Exhibition: ‘Lisette Model Retrospective’ at the Albertina Museum, Vienna

Exhibition dates: 30th October, 2025 – 22nd February, 2026

Curators: Walter Moser, head of the department of photography at the Albertina, with assistant curator Nina Eisterer

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Promenade des Anglais, Nice' 1934 from the exhibition 'Lisette Model Retrospective' at The Albertina Museum, Vienna, October 2025 - February 2026

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Promenade des Anglais, Nice
1934
Gelatin silver print
50.7 x 40.4cm
Estate of Gerd Sander, Julian Sander Gallery, Cologne
© Estate of Lisette Model, courtesy of baudoin lebon and Avi Keitelman

 

 

From the gut

All the haughtiness of the upper-upper, lower-upper, socialites and high society in Promenade des Anglais, Nice (1934, below) versus all the “colour” and characters of Sammy’s Bar in New York, salt of the earth, dead beat party animals (1940-1944, below).

All the obsequious opulence of the women in Fashion Show, Hotel Pierre, New York (1940-1946, below) versus all the low angle, unbuttoned bulk of a New York bag lady in Lower East Side, New York (1940-1947, below)

Model sure doesn’t pull any punches and, perchance, you know which side of the fence she sits.

Combining social realism and emotional expression Model’s street-life scenes and portraits are shot with a razor sharp mind and eye, honed with emotional insight and social conviction, promoting “a fierce attack on the bourgeoisie of the time.” These images are shot from the gut, felt in the gut! Oooof! Kapow!

This philosophical, libertarian vision is grounded in the everydayness of working people, not in men “who sit at desks as large as thrones, who gather in solemn hemicycles, in splendid and severe seats…”

Her Promenade des Anglais photographs are incisive, cutting to the marrow, evidencing a piercing, core-level truth about the nature of power, money, humility, humanity. Knowing exactly the story she wanted to tell, Model cropped her negatives in the darkroom to get the desired, constructed photographs of the elite, this promenade of the privileged. That she passed on her wisdom to Diane Arbus is only to our benefit.

Model’s photographs in this series are more biting, satirical and oblique than those of Arbus. Direct in one way (in the placement of the camera in front of the subject) but oblique in another … in the asymmetrical placement of the figures within the picture plane, in the sly acknowledgement (or not) and resentment of the camera by the subject. Conversely, her photographs of people in nightclubs, jazz performers and the socially disadvantaged are humanist photographs of the highest order, unorthodox musical compositions that sing with light, movement, and life much more so than the square, formal attributes of the Arbus.

God bless Lisette Model for her glorious irreverence and musical lyricism.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


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

 

 

“As long as man exploits man, as long as humanity is divided into masters and servants, there will be neither normality nor peace. The reason for all the evil of our time is here. Do you see these? Severe, double-breasted, elegant men who get on and off airplanes, who run in powerful cars, who sit at desks as large as thrones, who gather in solemn hemicycles, in splendid and severe seats: these men with the faces of dogs or of saints, of hyenas or eagles, these are the masters.”


Pier Paolo Pasolini

 

Model’s libertarian philosophy is not easy to classify… it is often stuck in the approximation of street photography… but photography, when it is great, is one! and one only!… Genres only serve to sink it into the language of commerce! The lopsided shots, the deep blacks, the stellar whites… beaded with emotional uniqueness… see the human being as an end and never as a means… they invite us to think that justice is inseparable from beauty, it is a way of doing things well, like a chair-setter, a coalman, or a bricklayer… to flee from the arrogance, imitation, and contempt that accompany social codifications… what is beautiful is naturally right… because photography is not just a linguistic quest, but precisely as a linguistic quest, it is a philosophical vision… that respects no barriers or emulates the gods… it is an original, archetypal desire, that takes precedence over everything and carries it as the absolute value of beauty and justice!


Pino Bertelli. “Lisette Model. Sulla fotografia del disinganno,” on the Phocus Magazine website Nd [Online] Cited 02/02/2026. Translated from the Italian by Google Translate. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Promenade des Anglais, Nice' 1934

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Promenade des Anglais, Nice
1934
Gelatin silver print
43.2 x 35.4cm
The ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna
© Estate of Lisette Model, courtesy Lebon, Paris /
Keitelman, Brussels

 

“Visiting her mother in Nice in 1934 Model took her camera out on the Promenade des Anglais and made a series of portraits which to this day are among her most widely reproduced and widely exhibited images. With them Model declared her trademark style: Close-up, biting, satirical – almost like photographic political cartoons. In a nice bit of art history sleuthing, Thomas discovered that this series was published in the communist periodical Regards, a publication led by Ehrenburg, Gide, Gorky and Malreaux in 1935. Model, she says, never denied having published her work in Europe, but neither did she ever precisely acknowledge having done so… Thomas also relates Model’s style to the style of images published in Regards and what was being shown in small galleries – that approach, almost mocking, surely exposing, with the photographer or artist clearly separate/different if not superior from the subject – was in the air. Model perfected it, but she didn’t invent it.”

Elsa Dorfman. “Ann Thomas on Lisette Model,” on the AMERICANSUBURB X: THEORY website, June 14, 2010 [Online] Cited 03/02/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Promenade des Anglais, Nice' 1937 from the exhibition 'Lisette Model Retrospective' at The Albertina Museum, Vienna, October 2025 - February 2026

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Promenade des Anglais, Nice
1937
Gelatin silver print
50.7 x 40.4cm
Estate of Gerd Sander, Julian Sander Gallery, Cologne
© Estate of Lisette Model

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Promenade des Anglais, Nice' 1937

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Promenade des Anglais, Nice
1937
Gelatin silver print
50.7 x 40.4cm
Estate of Gerd Sander, Julian Sander Gallery, Cologne
© Estate of Lisette Model

 

Lisette Model (1901-1983), born into a Viennese Jewish family, is regarded as one of the 20th century’s most influential photographers. This ALBERTINA exhibition presents a broad retrospective covering her most important groups of works created between 1933 and 1959. Alongside iconic photographs such as Coney Island Bather and Café Metropole, the selection will also include seldom-seen works.

Model, following her emigration to New York in 1938, quickly rose to prominence with her pictures for magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar showing facets of urban life: the poverty of the Lower East Side, the upper class at their leisure pursuits, and night life at bars and jazz clubs. Model went on to become an influential teacher during the McCarthy Era. The exhibition features the first-ever public presentation of the original draft of her 1979 monograph, a classic of photo book history.

Text from The Albertina Museum website

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'First Reflection, New York' 1939-1940, printed 1976-1981

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
First Reflection, New York
1939-1940, printed 1976-1981
Gelatin silver print
Estate of Gerd Sander, Julian Sander Gallery, Cologne

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Window, Bonwit Teller, New York' 1939-1940, printed 1976-1981

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Window, Bonwit Teller, New York
1939-1940, printed 1976-1981
Gelatin silver print
Estate of Gerd Sander, Julian Sander Gallery, Cologne

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Reflections, New York' 1939-1945

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Reflections, New York
1939-1945
Gelatin silver print
26.5 x 33.4cm
The ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna
© Estate of Lisette Model, courtesy Lebon, Paris / Keitelman, Brussels

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Singer, Sammy's Bar, New York' c. 1940

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Singer, Sammy’s Bar, New York
c. 1940
Gelatin silver print
© Estate of Lisette Model

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Couple Dancing' 1940

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Couple Dancing
1940
Gelatin silver print
© Estate of Lisette Model

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Sammy’s Bar, New York' 1940-1944

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Sammy’s Bar, New York
1940-1944
Gelatin silver print
37.8 x 49cm
The ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna – Permanent Loan Austrian Ludwig Foundation for Arts and Science
© Estate of Lisette Model, courtesy Lebon, Paris / Keitelman, Brussels

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Sammy's' 1940-1944

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Sammy’s
1940-1944
Gelatin silver print
© Estate of Lisette Model

 

 

Born into a Viennese family with Jewish roots, Lisette Model (1901-1983) is considered one of the most internationally influential female photographers. The exhibition at the ALBERTINA Museum is the most comprehensive presentation of the artist in Austria to date and brings together her most important groups of works from 1933 to 1959. In addition to iconic photographs such as Coney Island Bather and Singer at the Metropole Café, the exhibition also includes lesser-known works that have never been shown before.

