American, 1811-1894)
Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, 1808-1901)
Jonas Chickering, 5 Apr 1798 – 8 Dec 1853
1853
Whole-plate daguerreotype
Image: 20 x 15cm (7 7/8 x 5 7/8″)
Frame: 31.1 x 25.7 x 2.5cm (12 1/4 x 10 1/8 x 1″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Jonas Chickering, 5 Apr 1798 – 8 Dec 1853
Born Mason Village, New Hampshire

“The father of American piano making,” Jonas Chickering advanced the development of a one-piece, cast-iron frame that revolutionised piano construction. The result was an instrument that could withstand the tension exerted by its strings and resist extremes in temperature and humidity that impacted its ability to remain in tune. Chickering’s patented innovations also yielded pianos of greater volume and superior resonance. Honoured at the 1851 Crystal Palace exhibition in London, his pianos became the instruments of choice in U.S. and international concert halls.

When he posed for this portrait by Boston’s premier daguerreotypists, Chickering was at the zenith of his career.

Text from the National Portrait Gallery website

Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing Mathew B. Brady’s John Frederick Kensett 1816-1872 c. 1856 (below)

Mathew B. Brady (American, 1822-1896)
John Frederick Kensett, 22 Mar 1816 – 15 Dec 1872
c. 1856
Whole-plate ambrotype
Image: 18.4 x 13.2cm (7 1/4 x 5 3/16″)
Case Open: 23 x 36.4cm (9 1/16 x 14 5/16″)
Case Closed: 23 x 18.4cm (9 1/16 x 7 1/4″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

John Frederick Kensett, 22 Mar 1816 – 15 Dec 1872
Born Cheshire, Connecticut

In a newspaper advertisement that was published on September 29, 1855, photographer Mathew Brady announced he was now offering “AMBROTYPES – a New Style of Picture on Glass, more durable and perfect than any known method of portraiture.”

Brady’s ambrotype represents artist and engraver John Frederick Kensett, one of the most popular members of the Hudson River School’s second generation of American landscape painters. Kensett was admired for his keen observations of nature, refined compositions, and sensitive rendering of light. A member of the prestigious National Academy, he helped found New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Text from the National Portrait Gallery website

National Portrait Gallery Presents “From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years”

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery will present “From Shadow to Substance: Grand Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years” June 20 through June 7, 2026. Drawing from the museum’s extensive early photography collection, this exhibition traces the evolution of the grand scale, whole-plate portrait format from the high-end daguerreotype and mid-range ambrotype to the more affordable tintype. The exhibition is curated by Senior Curator of Photographs Ann Shumard.

Photographers seeking customers during the medium’s early years, from 1840 to 1860, often urged the public to “Secure the shadow ere the substance fade.” Hinting at life’s fragility, this tagline underscored photography’s ability to capture a fleeting likeness and preserve it for posterity. Portraits in the impressive whole-plate format – measuring 8 1/2 by 6 1/2 inches – were among the premier offerings of the nation’s leading photographic studios.

“This exhibition marks the first time these whole-plate daguerreotype, ambrotype and tintype portraits will be shown together at the Portrait Gallery,” Shumard said. Examples of whole plates in each of these mediums illustrate how the format evolved as new photographic processes were introduced. Featured works include daguerreotypes representing U.S. Senators Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun, an ambrotype portrait of American landscape artist John Frederick Kensett and a tintype likeness of an unidentified African American woman. Also included are original advertisements issued by photographers Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes, and Mathew B. Brady to promote their respective businesses. The exhibition will be presented in the Early Photography Alcove on the museum’s first floor.

Press release from the National Portrait Gallery

Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing at left, Southworth & Hawes’ Daniel Webster 1782-1852 c. 1845; and at right, Unidentified photographer Daniel Webster 1782-1852 c. 1850

Southworth & Hawes (active 1843-1862) 'Daniel Webster 1782-1852' c. 1845

Southworth & Hawes (active 1843-1862)
Albert Sands Southworth (American, 1811-1894)
Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, 1808-1901)
Daniel Webster 1782-1852
c. 1845
Whole plate copy daguerreotype
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Conservation made possible by a grant from the Smithsonian’s Collections Care and Preservation Fund

Daniel Webster 1782-1852
Born Salisbury, New Hampshire

Daniel Webster emerged as a major force in national politics at a time when rising sectionalism threatened to split the country apart. During his service in the House (1823-1827) and Senate (1827-1841; 1845-1850), Webster’s brilliant orations in defence of the Union marked him as one of the great public figures of his generation.