While Lisette Model initially pursued a musical education, it was only in France, where she lived from the mid-1920s, that she found her way to photography: in 1934, the self-taught photographer took her revealing series of portraits of rich idlers in Nice, which caused a sensation as a biting social critique in the heated political climate of the time. After Model emigrated to New York in 1938, she quickly made a name for herself in the vibrant art scene as a freelance photographer for style-setting magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar. She photographed the diverse and contradictory facets of urban life: Model showed the poor population of the Lower East Side district in unsparing shots, the upper class at their pleasures in confrontational portraits and the vibrant nightlife in bars and jazz clubs in dynamic series. In the late 1940s and 1950s, she created extensive groups of works outside New York.

The photos of the west coast of the USA or Venezuela are characterised by a melancholy and gloomy mood without Model losing sight of social conditions. Due to political reprisals during the McCarthy era, Model began her second, enormously influential career as a teacher. After decades of effort, the publishing house Aperture published her first monograph in 1979. The exhibition Lisette Model presents the original design of this publication, which is now a classic among photo books, for the first time.

Lisette Model

Lisette Model (1901-1983) brought about a sudden change in photography with her spectacularly direct pictures. Her immediate, humorous, frequently confrontational, yet sometimes also empathetic style of representation revolutionised traditional documentary photography. Her pictures of street-life scenes and portraits combine social realism and emotional expression: “Shoot from the gut!” was her famous credo. This retrospective brings together Model’s most important groups of works from her nearly thirty-year career, from 1933 to 1959, including works that have never been on view before.

Lisette Model was born as Elise Amelie Felicie Stern (Seybert) into an upper class Viennese family with Jewish roots in 1901. She initially pursued a musical education and from 1919 to 1921 attended courses taught by composer Arnold Schönberg at the progressive Schwarzwald School, which had been founded by Eugenie Schwarzwald. Her contact with Schönberg proved formative for Model’s artistic work. After her father’s death, Lisette Model, together with her mother and sister, moved to France in 1926, where she discovered photography. In 1934 she shot her first extensive portrait series of wealthy idlers in Nice, which caused a furor for betraying social criticism in the heated political climate of the time.

Having emigrated to New York in 1938, Model quickly made a name for herself in the art scene as a freelance photographer for such influential magazines as Harper’s Bazaar. She photographed the contrasts of urban life: in unsparing images, Model presented the impoverished population of the Lower East Side; in scathing portraits, she depicted the upper classes indulging in their pleasures; and in a number of dynamic series, she captured the pulsating nightlife of the metropolis. In the late 1940s and 1950s she created her first series of works outside New York. Due to political reprisals during the McCarthy era, Model’s artistic work stagnated. She embarked on an influential career as a teacher, shaping an entire generation of photographers, including Larry Fink, Diane Arbus, and others.

France

In 1926, Lisette Model moved to France, where she continued her vocal training, which she was forced to discontinue abruptly due to voice problems. In 1933 she turned to photography instead. The threatening political situation in Europe made it necessary for her to learn a profession, and photography offered itself as a modern field of activity especially for women. Model’s sister Olga, a trained photographer, and the artist Rogi André provided important inspiration, including the momentous advice to photograph only what aroused her passionate interest.

The economic crisis and the rise of fascism went hand in hand with a debate among committed left-wing artists about documentary photography. The central question was to what extent photography could expose social injustices and serve as a weapon in social conflicts. It is unclear how closely Model followed these debates; in later years, she remained persistently silent on the subject. Her early photographs from Paris clearly reveal a socially critical approach. Going about her work with distinct directness, she photographed sleeping homeless people and blind beggars, whom she characterised as victims of social circumstances through their bent bodies.

In July 1934, Lisette Model used a Rolleiflex to photograph a series of portraits of wealthy idlers on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. It was synonymous with glamour and elite tourism and a popular motif at the time. Yet Model portrayed her subjects as caricatures through their facial expressions, postures, and gestures. The narrow cropping of the motifs suggests that the photographer was in close proximity to her subjects, who look condescendingly into the camera. In fact, however, Model achieved this effect in the darkroom, where she selected radically novel perspectives from the negatives.

Regards

Although Lisette Model was only at the beginning of her career, the respected communist magazine Regards published her photographs from the series Promenade des Anglais in 1935. The layout of the article juxtaposed Model’s portraits with an image of a female worker with a fishing net. The accompanying text also embeds the photographs in the ideological rhetoric of class struggle: “The Promenade des Anglais is a zoological garden where the most abominable specimens of the human species lounge in white armchairs. Their faces betray boredom, condescension, impertinent stupidity, and at times malice. These rich people, who spend most of their time dressing, adorning themselves, manicuring their nails, and applying makeup, fail to conceal the decadence and immeasurable emptiness of bourgeois thinking.”

Against the backdrop of the repressive climate of the McCarthy era in the 1950s, Lisette Model would later tone down the political content of her images from Nice. Instead, she emphasised the humour and her intuitive approach to portraiture in public spaces.

New York

In October 1938, Lisette Model emigrated to New York with her husband Evsa Model, a Jewish-Russian painter. Her first series shot there reveal her great fascination with the metropolis. The work Reflection, which makes use of reflections in shop windows, merges motifs and spaces to create an enigmatic collage. For the Running Legs photographs, Model did not point her camera upwards at the skyscrapers as usual, but looked at the feet of passersby at street level. Model experienced New York’s hectic and consumer-oriented culture as ambivalent: the dark shadows in the windows of the department stores seem threatening, and the dense crowds of legs have a claustrophobic effect. In portraits of people on Fifth Avenue and Wall Street photographed from below, Model highlights the arrogance of the pedestrians rushing by.

Shortly after her arrival in New York, Lisette Model attracted the attention of several key figures in the art and media world. Her contacts with Ralph Steiner, editor of the magazine PM’s Weekly, and Alexey Brodovitch, the legendary art director of Harper’s Bazaar, proved momentous. In 1941, Steiner published Model’s biting photographs of the Promenade des Anglais in Nice under the provocative title “Why France Fell” as an explanation for the country’s defeat in World War II. Model’s first commission for Harper’s Bazaar took her to the popular leisure destination of Coney Island, where she shot her iconic photographs of a bather with an empathetic eye. As early as 1940, the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired one of Model’s pictures and continued to show her works in exhibitions in the following years.

Lower East Side

In one of her most extensive groups of works, Lisette Model focuses on the residents of the Lower East Side. Model’s attention to physical peculiarities and extremes becomes particularly apparent in it. Retrospectively defined cropping detaches the people from their spatial surroundings and emphasises the sitters’ statuesque monumentality.

Lisette Model shared her interest in the socially disadvantaged with photographers from the New York Photo League, an influential left-wing political association dedicated to socially committed photography. Becoming a member, Model actively participated in Photo League events and exhibited on its premises. And yet she distanced herself from her photography being categorised as political or social documentary. She also rejected accusations of portraying her models overly sarcastically, arguing instead for a humanist point-of-view that focuses on the strength and personality of her subjects. Emotional expression and social realism are inextricably linked in these photographs: the expressive bodies clearly display the burden of tough living conditions.

Entertainment

Similar to her photographs from France, Model also explored disparities in urban life in New York. The harsh images of the Lower East Side are juxtaposed with photographs of people indulging in leisure activities and amusing themselves at all kinds of shows. Model captured these scenes with a keen eye for human contradictions and bizarre moments: dressed-up ladies at a fashion show are just as much a part of this as participants in a dog show bearing a striking resemblance to their four-legged friends. Photographs taken in museums do not focus on the artworks intently viewed by visitors, but rather on the act of vision itself. With a few exceptions, the series Dog Show and Museum have only survived as negatives. They can now be presented here in digital form for the first time.