Boston-based photographers Southworth & Hawes excelled in creating whole-plate daguerreotypes of unrivalled quality. Consequently, their studio attracted numerous prominent figures, including Webster. Their majestic Webster portrait was so popular that it may have inspired them to produce this daguerreotype, a copy of the original.

Text from the National Portrait Gallery website

Unidentified photographer
Daniel Webster 1782-1852
c. 1850
Sixth-plate daguerreotype
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

A sixth-plate daguerreotype such as this portrait of Daniel Webster, would have sold for a fraction of the cost of a whole plate. To put the era’s pricing in context, a year’s supply of coal for a working-class family in 1850 cost $15 – the minimum price for a Southworth & Hawes whole-plate daguerreotype. The whole plate was therefore too expensive for most consumers.

Retailing for about $3, a sixth-plate was a more affordable option. There were tradeoffs, however. While the whole plate allowed for a dramatic, standing view of Webster, the Sith-plate accommodated only a bust-length image.

In a period when American federalism faced increasing challenges from states’-rights supporters, Daniel Webster emerged as one of the Union’s most eloquent defenders. Having gained acclaim as a lawyer who argued some of the young republic’s pivotal Supreme Court cases, Webster became a major force in national politics through his service in the House and in the Senate. There, his brilliant orations on behalf of the indivisibility of the Union marked him as one of the greatest public figures of his generation. Despite his national stature, Webster fell short of mustering the broad support that might have won him the presidency.

This daguerreotype represents Webster around the time of his controversial endorsement of the Compromise of 1850. In supporting the measure, Webster sought to preserve the Union through concession and compromise but succeeded principally in incurring the wrath of his northern constituents, who abhorred the legislation’s Fugitive Slave Act. Although attacks from his critics left Webster shaken and burdened by “the crushing weight of anxiety and responsibility,” he soldiered on until a liver ailment claimed his life in October 1852. The evergreen sprig preserved with this daguerreotype serves as a reminder of Webster’s endurance as a symbol and an icon in American history.

Text from the National Portrait Gallery website

Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing a wood engraving by an unidentified artist of Southworth & Hawes’ Daguerreotype Rooms c. 1849 (below)

Unidentified Artist
Southworth & Hawes’ Daguerreotype Rooms
c. 1849
Wood engraving
20 x 12.7cm (7 7/8 x 5″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Gift of an anonymous donor in honour of Carlos G. Vertanssian

In 1843, photographer Albert Sands Southworth (1811-1894) and Josiah Johnson Hawes (1808-1901) formed a creative partnership that yielded daguerreotypes unrivalled for their artistry and technical achievement. Committed to the highest standards, the duo excelled in producing beautiful composed, evocative portraits, particularly in the large (8 1/2 x 6 1/2 in.) and technically demanding whole-plate format.

In this advertisement for their Boston studio, Southworth & Hawes offered potential customers the assurance: ‘In style of execution and picturesque effect – in boldness of character and beauty of expression – in variety of size and delicacy of lights and shadows, we shall aim at the highest perfection’.

Text from the National Portrait Gallery website

Southworth & Hawes (active 1843-1862)
Albert Sands Southworth (American, 1811-1894)
Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, 1808-1901)
Gaetano Bedini, 1806-1864
1853
Whole-plate daguerreotype
Image: 20 x 15cm (7 7/8 x 5 7/8″)
Case Open: 25.4 x 40.8 x 1cm (10 x 16 1/16 x 3/8″)
Case Closed: 23.1 x 18.1 x 1.7cm (9 1/8 x 7 1/8 x 11/16″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Transfer from the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Conservation made possible by a grant from the Smithsonian’s Collections Care and Preservation Fund

Gaetano Bedini, 1806-1864
Born Sinigaglia, Italy

In 1853, Italian archbishop Gaetano Bedini travelled to the United States at the request of Pope Pius IX to assess the condition of the Catholic Church in North America and to study the possibility of establishing a papal mission in Washington, D.C. Bedini’s multi-month, fact-finding tour coincided with an intense wave of anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant feeling fanned by the newly ascendant American (or Know-Nothing) Party. In several cities, his presence sparked hostile demonstrations. Upon returning to the Vatican, Bedini advocated successfully for the creation of a North American College in Rome to prepare Roman Catholic clergy for service in the United States.