Nightlife

Lisette Model’s intuitive approach to photography reached its peak in her pictures of nightclubs. Using bright flashes, she snatched the celebrating guests and energetic performers from the darkness and in the subsequent post-editing of the images tilted the motifs to render the compositions more dynamic. The depiction of expressive gestures and people in moments of emotional tension recalls the body images of the early Viennese Expressionists, whom Model got to know through her contact with Arnold Schönberg. Model, who always vehemently denied the influence of other artists, acknowledged solely Schönberg’s impact on her work. His theory of the “emancipation of dissonance,” which expands on classical harmony, is echoed both in Model’s unorthodox compositions and in her caricatures.

The traumatic experience of exile left deep traces in Lisette Model’s work. Like the Lower East Side before, nightclubs were places populated by immigrants. They evoked a sense of social belonging and cultural familiarity in the artist.

West Coast

In 1946, Lisette Model accompanied her husband Evsa to San Francisco on an invitation from the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA). She quickly established connections with the lively photography scene on the US West Coast, where famous photographers such as Ansel Adams and Edward Weston were active. Model returned several times and in 1949 taught a course on documentary photography at the CSFA’s photography department; she continued with her teaching in New York from 1951 onward.

Model did her first major groups of works outside New York. The photographs of visitors to the opera of San Francisco rank among her most striking portraits and illustrate her strategy of bringing out individual characters by exaggerating physical peculiarities.

In 1949 an assignment for the Ladies Home Journal took Lisette Model to Reno, Nevada. She photographed women staying at so-called “divorce ranches,” waiting for their divorces to be finalised. Thanks to more liberal laws, divorce was possible in Nevada after a waiting period of just a few weeks – compared to the patriarchal rules of other states, this was an uncomplicated way for women in particular to separate from their spouses. Lisette Model’s sympathy for her sitters becomes palpable. Unlike the pictures taken in San Francisco, these portraits are less expressive, but more melancholic instead.

Venezuela

In the 1950s, in the wake of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch hunt, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) inquired into Lisette Model’s activities. Neighbours and even her grocer were questioned about the artist. In February 1954 two FBI agents finally interrogated Lisette Model and accused her of alleged membership in the communist party and of her actual affiliation with the Photo League, which had already disbanded in 1951 due to political pressure. The agents were unable to prove any wrongdoing on Model’s part, but classified her as uncooperative and recommended that she be placed on the security watch list. As a result of these accusations, Model lost some of her most important clients and was forced to supplement her income by working as a teacher.

Plagued by financial difficulties, she travelled to Caracas in 1954, accepting an invitation extended by the Venezuelan government. By then, Venezuela had been under the presidency of Marcos Evangelista Pérez Jiménez for two years – a military officer and dictator who modernised Caracas and exploited the country’s rich oil reserves. In photographs that were unusual for her in terms of motif and style, Model captured the technical infrastructure for oil production around Lake Maracaibo. Because of their gloomy atmosphere, the images were unsuitable for use in advertising and propaganda. Unsettled by the paranoia of the McCarthy era, the photographer often found it difficult to relate to her surroundings.

Jazz

As a result of the reprisals during the McCarthy era, Lisette Model photographed significantly less in the 1950s than in the promising decades before. One exception were the photographs she took during a horserace in New York in 1956, where she directed her attention at the audience instead of the competition. Her preoccupation with the subject of jazz was most intense. It is Model’s largest body of work, which developed from her photographs of New York nightclubs in the 1940s. Model was one of the few women to photograph jazz events such as the Newport Jazz Festival or concerts of the Lenox School of Jazz at the Berkshire Music Barn in Massachusetts. Highly musical herself, Model knew how to use her straightforward approach to convey the passion and intensity of the musicians’ playing as an immediate experience. No musician was photographed by her as often as Billie Holiday. One of Lisette Model’s last pictures, taken in 1959, shows the singer lying in her coffin.

In the 1950s, Model planned to publish her jazz photographs. It would have been the first monographic jazz book in history, but the project failed when her former client at Harper’s Bazaar discredited Model as a “troublemaker” and, due to her “political unreliability,” dissuaded potential financial backers.

Starting in the 1970s, Lisette Model was rediscovered in exhibitions and interviews. After years of effort, the first monograph on her work, with an introduction by Berenice Abbott, came out in 1979 with the renowned publisher Aperture. It is now considered an incunabulum within the photo book genre. The Albertina owns the hitherto unpublished dummy with original prints. Originally, the book was to be printed with a comprehensive biography of the artist penned by author Phillip Lopate. Dissatisfied with the text, Model had the manuscript withdrawn and commented on it with scathing remarks: “I thought an introduction was to be written – not that I was to be put on trial,” she noted down on the title page.

Model’s behaviour was indicative of the protective shield she had built around her private life as a result of her threatening encounter with the paranoia of the McCarthy era. In her public statements and interviews she obscured facts and details of her biography. She resisted simplistic interpretations of her work, but also concealed and marginalised references to politically explosive works, such as the publication of her photographs from Nice in the communist publication Regards in the mid-1930s.

Press release from The Albertina Museum

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Coney Island Bather, New York' 1939-1941

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Coney Island Bather, New York
1939-1941
Gelatin silver print
49.5 × 39.3cm
Estate of Gerd Sander, Julian Sander Gallery, Cologne
©️ Estate of Lisette Model, courtesy of baudoin lebon and Avi Keitelman

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Fashion Show, Hotel Pierre, New York' 1940-1946

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Fashion Show, Hotel Pierre, New York
1940-1946
Gelatin silver print
39.3 x 49.2 cm
The ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna, Permanent Loan Austrian Ludwig Foundation for Arts and Science
© Estate of Lisette Model, courtesy Lebon, Paris / Keitelman, Brussels

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Lower East Side, New York' 1940-1947

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Lower East Side, New York
1940-1947
34.6 × 27.1cm
The ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna
© Estate of Lisette Model, courtesy Lebon, Paris / Keitelman, Brussels

 

Lisette Model (1901-1983) 'Albert-Alberta, Hubert's 42nd St Flea Circus, New York' 1945

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Albert-Alberta, Hubert’s Forty-second Street Flea Circus, New York
1945, printed 1980s
Gelatin silver print
Estate of Gerd Sander, Julian Sander Gallery, Cologne

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Female impersonator' c. 1945

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Female impersonator
c. 1945
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Opera, San Francisco' 1949

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Opera, San Francisco
1949
Gelatin silver print
34 × 26.6cm
The ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna
© Estate of Lisette Model, courtesy Lebon, Paris / Keitelman, Brussels

 

Lisette Model (American, born Austria 1901-1983) 'Opera, San Francisco' 1949

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Opera, San Francisco
1949
Gelatin silver print
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)

Lisette Model (Vienna, 1901 – New York, 1983) was one of the main practitioners of North American direct photography. Born into a Jewish bourgeois family in Vienna, she studied piano and singing with Arnold Schönberg. In 1926 she moved to Paris where she became interested in painting and photography. Due to the oncoming war in Europe and growing anti-Semitism spreading throughout the continent, Model moved to New York in 1938 and began to work as a photographer for the magazine Harper’s Bazaar under the guidance of Alexey Brodovitch. She became a member of the Photo League.

Free of any sort of indoctrination, Model’s work stands out for her use of direct portraiture and for focusing on the peculiarities of the people she portrayed. Her images are full of low-angle shots, radical framings, and powerful black and white contrasts, making them greatly expressive. Some of her most renowned series – Promenade des Anglais, Reflections, and Running Legs – were produced in the French Côte d’Azur and in New York.

At the end of her career Model worked with Gerhard Sander, grandson of the photographer August Sander, who became her art dealer and lab assistant. Her work as an instructor was also notable. She began teaching in 1949 at the California School of Fine Arts and continued to teach throughout her life at other institutions such as the New School for Social Research. Her role as a professor would leave a mark on some of the most important photographers of the following generation, such as Diane Arbus, Larry Fink, and Peter Hujar, to name a few.

Text from the Fundacion MAPFRE website

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Singer at the Metropole Café, New York' 1946

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Singer at the Metropole Café, New York
1946
Gelatin silver print
49.6 x 39.8 cm
The ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna
© Estate of Lisette Model, courtesy Lebon, Paris /
Keitelman, Brussels

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Woman with Veil, San Francisco' 1949

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Woman with Veil, San Francisco
1949
Gelatin silver print
49.8 x 10.1 cm
Estate of Gerd Sander, Julian Sander Gallery, Cologne
© Estate of Lisette Model, courtesy of baudoin lebon and Avi Keitelman

 

Closeness that does not comfort

Model’s photographs are close. Uncomfortably close. Faces, bodies, gestures fill the frame, often to the limit of what is bearable. The famous tight cropping, often decided only in the darkroom, frees the people from their surroundings and confronts the viewer with full presence. There is no escaping. No decorative surroundings.

And yet there is no voyeurism. No mockery. Despite all the harshness, these images carry a form of respect, often with a good dose of humor or, depending on the subject, social criticism. You sense that someone is looking here, not looking down. There is tension hanging in the air – between ruthlessness and empathy – and it keeps the work relevant to this day.

Anonymous. “Zeit hinzusehen: Lisette Model in der Albertina,” on the ViennaCultgram website Nd [online] Cited 02/02/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Ollie McLaughlin, Hotel Viking, Newport Jazz Festival, Rhode Island' 1956

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Ollie McLaughlin, Hotel Viking, Newport Jazz Festival, Rhode Island
1956
Gelatin silver print
27.5 × 34.9cm
© Estate of Lisette Model, courtesy of baudoin lebon and Avi Keitelman

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Ella Fitzgerald' 1954

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Ella Fitzgerald
1954
Gelatin silver print

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Dizzy Gillespie, New York Jazz Festival' 1956

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Dizzy Gillespie, New York Jazz Festival
1956
Gelatin silver print

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Bud Powell, New York Jazz Festival' 1957

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Bud Powell, New York Jazz Festival
1957
Gelatin silver print

 

 

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Exhibition: ‘Zofia Rydet: Sociological Record’ at The Photographers’ Gallery, London

Exhibition dates: 10th October, 2025 – 22nd February, 2026

Poland 1978-1990

Co-curators: Clare Grafik and Karol Hordziej

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997) From 'Sociological Record' 1978-1990

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997)
From Sociological Record
1978-1990
© Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation

 

 

Photo-gene(ic)

I profoundly admire the work of Polish social documentary photographer Zofia Rydet.

There are no ‘look at me I’m the photographer’ flourishes to her photographs, no egotistical excess, just a version of reality pictured through direct flash photography – rural Polish life, interiors and ancestors, families and marriages, portraits of younger self, older self and the transience of time.

Here lives religion, wallpaper, stencils pasted directly onto thick, rough hewn walls, patterned, fabrics, youth and old age. A boy in his flat with a racing helmet and a poster of Brazilian Formula 1 driver Carlos Reutemann on the wall, bottles of gin and brandy above the door; a young girl, wall plastered with posters of Sting and the band The Police; a woman sitting on a chair, bare feet, rickety bed to left, portraits of wedding day and husband and life behind her. Ancient and modern.

Like August Sander’s unfinished magnum opus People of the 20th Century in which the photographer attempted “to produce a definitive atlas of the German people over the course of his lifetime” (Getty), Zofia Rydet’s archive, record, document, is “an unfinished atlas of memory” of a Polish way of life that is fast disappearing. Her stories of Polish humanity with their huts and habitations speaks to the essential nature, the rootedness, of a people and culture.

The souls are not photogenic, but through Rydet’s direct, engaging process they become photo-gene(ic), archetypes and representatives of ancestors past, present and future which together form the genetic make-up of Polish society. Rydet tells their stories with empathy and compassion, the artist “captivated by something worth preserving – especially the wonderful human stories I hear during these visits.”

These photographs hold the viewers attention because they mean something in this transient world of facile images. As Youssra Manlaykhaf cogently observes,

“Today, in an age when we document ourselves endlessly but often forget what those images mean, Rydet’s work feels newly vital. Her archive is a reminder that photography can still be an act of devotion, a way of saying I see you, and you matter. Rydet didn’t just photograph people; she photographed the fragile dignity of being human. And in doing so, she built a record not just for Poland, but for all of us; an unfinished atlas of memory, tender and eternal.”1

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

1/ Youssra Manlaykhaf. “The Unfinished Archive,” on The Photographers’ Gallery website Nd [Online] Cited 05/02/202. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research


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

 

 

“I knock on the door, I say ‘hello’, and I shake hands.”


“Even if they don’t publish it… this will remain, not art perhaps, but a document of the times.”


“For me, photography is not just a visual image, but above all, a language I’d like to speak to ordinary people, not great artists. Photography’s greatest value lies in its informative role, its content – not in its transient artistic endeavours. The more my “Record” grows, the more I believe it will have lasting value. I’m convinced I’m on the right track – I still have so many plans, just not enough life ahead of me…”


“I know some people think I’m hypocritical, self-serving, telling these people they’re beautiful. But I truly see something interesting, beautiful in every person, and I’m captivated by something worth preserving – especially the wonderful human stories I hear during these visits. Each person is a story in itself, some very interesting, some instructive, sometimes moving…”


Zofia Ryde

 

 

 

Interview with the Zofia Rydet Foundation | The Photographers’ Gallery

Delve into the life and work of the warmly remembered Polish social documentarian, Zofia Rydet in an interview with the Zofia Rydet Foundation and Clare Grafik, Head of Exhibitions, The Photographers’ Gallery.

Sociological Record by Zofia Rydet is a sweepingly comprehensive documentary portrait of Polish domestic life which spans decades, eras, regions and cultures.

 

 

Head curator and art historian Karolina Ziębińska explorie the work and legacy of Zofia Rydet (1911-1997), one of Poland’s most significant post-war photographers.

Best known for her lifelong project The Sociological Record (1978-1990), Rydet sought to systematically document the interiors and inhabitants of Polish homes, creating a vast visual archive of everyday life during a time of profound social and political transformation.

In this talk, Ziębińska introduce Rydet’s distinctive approach to photography, situating her practice within the shifting cultural, historical and ideological contexts of 20th-century Poland. It also spotlights other areas of Rydet’s practice and is an opportunity to consider how Rydet’s work resonates within broader conversations about identity, memory and the role of the photograph as social document.

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Zofia Rydet Sociological Record' at The Photographers' Gallery, London

 

Installation view of the exhibition Zofia Rydet: Sociological Record at The Photographers’ Gallery, London

 

 

From 1978, when she was 67, Zofia Rydet (1911-1997) set out to photograph the inside of every Polish household. She would approach a home unannounced, knock, and warmly introduce herself and ask the people living there if they would like to take part in her project.

Rydet was always on the road, with a camera in her hand. For nearly three decades, she photographed people in their homes, still lives, building exteriors and landscapes. She also returned to the same houses several years after she first visited to document the transformation of rural Poland. The result – Sociological Record – is a monumental project and one of the most important achievements in 20th century Polish photography.

Rydet used photography to express everyday stories and capture the essence of what it meant to be human. Despite the project’s epic scope, the individual portraits often feel intimate and revealing. Her careful and considered practice spans decades and she worked on the project until her death in 1997.