Text from the National Portrait Gallery website

Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing a wood engraving by an unidentified artist of Brady’s Daguerreotypes 1854 (below)

Unidentified Artist
Brady’s Daguerreotypes
1854
Wood engraving on paper
Image: 21.8 x 14.8cm (8 9/16 x 5 13/16″)
Sheet: 24 x 18.6cm (9 7/16 x 7 5/16″)
Mat: 45.8 x 35.6cm (18 1/16 x 14″)
Published in the Illustrated American Biography, 1854
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Gift of George S. Whiteley IV

Mathew Brady placed this full-page advertisement in the Illustrated American Biography, a publication that marketed itself as a biographical volume but was actually a glorified business directory. With its cutaway image of a camera, Brady’s ad presents a fanciful view of the process by which sunlight passes through the camera’s lens to produce an image.

In 1851, Mathew Brady submitted forty-eight daguerreotypes to the “Great Exhibition,” the vast international fair organised by Britain’s Prince Albert at the Crystal Palace in London. A critic for the London Illustrated News noted, “The likenesses of various distinguished Americans by Mr. Brady are notable examples of this style of art.” It is reasonable to assume that whole-plate portraits were among the works Brady exhibited. When jurors pronounced his daguerreotypes “excellent for beauty of execution,” he proudly claimed one of the fair’s highly coveted medals.

Well aware of the marketing value of his prize, Brady touted it in full-page advertisements, such as this example. Presenting a cutaway image of a camera’s interior, the ad offers a fanciful view of the way in which sunlight, represented by an allegorical figure, passes through the lens to produce an image.

Text from the National Portrait Gallery website

Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing a whole-plate tintype by an unidentified photographer of an Unidentified Woman c. 1865 (below)

Unidentified photographer
Unidentified Woman
c. 1865
Whole-plate tintype
Image/Sheet: 21.6 x 15.2 cm (8 1/2 x 6″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Unidentified Woman
Birthplace unknown

A penciled note attached to the back of this tintype reads simply, “Born May 10 1811.” Regrettably, the woman pictured is not otherwise identified. However, her handsome dress, her gold-accented jewelry, the book on the table beside her, and the slim volume in her hands suggest she was a literate woman who could afford a top-of-the-line tintype.

This portrait’s large scale and studio setting distinguish it from the small, inexpensive tintypes commonly produced by itinerant photographers. A whole-plate tintype such as this was likely priced from $.75 to $1 in the 1860s, when the average daily wage of a labourer was only $2.

Text from the National Portrait Gallery website

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Exhibition: ‘Martin Parr: Global Warning’ at Jeu de Paume, Paris

“Through his surreal, dream sequences captured in pop colour, punctum laden reality, Parr observed the absurdities of life on this planet…” Dr Marcus Bunyan

Exhibition dates: 30th January – 24th May, 2026

Curators: Quentin Bajac, in collaboration with Martin Parr and Clémentine de la Féronnière

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'United Arab Emirates, Dubai' 2007

“Life is an act of consumption.

To consume is to live.”

From the film Jupiter Ascending 2015

“We are living in a time when, to borrow a phrase and book title of Sigmund Freud’s, civilization and its discontents are becoming painfully evident to us all. Our machine age technology with its private greed, ecologically disastrous policies, crass materialism, human alienation, incessant strife and conflict, and the portent of man’s destroying himself by his own recklessness, is taking its toll in terms of our confidence and optimism about life. …

John Anson Warner. “Introduction” to The Life & Art of the North American Indian. London: Hamlyn, 1975, p. 6.

A bewitching eye / the unfolding moment

A bewitching eye refers to eyes that are so powerfully, seductively attractive or charming that they appear to cast a spell, mesmerising or enchanting an onlooker. They possess an irresistible, magnetic allure that captivates the viewer, having an almost magical ability to draw someone in. This description could metaphorically be applied to the photographs of the legendary (and I don’t use that word lightly) contemporary British photographer Martin Parr (1952-2025).

Parr was an observer of life with a socially critical eye. Through his surreal, dream sequences captured in pop colour, punctum laden reality, Parr observed the absurdities of life on this planet – human, animal, inanimate – with curiosity and a sense of wonder even while questioning our path to destruction. While this exhibition is split into various sections – Leisure & waste lands; Last Chance To Buy; Small World; The Animal Kingdom; and Technological Addictions – in reality most of his images from each of the sections could fit into any other, for the whole world is interconnected in the excesses and grotesqueness of modern life, of civilization and its discontents.

Parr’s exploration of the pyschogeography of the urbanscape, the exploration of urban environments that emphasises interpersonal connections to places, is damming in its technicolor coat of glory. Mass tourism takes us to leisure spaces like the beach where technology is used to take selfies and mountains of waste pile up near the water’s edge. Mass human, mass cultivation (of palm oil or eucalyptus trees for example) is causing mass extinction of species across the planet. Mass consumption means that we are using the Earth’s resources indiscriminately to fuel (ha!) our desire for the latest, larger four-wheel drive we can get our hands on, the latest fashions that end up in landfill every 6 month cycle when they are not bought, or the brightest, pinkest, must luscious cup cakes you have ever seen in your life.

Parr’s colour saturated photos draw us into this consumptive world where the body is racked by disease, where the patient will soon be on life support. Through his mesmerising, enchanting, multilicious photographs he pokes a great big subversive stick at our follies, excesses, self-destructive desires. Unfortunately, while Parr’s photos seep into our subconscious, most images have little power to change public and personal opinion – all they can do is proffer alternate visions and interpretations of the world and hope that some glimmer of recognition of the environmental damage we are doing will permeate the mind of the viewer.

Of course, Parr’s famous photographs did not appear out of thin air. He was a dedicated photographer whose art practice required years of hard work, talent and skill to obtain his images. He emphasises that, “you have to look at the history of photography and learn what they have done and achieved and apply that, think about it and have it in the back of your head and then you can apply that to your own work.” By doing that, “you may have the rare opportunity actually to develop your own voice, and you can become a photographer with a particular voice.”

“What you are going to do, of course, is to find a good connection to the world out there. It is the quality of that connection that is really important. So, you find a subject you feel strongly about. Then work out how to articulate that and that hopefully will give you momentum for you to get good work.”

Nothing comes without hard work and perseverance.

In the video below where he is giving advice to young photographers he states that he might get only ten great photographs a year, sometimes only one, but he shoots heap of photographs and then discards the dross. What he also says that is really important is that he is attentive to the unfolding moment, he is aware and ready for what the energy of the world puts in front of his eye and his camera. If only the human race was so aware.

Parr was a human being that I would have really liked to have met. To have a conversation about the energy of the world, the passion and commitment of human beings to do good things, to see things differently, to make a difference.

We have his images for as long as the human race exists. But I miss him already.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Ireland 1980-1983

While living in Ireland, Martin Parr became interested in the abandoned morris Minors – the emblematic car of the post-war British middle classes – found throughout the Irish countryside. Through his lens, the vehicles become a new motif of contemporary ruin: modern vanities symbolising the inevitable decline of progress, a subtle criticism of pollution linked to the automotive industry, an homage to the beauty of Irish landscapes, an almost optimistic meditation on the resilience of nature, and a celebration of human ingenuity. In this sense, the series offers an implicit history of both pollution and adaptation.

Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left the wall text “Leisure & Waste Lands” and at centre, Martin Parr’s Mar del Plata, Argentina (2014, below)

Leisure & Waste Lands

Beginning in the 1980s, Martin Parr relentlessly documented how contemporary landscapes are periodically or permanently reshaped by the expansion of mass leisure. Many of these works capture the coexistence and constant intermingling of natural and man-made elements.

Parr’s photography explores the interests of ordinary people, with whom he identified. Although he never learned to swim – unlike his wife Susie, who is an excellent swimmer – he spent a great deal of time on beaches, which feature prominently in his work. His first major colour series, ‘The Last Resort’, focuses on the popular seaside resort, New Brighton, near Liverpool. Parr would go on to pursue this theme across all five continents, producing some of his most incisive social critiques, from ‘Benidorm’ – capturing life at a sprawling resort on Spain’s Costa Blanca – to ‘Playas’ – a survey of Latin America’s most frequented beaches.

‘You can read a lot about a country by looking at its beaches: across cultures, the beach is that rare public space in which all absurdities and quirky national behaviour can be found,’ he wrote in 2013. For Parr, the beach setting became a field of experimentation, rarely appearing in his work as exotic or pristine, but instead as spaces rife with the contradictions of the leisure industry. At once convivial and chaotic, beaches are places of relaxation, paradoxically crowded with bodies, colours and – on might even say – noise. They are sites where we reproduce our ordinary urban habits, and where consumerism is inextricably bound up with trash and waste in every imaginable form: a highly photogenic subject that Parr faithfully captured from the very beginning of his career.

Wall text from the exhibition

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Mar del Plata, Argentina' 2014

‘I first came to Mar del Plata, the largest Argentine seaside resort, way back in 2007 when I was shooting images for my ‘Playas’ project, a survey of Latin American beaches. I was amazed then at the scale of the resort. It has two thousand hotels, sixteen kilometres of beaches, and welcomes over seven million visitors a year. In terms of scale, Mar del Plata dwarfs other well-known resorts across the globe, including Copacabana, Blackpool and benidorm, yet it is virtually unknown beyond Argentina.’