Text from The Photographers’ Gallery website

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997) From 'Sociological Record' 1978-1990

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997)
From Sociological Record
1978-1990
© Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997) From 'Sociological Record' 1978-1990

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997)
From Sociological Record
1978-1990
© Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997) From 'Sociological Record' 1978-1990

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997)
From Sociological Record
1978-1990
© Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation

 

 

Rydet is best known for The Sociological Record – an extraordinary lifelong project documenting thousands of domestic interiors and portraits across Poland from the late 1970s onwards. Her work captured the nuances of everyday life during a time of rapid social and political change, revealing how identity, class and belonging were expressed within the home. For me, Rydet’s photographs are a commentary on a particular period in time, a transition from communism to capitalism, a shift from rural to the urban and a way of seeing that span the personal and the collective. …

I discussed Sociological Record with my mum who also visited the exhibition. We were both deeply moved by the large vinyl image of a straw house surrounded by smaller photographs of other homes. It is heartwarming to see such intimate, everyday experiences documented and acknowledged in the Gallery – moments that resonate deeply with many Polish people living in the UK. …

The recurring presence of John Paul II in Rydet’s work also struck a familiar chord; his image continues to appear in Polish households both in the UK and in Poland, carrying with it layers of cultural memory, belonging, but also conflict. Some of Rydet’s portraits – with their lace curtains, tablecloths, patterned rugs and carefully arranged family photographs – reminded me of our own home in Poland. They share an aesthetic and emotional language that feels instantly recognisable: the way ancestors’ portraits watch quietly from the walls, the mix of pride and modesty in how people present their space. To see this visual culture acknowledged and valued within a major British art institution feels both affirming and long awaited – a recognition of a Polish history that has long existed yet has rarely been seen.

Zula Rabikowska. “Zula Rabikowska responds to Zofia Rydet’s Sociological Record,” on The Photographers’ Gallery website Nd [Online] Cited 06/02/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997) From 'Sociological Record' 1978-1990

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997)
From Sociological Record
1978-1990
© Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997) From 'Sociological Record' 1978-1990

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997)
From Sociological Record
1978-1990
© Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997) From 'Sociological Record' 1978-1990

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997)
From Sociological Record
1978-1990
© Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997) From 'Sociological Record' 1978-1990

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997)
From Sociological Record
1978-1990
© Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation

 

 

The Unfinished Archive

Delve into the life and work of the warmly remembered Polish social documentarian, Zofia Rydet

By the time Zofia Rydet began her greatest work, she was already in her sixties, an age when most photographers might be reflecting on what they’ve accomplished, not setting out to capture an entire nation. Yet that’s exactly what she did. From the late 1970s until a few years before the end of her life, Rydet roamed through towns and villages across Poland, camera in hand, knocking on doors and asking to come inside. 

Her project, Sociological Record (Zapis socjologiczny), became one of the most extraordinary photographic archives of the twentieth century: over 20,000 black-and-white portraits, most taken inside a person’s home. The format rarely changed. Her subjects stand in their living rooms, surrounded by furniture, family photos, crucifixes, embroidery, clocks and wallpaper that tells as much of a story as their faces do. Every image is composed with the same direct flash, the same square frame, and the same feeling that time has briefly stood still. 

At first glance, Rydet’s portraits might seem uniform, almost bureaucratic in their repetition. But look longer, and the sameness dissolves. You begin to notice the delicate individuality in each frame: the proud tilt of a chin, a mismatched chair, a child’s toy tucked behind an armchair. Each photograph becomes a world of its own.

Rydet was born in 1911 in Stanisławów, a city that no longer exists as it once did. Over her lifetime, Poland’s borders shifted, wars came and went, and entire ways of life vanished. Perhaps that’s why she photographed with such urgency. She once said she wanted to “save people from disappearing,” and in Sociological Record, that impulse becomes visible. Her archive reads like a collective portrait of Poland on the brink of transformation, the last breaths of a rural and domestic culture before modernity swept through. “I can already see the difference now, three or four years later – the huts are disappearing, being rebuilt… I miss the houses near Warsaw, but I’m afraid to go there…” 

Before she began this monumental project, Rydet had already spent two decades photographing daily life: children playing in the streets, fishermen, women at markets. Her early images are tender and human, often filled with humour. But in the late 1970s, she found her true calling. Carrying her medium-format camera and a small flash, she entered the homes of strangers, sometimes by invitation, sometimes by bold insistence, and created what she saw as a kind of “photographic sociology.”

What’s remarkable is that Rydet’s approach, while systematic, never feels cold. Her use of flash flattens space so that every detail, faces, furniture, wallpaper and light becomes equally significant. It’s as if she believed that the soul of a person might just as easily reside in the pattern of a curtain as in their expression.

Her images speak not only of individuals but of collective identity: Polish Catholic iconography, working-class aspiration, domestic pride. And beneath it all, the quiet ache of time passing. In one photo, a couple stands shoulder to shoulder beneath their wedding portrait, two images separated by decades, yet bound by the same gaze. In another, a young boy stares directly at the camera, his future still unwritten.

Rydet continued photographing well into the 1980s, often assisted by younger artists who recognised the importance of what she was building. She never considered the project finished; how could she? The very premise, recording the human condition through its domestic spaces, was infinite by nature. When she died in 1997, she left behind a sprawling, incomplete monument to ordinary lives.

Today, in an age when we document ourselves endlessly but often forget what those images mean, Rydet’s work feels newly vital. Her archive is a reminder that photography can still be an act of devotion, a way of saying I see you, and you matter. Rydet didn’t just photograph people; she photographed the fragile dignity of being human. And in doing so, she built a record not just for Poland, but for all of us; an unfinished atlas of memory, tender and eternal.

Youssra Manlaykhaf. “The Unfinished Archive,” on The Photographers’ Gallery website Nd [Online] Cited 05/02/202. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997) From 'Sociological Record' 1978-1990

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997)
From Sociological Record
1978-1990
© Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997) From 'Sociological Record' 1978-1990

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997)
From Sociological Record
1978-1990
© Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997) From 'Sociological Record' 1978-1990

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997)
From Sociological Record
1978-1990
© Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997) From 'Sociological Record' 1978-1990

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997)
From Sociological Record
1978-1990
© Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997) From 'Sociological Record' 1978-1990

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997)
From Sociological Record
1978-1990
© Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997) From 'Sociological Record' 1978-1990

 

Zofia Rydet (Polish, 1911-1997)
From Sociological Record
1978-1990
© Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation

 

 

Opening this October at The Photographers’ Gallery, as part of the UK/Poland Season 2025, Sociological Record is a landmark photographic project undertaken by Polish photographer Zofia Rydet. The series is a comprehensive documentary portrait of Polish domestic life which spans decades, eras, regions and cultures.

Starting in 1978, aged 67 years old, Zofia Rydet (1911-1997) set out on a mammoth task to photograph the inside of ‘every’ Polish household. Motivated by a desire to capture the ordinary, unsung populations, particularly of the countryside – but also covering towns and cities – Rydet would become increasingly obsessed with her mission to record the cultures and people that she sought out.

Rydet cut an unlikely figure on her field trips to different regions, a diminutive woman travelling by bus or with the help of friends who could drive her. Approaching households unannounced, she would knock and warmly introduce herself, asking those living there if they would like to take part in her project. Using a newly acquired wide angle lens and flash, Rydet was able to capture often darkened interiors of homes and their inhabitants in great detail. Asking her sitters not to smile and look straight ahead into the camera lens, her subjects are posed in their homes, rich in personal histories.

As the series progressed, Rydet would identify different categories within the Sociological Record such as ‘Women on Doorsteps’, ‘Professions’, ‘The Ill’, ‘Road Signs’, ‘Windows’, ‘Houses’ and ‘Televisions’. She would also come to identify more philosophical themes such as ‘Presence’ – noting the omniscience of the Polish Pope John Paul II’s image (inaugurated the same year Rydet started the Record in 1978) within Polish households. Others included ‘The Myth of Photography’ focusing on the central position and significance of family photographs within the home, such as traditional, hand-painted studio photographs of married couples in homes with little or no other decoration.

Through the cumulative interactions with her sitters, sometimes returning to households more than once over time, Rydet identified a change in her own personal and artistic journey and the role photography played within it. Creating over 20,000 images, many of which by the end of the project were never printed – Sociological Record is a monumental project and one of the most important achievements in 20th century Polish photography.

Rydet said of her hopes for the work: “Even if they don’t publish it… this will remain, not art perhaps, but a document of the times.” Rydet continued working on the Record until 1990, seven years before she died aged 86 years old.