From Martin parr’s blog, Mar del Pata, 2004
Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s New Brighton, United Kingdom (1983-85, below); and at second left, Benidorm, Spain (1997)

Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s Tokyo, Japan (2000, below); at second left, Melbourne, Australia (2008); and at right, New Brighton, United Kingdom (1983-85, below)

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Tokyo, Japan' 2000

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025)
New Brighton, United Kingdom
1983-85
From Last Resort
© Martin Parr / Magnum Photos

Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s photograph New Brighton, United Kingdom (1983-85, below); at at right, Mar del Plata, Argentina (2014)

Martin Parr (British, 1952-2025) 'New Brighton, England' 1983-1985 from the series 'The Last Resort'

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025)
New Brighton, United Kingdom
1983-85
From Last Resort
© Martin Parr / Magnum Photos

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Spending Time, Salford, England' 1986

Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at right, Martin Parr’s photograph Untitled (Hot Dog Stand), United Kingdom (1983-85, below) from Last Resort

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025)
Untitled (Hot Dog Stand), United Kingdom
1983-85
From Last Resort
© Martin Parr / Magnum Photos

Installation view of the exhibition 'Martin Parr: Global Warning' at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January - May, 2026 showing from left to right, 'Benidorm, Spain' (1997); 'Magaluf, Majorca, Spain' (2003); 'Benidorm, Spain' (1997); and at right, 'Tenby, United Kingdom' (2018)

Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warming at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing from left to right, Benidorm, Spain (1997); Magaluf, Majorca, Spain (2003); Benidorm, Spain (1997); and at right, Tenby, United Kingdom (2018)

Installation view of the exhibition 'Martin Parr: Global Warning' at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January - May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr's 'Benidorm, Spain' (1997) and at right, 'Tenby, United Kingdom' (2018)

Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warming at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s Benidorm, Spain (1997, below) and at right, Tenby, United Kingdom (2018)

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) Benidorm, Spain' 1997

This exhibition invites the public to revisit the work of Martin Parr. Through different bodies of work created from the late 1970s to the present day, Parr’s photographs capture the absurdities and malfunctions of our contemporary world. Over 50 years, in locations all round the globe, the photographer has built up a corpus of work that portrays the inequalities and excesses of our modern lifestyle. A number of themes recur throughout. These include: the ravages of tourism, the prevalence of car culture, our dependence on technology, consumer excess, and even our ambivalent relationship with the living world. Martin Parr brings his unique, off-beat perspective to several major causes of climate change and environmental damage: unchecked global travel, reliance on fossil fuels, and world-wide overconsumption. Seemingly light-hearted and humorous, Parr’s work is in fact deeply serious. The ironical nature of his work places Parr firmly within the traditions of British satire and offers an indirect yet profound critique of contemporary life.

Through some 180 images spanning fifty years of work – from his early black
and white images to more recent output – this exhibition addresses the chaos of modern society. Five main sections, organised according to recurring themes, motifs and obsessions, convey the range and depth of Parr’s work. These sections explore the way in which our leisure pursuits impact the environment. Despite being a non-swimmer, Parr is repeatedly drawn to the beach as a site where the natural and artificial worlds coexist and pleasure leads to waste. In the section ‘Everything Must Go!’ our obsessive consumerism is explored. Parr draws up a crude inventory of sought-after objects and modes of consumption. Supermarkets, shopping malls, fairs and exhibitions provide the setting for a frantic materialistic race that is common to all classes of society. Sometimes even human beings become a form of merchandise.

In the ‘Small World’ section, named after one of his most celebrated series, Parr explores the joys, contradictions and dead ends of the tourism industry. In some of the world’s most iconic destinations, he focuses on the habits, behaviours, expectations and disappointments of the global tourist, against the backdrop of North/South, West/East imbalances. In ‘The Animal Kingdom’ he looks at the ambiguous relationship between humans and animals, from fascination and indulgence to neglect and exploitation. The final section – ‘Technological Addictions’ addresses our relationship with machines of all kinds: phones, cars, planes and computers as through them we navigate space, time and reality on a daily basis.

I create entertainment that contains a serious message if you are willing to look for it, but I’m not trying to convince anyone, I’m simply showing people what they think they know’ declared Martin Parr in 2021. Tireless photographer, frequent flyer, beach-lover, Martin Parr never tries to be a moral authority. He has often acknowledged that he himself is fully part of the world he documents and is clear-sighted about the environmental impact of his own lifestyle, particularly his significant carbon footprint: ‘We are heading towards catastrophe but we are all going there together. Who would dare ban cars or air travel?’