This is the first substantial exhibition of Zofia Rydet’s Sociological Record in the UK. It focuses on the small proportion of rare prints she made from the series in her home darkroom, including the significant ‘People in Interiors’ works, and other sub-series such as ‘Women on Doorsteps’ and ‘Presence’. It will also feature ephemera from Rydet’s archives and original publications. Polish filmmaker Andrzej Różycki’s 1989 documentary film about Rydet, ‘Endlessly Distant Roads’, as well as Polish photographer Anna Beata Bohdziewicz’s documentary portraits of Rydet at work will also be on show.

Zofia Rydet: Sociological Record is part of the UK/Poland Season 2025. It is produced by The Photographers’’’ Gallery in partnership with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute (co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage), Poland, and the Zofia Rydet Foundation.

A new English catalogue will accompany the exhibition featuring texts by Zofia Rydet and 100 images from the Sociological Record series. Edited by co-curators of the exhibition, Clare Grafik and Karol Hordziej, image edit with the collaboration of Wojciech Nowicki. Produced by Lola Paprocki and designed by Brian Kanagaki / Kanagaki Studio. Co-published by The Photographers’ Gallery and Palm* Studios, with support from the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.

About Zofia Rydet

Zofia Rydet was born in 1911 in Stanisławów, Galicia – then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, later Poland, now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine. The daughter of a Polish lawyer and judge who served the rural populations of the area, her first photographs were in the regions of south-eastern Polish borderlands.

Following the brutal and tumultuous occupation of Nazi Germany in World War II and the region’s absorption into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, her family fled into the newly defined borders of Poland at the end of the war to Rabka and then Bytom in Upper Silesia. There she would focus on her passion for photography, as one of the few women members of the Gliwice Photography Society, which she joined in 1954. She met other avant-garde photographers, became a photography teacher and began sending her photographs to international and national competitions.

Her artistic career developed through many distinct but overlapping phases which included the seminal series and photobook Little Man (Mały Człowiek), which drew on her many photographs of children taken during her national and international travels, highlighting humanist approaches to documentary photography and emphasising the complexities and challenges of childhood. Her long-standing surrealist collage series The World of Feelings and Imagination (Świat uczuć i wyobraźni) also marked an important expressive phase in her creative practice. Sociological Record (Zapis socjologiczny) would become her final and largest artistic project.

About Adam Mickiewicz Institute

The Adam Mickiewicz Institute (AMI) brings Polish culture to people around the world. Being a state institution, it creates lasting interest in Polish culture and art through strengthening the presence of Polish artists on the global stage. It initiates innovative projects, supports international cooperation and cultural exchanges. It promotes the work of both established and promising artists, showing the diversity and richness of our culture. The Adam Mickiewicz Institute is also responsible for the Culture.pl website, a comprehensive source of knowledge about Polish culture. For more information please visit: www.iam.pl.

Press release from The Photographers’ Gallery

 

Portrait of Zofia Rydet Nd

 

Portrait of Zofia Rydet Nd

 

Zofia Rydet and photographer friends Nd

 

Zofia Rydet and photographer friends Nd

 

Zofia Rydet with camera and subjects Nd

 

Zofia Rydet with camera and subjects Nd

 

The Photographers’ Gallery
16-18 Ramillies Street
London
W1F 7LW

Opening hours:
Mon – Wed: 10.00 – 18.00
Thursday – Friday: 10.00 – 20.00
Saturday: 10.00 – 18.00
Sunday: 11.00 – 18.00

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Exhibition: ‘Dorothea Lange: Seeing People’ at the National Gallery of Art, Washington Part 1

Exhibition dates: 5th November 2023 – 31st March 2024

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Child of Impoverished Black Tenant Family Working on Farm, Alabama' July 1936

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Child of Impoverished Black Tenant Family Working on Farm, Alabama
July 1936
Gelatin silver print
Image: 20 x 19.2cm (7 7/8 x 7 9/16 in.)
Sheet: 25.4 x 20.2cm (10 x 7 15/16 in.)
Mat: 14 x 14 in.
Frame (outside): 15 x 15 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

 

A humungous two-part posting on the work of American photographer Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) which features over 110 of her photographs many of which were unknown to me.

Of course, the posting features the photographs for which she is rightly famous (Migrant Mother; White Angel Breadline; Nettie Featherston; Migratory cotton picker with his cotton sack slung over his shoulder rests at the scales before returning to work in the field; Once a Missouri farmer, now a Migratory Farm Laborer) but others are a surprise for the senses, especially the Irish portrait photographs.

See my comment on the photographs in Part 2 of the posting.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


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

 

 

During her long, prolific, and groundbreaking career, the American photographer Dorothea Lange made some of the most iconic portraits of the 20th century. Dorothea Lange: Seeing People reframes Lange’s work through the lens of portraiture, highlighting her unique ability to discover and reveal the character and resilience of those she photographed.

Featuring some 100 photographs, the exhibition addresses her innovative approaches to picturing people, emphasising her work on social issues including economic disparity, migration, poverty, and racism.

 

 

“The portrait is made more meaningful by intimacy – an intimacy shared not only by the photographer with his subject but by the audience.”


Dorothea Lange

 

“The power of her pictures – their ability to speak to the character and resilience of those she photographed – lies not only in her desire to effect social change, but also in her deep humanism, her abiding interest in people, and the skills and insights she learned as a portrait photographer.”


Sarah Greenough

 

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'White Angel Breadline, San Francisco, California' 1933

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
White Angel Breadline, San Francisco, California
1933
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 34 x 26.5cm (13 3/8 x 10 7/16 in.)
Mat: 20 x 16 in.
Frame (outside): 21 x 17 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

A growing desire to capture the Depression’s impact drew Lange to the White Angel Jungle, a San Francisco soup kitchen run by Lois Jordan, the “White Angel.” There Lange photographed this downtrodden man leaning on a barricade, his jaw clenched, shoulders hunched, back to the crowd, and eyes covered by the brim of his hat. Though anonymous, he drew Lange’s sympathetic eye and became a symbol of the nameless masses who faced economic hardship as the United States plunged deep into financial crisis.

Label text from the exhibition

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Street Demonstration, San Francisco' 1934

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Street Demonstration, San Francisco
1934
Gelatin silver print
Image: 24.4 x 19.1cm (9 5/8 x 7 1/2 in.)
Mount: 27.9 x 20.2cm (11 x 7 15/16 in.)
Mat: 20 x 16 in.
Frame (outside): 21 x 17 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Diana and Mallory Walker Fund and Robert Menschel and the Vital Projects Fund, in Honor of the 25th Anniversary of Photography at the National Gallery of Art
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

In spring and summer 1934, a longshoremen’s strike gripped San Francisco and demonstrations took place throughout the city. Protesters also advocated for Japanese unions, which were being threatened by anti-labor forces in Japan. Lange wrote in her notes, “This was just before the New Deal during a time when Communists were very active. A few blocks away … soup was being distributed daily to the unemployed.”

Lange focused on a lone policeman standing before a crowd of protesters holding placards in English and Japanese. The policeman projects authority through his firm stance, crisp uniform, and shiny badge, creating a barrier between the photographer and the crowd.

Label text from the exhibition

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Mexican Workers Leaving for Melon Fields, Imperial Valley, California' June 1935, printed 1940s

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Mexican Workers Leaving for Melon Fields, Imperial Valley, California
June 1935, printed 1940s
Gelatin silver print
Image: 45 x 58cm (17 11/16 x 22 13/16 in.)
Sheet: 50.2 x 67.5cm (19 3/4 x 26 9/16 in.)
Mat: 24 x 28 in.
Frame (outside): 25 x 29 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

In the summer of 1935, Lange traveled with Paul Taylor, working with his research team on a study of migrant labourers funded by California’s State Emergency Relief Administration. Mexican farm labourers, like this trio of cantaloupe harvesters, saw wages plummet during the Depression as thousands of westbound American migrants flooded the labour market. Angling her camera upward, Lange silhouetted the workers against a hazy sky, producing a striking group portrait. Working together solidified Lange and Taylor’s professional relationship, which developed into a romantic partnership and marriage later that same year.

Label text from the exhibition

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Once a Missouri farmer, now a Migratory Farm Laborer. San Joaquin Valley, California' February 1936, printed c. 1965

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Once a Missouri farmer, now a Migratory Farm Laborer. San Joaquin Valley, California
February 1936, printed c. 1965
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 44.6 x 39.5cm (17 9/16 x 15 9/16 in.)
Mat: 26 x 22 in.
Frame (outside): 27 x 23 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

Although this farm labourer from Missouri seems to be alone behind the wheel of his car, he is actually seated beside his wife, in the passenger seat. Her overcoat and right arm are easily overlooked at the bottom left. By focusing only on the driver, with his gaunt features and intense gaze, Lange heightens our sense of his isolation to create an evocative portrait of a man grappling with the consequences of dislocation. The photograph also calls attention to the automobile as a means of transport and escape for some Depression-era migrants.

Label text from the exhibition

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Former Tenant Farmer on Relief Grant in the Imperial Valley, California' March 1937

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Former Tenant Farmer on Relief Grant in the Imperial Valley, California
March 1937
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 9.5 x 9cm (3 3/4 x 3 9/16 in.)
Mat: 14 x 11 in.
Frame (outside): 15 x 12 3/4 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Eighteen-Year-Old Mother from Oklahoma, now a California Migrant' March 1937

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Eighteen-Year-Old Mother from Oklahoma, now a California Migrant
March 1937
Gelatin silver print
Image: 18.9 x 24.5cm (7 7/16 x 9 5/8 in.)
Sheet: 20.6 x 25.5cm (8 1/8 x 10 1/16 in.)
Mat: 13 x 16 in.
Frame (outside): 14 x 17 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Displaced Tenant Farmers, Goodlett, Hardeman County, Texas' July 1937, printed 1950s

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Displaced Tenant Farmers, Goodlett, Hardeman County, Texas
July 1937, printed 1950s
Gelatin silver print
Image: 19 x 24 cm (7 1/2 x 9 7/16 in.)
Sheet: 20.3 x 25.2 cm (8 x 9 15/16 in.)
Mat: 14 x 16 in.
Frame (outside): 15 x 17 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

During the 1930s, machines began to replace people in some cotton-growing regions like Hardeman County in Northeast Texas; consequently, many tenant farmers were evicted from their land. Already reckoning with severe drought and economic depression, these “tractored out” farmers were forced to seek work as day labourers, a precarious livelihood offering little security. In this picture, five displaced tenant farmers congregate outside the screened porch of a small house. Although they are united by a common plight, each man seems utterly alone, unable to find solace or support within an eroding agricultural system.

Label text from the exhibition

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Nettie Featherston, Wife of a Migratory Laborer with Three Children, near Childress, Texas, from The American Country Woman' June 1938

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Nettie Featherston, Wife of a Migratory Laborer with Three Children, near Childress, Texas, from The American Country Woman
June 1938
Gelatin silver print
Image: 34 x 26.8cm (13 3/8 x 10 9/16 in.)
Sheet: 35.2 x 28cm (13 7/8 x 11 in.)
Mount: 45.4 x 38.3cm (17 7/8 x 15 1/16 in.)
Mat: 22 x 18 in.
Frame (outside): 23 x 19 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

When Lange photographed her on a North Texas farm, 40-year-old Nettie Featherston was accustomed to a life of hard labor and poverty. She and her family had left Oklahoma seeking work in California when they ran out of money in Texas and found work picking cotton. Lange’s portrait reveals a gaunt survivor of the Dust Bowl, her right arm echoing the shape of the storm cloud behind her – a symbol of the difficult road ahead for migrant families looking for work. Reflecting on the photograph of herself years later, Featherston said, “It seems like … I have too much on my mind. I can just be burdened so bad, awful burdens they’ll be.”

Label text from the exhibition

 

Nettie Featherston

Lange met Nettie Featherston while working on that same FSA project. Like Turpen, Featherston’s family had been forced off their farm in Oklahoma. On their way to California to find work, they ran out of money and found themselves stranded in Childress, Texas.

The Featherstons sold their car for money to buy food. That left them with no way out of the dry and dusty landscape we seen behind Featherston. She looks desperate and distraught. “This county’s a hard county. They won’t help bury you here. If you die, you’re dead, that’s all,” she told Lange.

Decades later photographer and author Bill Ganzel tracked down Featherston. Then in her 80s, she still remembered how difficult that time had been. “Your kids would cry for something to eat, and you couldn’t give it. We cooked with black-eyed peas until I never wanted to ever see another black-eyed pea.”

Anonymous. “The Real Lives of People in Dorothea Lange’s Portraits,” on the National Gallery of Art website November 03, 2023 [Online] Cited 25/02/2024

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Arkansas mother come to California for a new start, with husband and eleven children. Now a rural rehabilitation client. Tulare County, California, from The American Country Woman' November 1938, printed 1965

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Arkansas mother come to California for a new start, with husband and eleven children. Now a rural rehabilitation client. Tulare County, California, from The American Country Woman
November 1938, printed 1965
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 35.5 x 27.9cm (14 x 11 in.)
Mat: 20 x 16 in.
Frame (outside): 21 x 17 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'On the Plains a Hat Is More Than a Covering' 1938, printed c. 1965

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
On the Plains a Hat Is More Than a Covering
1938, printed c. 1965
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 32 x 26.3cm (12 5/8 x 10 3/8 in.)
Mat: 20 x 18 in.
Frame (outside): 21 x 19 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

Lange wrote in her field notes that a “hat is more than a covering against sun and wind … it is a badge of service … linking past and present.” This artfully cropped photograph of James Abner Turpen, a 70-year-old Texas tenant farmer, focuses on Turpen’s hand as his fingers curl around the brim of a hat. Both hand and hat are weathered, aged by time and work, and portray Turpen without showing his face.

Label text from the exhibition

 

James Abner Turpen

From 1936 to 1939, Lange worked for the Resettlement Administration (which later became the Farm Security Administration). In Texas she documented the impacts of mechanisation on farmers. In the town of Goodlett she met James Abner Turpen, a 70-year-old tenant farmer who was about to be “tractored out” of his farm. Realising that agricultural machines like tractors could replace many farmers, landowners would evict their tenant farmers.

Turpen’s sons had already been tractored out. In her caption, Lange recorded his distress. “What are my boys going to do?” he asked. He believed the government was partly to blame. “They’re not any up there in Congress but what are big landowners and they’re going to see that the program is in their interest.”

Lange cropped one image to focus on Turpen’s weathered hand grasping his hat. The photograph is titled On the Plains a Hat Is More Than a Covering. But curator Philip Brookman inspected the image closely and compared it with others to confirm that Turpen is the subject.

Anonymous. “The Real Lives of People in Dorothea Lange’s Portraits,” on the National Gallery of Art website November 03, 2023 [Online] Cited 25/02/2024

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Migratory Field Worker Picking Cotton in San Joaquin Valley, California' from 'An American Exodus' November 1938, printed later

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Migratory Field Worker Picking Cotton in San Joaquin Valley, California from An American Exodus
November 1938, printed later
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 19 x 24cm (7 1/2 x 9 7/16 in.)
Mat: 14 x 18 in.
Frame (outside): 15 x 19 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

This photograph of hard stoop labor appeared in Lange and Paul Taylor’s 1939 book An American Exodus. According to Taylor’s field notes, “These pickers are paid seventy-five cents per hundred pounds of picked cotton. Strikers organising under CIO union (Congress of Industrial Organizations) are demanding one dollar. A good male picker, in good cotton, under favourable weather conditions, can pick about two hundred pounds in a day’s work.”