Aware that images alone are not enough to change the world, he advocates a form of discreet activism, a subtle visual guerilla warfare. If Parr uses humour it is always in the service of a commentary, often critical and satirical, that seeks to de-stabilise the idealised visions conveyed in the media by the cultural and tourism industries. Many of his images play with cliches, highlighting their inherent absurdity in order to subvert and deconstruct them. Tourist postcards, wildlife photography, foodie habits, selfies, all these and more provide the material that enables him to question, critique and occasionally mock the lifestyles and imagination of large sections of the world population. This exhibition is indeed a global warning.

Press release from Jeu de Paume

Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s Moscow (1992) ; and at right, the wall text to “Last chance to buy”

Last chance to buy

Beginning in the 1980s, Martin Parr began documenting a subject that relatively few photographers were exploring at the time: the myriad dimensions of consumer culture in Britain under Margaret Thatcher, and in particular the tastes, aspirations and attitudes of the middle class. Parr would sustain this interest throughout his career, later extending his investigation across Europe and the United Sates as well as to countries in Asia and the Middle East shaped by Westernised or Americanised lifestyles.

Today, Parr’s work offers a blunt and often humorous inventory of our consumer goods and ways of life – from food and art to luxury items and useless trinkets – framing consumption as a kind of new religion. In several series, parr deliberately subverted the visual vocabulary of advertising photography. In ‘Common Sense’, one of his most incisive critiques of consumer culture, close-ups and saturated colours produce a grotesque caricature of a world dominated by kitsch. Through his lens, supermarkets, hypermarkets, shopping malls, fairs, and trade shows become stages on which all social classes take part in a frenzied and absurd rush to accumulate goods of every kind. In this world, which seems ultimately to offer little pleasure, human beings themselves are at times turned into commodities.

Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at centre, photographs from Martin Parr’s series Common Sense (1999)

Installation view of the exhibition 'Martin Parr: Global Warning' at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January - May, 2026 showing photographs from Martin Parr's series 'Common Sense' (1999)

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) From 'Common Sense ' 1999

Installation views of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing photographs from Martin Parr’s series Common Sense (1999, below)

In his playfully titled Common sense series, British photographer Martin Parr confronts and amuses us in a similar way. Each image in the series is an isolated detail revealing one ghastly aspect of excessive consumerism and consumption after another. The images jostle for our attention like billboards on the side of a freeway, employing many of the tactics of advertising, using large-scale, saturated colour and shock value to attract our gaze.

In his photographs of food, Martin Parr pointedly examines the gross indulgence that is encouraged by manufacturers and their advertisers. Shown here as just another commodity, generic and mass-produced food becomes obscene in its abundance…. When seen in such lurid detail, the overblown details on the person’s hands, such as the ring with blue stone, a Band-Aid, and the imperfect application of the gaudy nail polish, become repulsive images of the ordinary. …

The Common sense series is a major body of work within Parr’s ongoing exploration of globalisation, mass tourism, class culture and consumerism. In common with much of his work, this series presents images critical of the contemporary culture with a distinctive sense of irony and British humour. There is something uncomfortable in all these photographs. We laugh at them while being slightly embarrassed by their familiarity and are acutely aware of the gulf between a dream of glamour and the sad synthetic reality.

Susan van Wyk, Curator, Photography, National Gallery of Victoria

Susan van Wyk. “Martin Parr’s Common Sense,” in Art Journal 46, 29 Jan 14 on the National Gallery of Victoria website [Online] Cited 16/04/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

Martin Parr (British, 1952-2025) 'England. Bristol. Car boot sale. 1995' 1994-1995 from the series 'British Food'

Martin Parr (British, 1952-2025)
England. Bristol. Car boot sale. 1995
1994-1995
From Common Sense
© Martin Parr / Magnum Photos

Martin Parr (British, 1952-2025) 'Ramsgate, England' 1996

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Tokyo, Japan' 1998

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Zurich, Switzerland' 1997

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025)
Fairy Cakes, Glasgow, Scotland
1999
From Common Sense
© Martin Parr / Magnum Photos

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Florida, USA' 1998

Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s Cozumel, Mexico (2002, below); and at right, the wall text for “Small World”

Small World

Martin Parr maintained that he belonged fully to the world he documented and critiqued. He readily acknowledged the environmental impact of his own lifestyle – not least his substantial carbon footprint – and near positioned himself above his subjects. Although fully aware that images alone could never change the world, he nevertheless engaged in a form of subtle, visual guerrilla warfare that questioned dominant representations, particularly those promoted by the tourism industry.

Beginning in the 1990s, tourism emerged as one of his favourite subjects. He would explore it the world over, in all its pleasures, contradictions, and even dead ends, documenting the rituals and behaviours of the global tourist in the world’s most visited destinations. The sameness of gestures, attitudes and clothing encountered in every corner of the planet provides a humorous, slightly wistful counterpoint to the diversity of the sites and monuments photographed. Parr takes particular pleasure in overturning the codes of postcard perfect aesthetics, especially in his images of iconic landmarks, which he presents in degraded forms caught between over crowding, scenes of anxiety, and crude replicas. Through his lens, the quest for authenticity is a thing of the past.

Wall text from the exhibition

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Cozumel, Mexico' 2002

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Amer Fort, Jaipur, India' 2019

Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing Parr’s photograph Cannes, France (2018, below)

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Cannes, France' 2018

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Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s photograph Sorrento, Italy (2014, below); and at right, The Matterhorn, Alps, Switzerland (1990)

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Sorrento, Italy' 2014

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'The Artificial beach inside the Ocean Dome' 1996

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025)
The Artificial beach inside the Ocean Dome, Seagaia Ocean Dome, Miyazaki, Japan
1996
© Martin Parr / Magnum Photos

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Machu Picchu, Peru' 2008

‘Between the hours of 10am and 2pm the site is at its busiest with up to 4,000 visitors arriving each day. Knowing how inaccessible the place is, it is staggering where and how they emerge. It is also not a cheap visit as each foreign tourist has to pay 122 soies (roughly $40) to enter the site. I am convinced that this entrance payment, together with the cost of the journey and the trekking are probably keeping the Peruvian economy afloat, as 70% of all visitors are foreigners.’

From Martin Parr’s blog, Machu Picchu, 2008
Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at bottom left, Martin Parr’s photograph Notre Dame, Paris, France (2012, below); and at right, Kleine Scheidegg, Switzerland (1994, below)

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Notre Dame, Paris, France' 2012

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Kleine Scheidegg, Switzerland' 1994

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Ooty, India' 2018

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Musée du Louvre, Paris, France' 2012

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Las Vegas, USA' 2000

The Animal Kingdom

Installation view of the exhibition 'Martin Parr: Global Warning' at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January - May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr's 'West Midlands Safari Park, United Kingdom' (1990); and at right, 'Longleat Safari Park, United Kingdom' (1994)

Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warming at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s West Midlands Safari Park, United Kingdom (1990); and at right, Longleat Safari Park, United Kingdom (1994)

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'West Midlands Safari Park, United Kingdom' 1990

Unlike zoos, safari parks are designed to let animals roam freely, almost as if they were “in the wild”, while human visitors are meant to experience a sense of closeness to the animals natural state. In his images of safari parks, Martin Parr mocks this idea by deliberately including exactly what such photographs usually try to exclude: cars. The resulting images resemble absurd collages of two disjointed realities, in which – in typical Par-like fashion – he plays with the incongruous encounter between the natural world and a human-made, artificial dimension

Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warming at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at second left, Martin Parr’s photograph Snow Polo World Cup, St Moritz, Switzerland (2011, below) from the series Luxury; and at second right, Venice Beach, California, USA (1998, below)

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Snow Polo World Cup, St Moritz, Switzerland' 1998

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Venice Beach, California, USA' 1998

“I am not saying that tourism is bad – far from it as it brings a livelihood for many people. Organisations like Tourism Concern in the UK make a very important contribution to a better understanding of the yin and yang of tourism. This charity highlights the problems caused by tourism – from water shortages in newly developed sites to the pure rape of our ever decreasing natural habitats – and tries to ensure that local people benefit from the fruits of tourism. We need to adopt a better understanding of the issues surrounding this huge business. These photographs, I hope, will offer a good starting point. For remember we, in the wealthy West, are the ones that seek out the pleasures of tourism, so we’re all in this together.”

Martin Parr

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Lake Garda, Italy' 1999

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Venice, Italy' 2005

Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing the wall text “Technological Addictions” with at bottom left, Martin Parr’s Chowpatty Beach, Mumbai, India (2018, below); at second right, Great Dorset Steam Fair, Dorset, England (2022, below) and at right, New York, USA (1999, below)

Technological Addictions

Even in his exploration of technology, Parr remains a humanist in both his practice and overarching project: what interests him is our relationship to the technology rather than the object or machine itself. As a keen observer of behaviour and constantly on the lookout for unexplored for unexplored topics, Parr examined how the human body interacts differently with each new technological object. He also probes technology’s growing role in daily lives and imagination, and the dependency it engenders. At the same time, he implicitly explores the way technology profoundly alters our perception of reality and our relationship to space and time.

Wall text from the exhibition

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Chowpatty Beach, Mumbai, India' 2018

Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s Great Dorset Steam Fair, Dorset, England (2022, below); and at top right, England, United Kingdom (1994) and at bottom right, England, United Kingdom (1994)

Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing Martin Parr’s Great Dorset Steam Fair, Dorset, England (2022, below)

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Great Dorset Steam Fair, Dorset, England' 2022

Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s New York, USA (1999, below); and at right top, Salford, United Kingdom (1986) and right bottom, Dublin, Ireland (1986)

‘I was hanging around a petrol station like a pervert. Photographers at the time would have said that this was the craziest place to take a picture. Because it’s a very unglamorous subject matter. Boring. There’s no drama here. But there’s something really interesting about boring. Something that seems very ordinary at the time becomes interesting when you look back at it later, almost 40 years later: the pump has changed, the clothes have changed, the car has changed. It tells us something about consumerism, and how we depend on fuel, oil and petrol.

From Martin Parr’s interview, ‘”There’s something very interesting about boring” Martin Parr on his life in pictures.’ The Guardian, 24 August 2025
Wall text from the exhibition

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'New York, USA' 1999

Photograph from Martin Parr’s first-ever fashion commission for the Italian magazine Amiga

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025) 'Venice, Italy' 2015 (installation view)

‘Although many museums have now banned the selfie stick, outside in the street, especially in front of that iconic monument or landmark the stick comes into its own. Getting the photo of you and your loved one(s) with the landmark in the background is de rigueur. The tourism industry, which is the biggest in the world, now dictates that the first requirement of any trip is to prove you were there with the necessary photo. It connects you to the world that we know and understand, and it is a vital part of any successful holiday experience. We used to have to ask a passing tourist to take the photo, but thanks to the selfie stick those days are over and we are now self sufficient.’

From Martin Parr’s blog, The Selfie Stick, 2015
Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s photographs Advertisement for Sony PlayStation, England, United Kingdom (2003); and at right, Ooty, India (2018, above)

Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at right, Martin Parr’s photograph from The Republican National Convention, Cleveland, Ohio, USA (2016, below)

Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025)
The Republican National Convention, Cleveland, Ohio, USA
2016
© Martin Parr / Magnum Photos

Jeu de Paume
1, Place de la Concorde
75008 Paris
métro Concorde
Phone: 01 47 03 12 50

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday 11am – 7pm
Closed Mondays

Jeu de Paume website

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July 2026

Image and imagination

Apollo Theater

Lafayette Theatre

Savoy Dancers

About the Savoy Ballroom

Exhibition dates: 14th December, 2025 – 25th July, 2026

Of being and becoming

Introduction

Exhibition dates: 27th February - 28th June, 2026

Generations

Footnotes

Cologne Progressives

History

Key concepts – Reversibility

Exhibition dates: 27th February - 28th June, 2026

Categories and portfolios

1/ The Farmer

2/ The Skilled Tradesman

3/ The Woman

4/ Classes and Professions

5. The Artists

6. The City

7. The Last People

Ontworpen wereld: Door de ogen van Tata Ronkholz (1940–1997)

Exhibition dates: 14th February – 21st June, 2026

Objective-documentary photography

Kiosks and corner shops

Industrial gates

Collaboration with Thomas Struth

Tata Ronkholz as product designer

Book

June 2026

There is no time

Exhibition dates: 6th February – 7th June, 2026

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (French, 1749-1803)

Exhibitions at the Académie de Saint-Luc

Becoming a member of the Royal Academy

Style and context

Carl Ferdinand Stelzner (German, 1805-1894)

Exhibition dates: 28th June, 2025 – 21st June, 2026

Silhouetting the celebrity

Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography Introductory text

Anna Maria Magnani (Italian, 1908-1973)

Exhibition dates: 20th June, 2025 – 7th June, 2026

High-class portraits

National Portrait Gallery Presents “From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years”

Exhibition dates: 30th January – 24th May, 2026

A bewitching eye / the unfolding moment

More postings on Martin Parr on Art Blart

Martin Parr’s Advice to Young Photographers | Louisiana Channel

Ireland 1980-1983

Leisure & Waste Lands

Last chance to buy

Small World

The Animal Kingdom

Technological Addictions