Label text from the exhibition

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Cotton Pickers and Farm Owners, Bakersfield, California' 1938, printed c. 1950s

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Cotton Pickers and Farm Owners, Bakersfield, California
1938, printed c. 1950s
Gelatin silver print
Image: 19 x 24cm (7 1/2 x 9 7/16 in.)
Sheet: 20.32 x 25.4cm (8 x 10 in.)
Mat: 13 x 16 in.
Frame (outside): 14 x 17 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Yazoo Delta, Mississippi' from 'An American Exodus' 1938, printed 1965

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Yazoo Delta, Mississippi from An American Exodus
1938, printed 1965
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 34.2 x 44.7cm (13 7/16 x 17 5/8 in.)
Mat: 20 x 24 in.
Frame (outside): 21 x 25 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Edison, Kern County, California. Young migratory mother, originally from Texas. On the day before the photograph was made, she and her husband traveled 35 miles each way to pick peas. They worked 5 hours each and together earned $2.25. They have two young children... Live in auto camp' April 11, 1940, printed 1950s

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Edison, Kern County, California. Young migratory mother, originally from Texas. On the day before the photograph was made, she and her husband traveled 35 miles each way to pick peas. They worked 5 hours each and together earned $2.25. They have two young children… Live in auto camp.
April 11, 1940, printed 1950s
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 30.1 x 24cm (11 7/8 x 9 7/16 in.)
Mount: 30.8 x 24 cm (12 1/8 x 9 7/16 in.)
Mat: 20 x 16 in.
Frame (outside): 21 x 17 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Children of the Weill Public School Shown in a Flag Pledge Ceremony, San Francisco, California' April 1942, printed c. 1965

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Children of the Weill Public School Shown in a Flag Pledge Ceremony, San Francisco, California
April 1942, printed c. 1965
Gelatin silver print
Image: 23.5 x 17.4 cm (9 1/4 x 6 7/8 in.)
Mat: 18 x 14 in.
Frame (outside): 19 x 15 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'End of Shift, 3:30, Shipyard Construction Workers, Richmond, California' September 1943

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
End of Shift, 3:30, Shipyard Construction Workers, Richmond, California
September 1943
Gelatin silver print
Image: 24 x 19 cm (9 7/16 x 7 1/2 in.)
Sheet: 25.4 x 20.32 cm (10 x 8 in.)
Mat: 18 x 14 in.
Frame (outside): 19 x 15 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

Fortune magazine commissioned Lange to document the bustling shipyards in Richmond, north of Oakland, where newly desegregated defence firms were rapidly constructing transport, cargo, and warships for the United States Navy. With its tight cropping and dynamic configuration, End of Shift focuses on the rushing legs and torsos of shipbuilders leaving a wartime facility. Lange expressed the urgency of their work in defence production without showing their individual features. The angled composition and complex interplay of light and shadow demonstrate Lange’s understanding of how modern design techniques could convey the force and energy of a group working together on a project critical to the nation’s defence.

Label text from the exhibition

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'War Babies, Richmond, California' 1944, printed c. 1965

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
War Babies, Richmond, California
1944, printed c. 1965
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 26.4 x 25.6cm (10 3/8 x 10 1/16 in.)
Mat: 18 x 18 in.
Frame (outside): 19 x 19 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

While in Richmond, Lange photographed not only shipyard workers but also local people on the street, such as this pair of young mothers. Cradling swaddled infants, with a knee-high toddler between them, the two women personify the prosperity and growth generated by the wartime boom, which brought renewed economic stability to many Californians. Lange’s pictures from Richmond capitalise on the symbolism presented by the backdrop of expanding production. In this photograph, for example, cruciform utility poles seem to watch over the women and children like industrial guards, symbolically guiding them away from the poverty of the Depression years.

Label text from the exhibition

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Lyde Wall, friend and neighbor, who makes "the world's best apple pie," and knows everything going on for miles around, Berkeley, California' from 'The American Country Woman' 1944

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Lyde Wall, friend and neighbor, who makes “the world’s best apple pie,” and knows everything going on for miles around, Berkeley, California, from The American Country Woman
1944
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 35.1 x 27.9cm (13 13/16 x 11 in.)
Mount: 35.2 x 28 cm (13 7/8 x 11 in.)
Mat: 22 x 18 in.
Frame (outside): 23 x 19 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

 

During her prolific and groundbreaking career, the American photographer Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) made some of the most iconic portraits of the 20th century. Dorothea Lange: Seeing People examines Lange’s decades-long investigation into how portrait photography could embody the humanity of the people she depicted. It demonstrates how her photographs helped shape contemporary documentary practice by connecting everyday people with moments of history – from the Great Depression through the mid-1960s – that still resonate with our lives in the 21st century. Featuring 101 photographs, the exhibition addresses her innovative approaches to picturing people, emphasising her work on various social issues including economic disparity, migration, poverty, and racism. The exhibition is on view from November 5, 2023, through March 31, 2024, in the West Building of the National Gallery of Art.

“Throughout the course of her 50-year career, Lange created an intensely humanistic body of work that sought to transform how we see and understand people,” said Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art. “Merging her skills as a portrait artist, a social documentary photographer, and a storyteller, she helped redefine photography through images that emphasise social issues.”

 

About the Exhibition

Dorothea Lange: Seeing People examines how Lange’s portraits have shaped our contemporary understanding of documentary photography as well as its importance to her vision and creative practice. Divided into six thematic sections, the exhibition features portraits ranging from her early career as a San Francisco studio photographer – the earliest work is from 1919 – and her powerful coverage of the Great Depression through expressive photographs of everyday people and communities during the 1950s and early 1960s.

Among the works on view are portraits of Indigenous people in Arizona and New Mexico from the 1920s and early 1930s; later depictions of striking labourers, migrant farmworkers, rural African Americans during the Jim Crow era, Japanese Americans denied their civil rights during World War II, and postwar baby boomers; and portraits of people in Ireland, Korea, Vietnam, Egypt, and Venezuela that Lange made in the decade before her death in 1965.

Lange began her career as a commercial studio photographer in San Francisco in 1918. Her studio became a gathering spot for artists who had serious discussions about photography and art. In 1920 she married Maynard Dixon, a painter of western subjects, who encouraged Lange to take her photography outside. She accompanied him on trips through the American Southwest, photographing rural landscapes and Dixon at work, along with the Indigenous communities he was portraying.

She started to work in the streets of San Francisco in 1933, making photographs such as White Angel Breadline, San Francisco, California (1933) that capture the effects of the Great Depression and the plight of the city’s dispossessed men and women. Lange also photographed labor organisers and protesters at May Day events around San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza: she focused on the protesters speaking, listening, or holding signs, and vowed to produce prints within 24 hours, as in May Day, San Francisco, California (1934). She also documented ensuing strikes, creating portraits of speakers and demonstrators with placards as well as photographs of the police presence in works such as Street Demonstration, San Francisco (1934). When she met the labor economist Paul Schuster Taylor in 1934, Lange began to photograph the plight of migrant farmers who had moved to California from the South and Midwest seeking new livelihoods.

From 1935 to 1943, while working for the for the US Resettlement Administration, Farm Security Administration, and War Relocation Authority, Lange focused on the resilience of Depression-era families, farmworkers, rural cooperative communities, migrant camps, and the forced incarceration of Japanese Americans in the early days of World War II. The resulting images illustrate the human and economic impact wrought across the United States by farm tenancy, racism, the legacy of slavery, climate change, and migrations. These portraits, sometimes combined with interviews, added a personal element to Lange’s stark pictures of makeshift housing and agricultural fields and cemented her documentary style.

During World War II Lange produced one of her most powerful series for the War Relocation Authority, depicting the forced incarceration of California’s Japanese Americans at Manzanar, in works on view such as Grandfather and Grandson of Japanese Ancestry at a War Relocation Authority Center, Manzanar, California (July 1942). She also photographed the shifts in California’s social fabric as its rising economy – sparked by growing defence industries – drew African Americans from the South and women into previously male-dominated and segregated businesses such as shipbuilding. In the 1950s, Lange continued to pursue stories about people and their communities for personal projects, as well as for Life magazine, that include her first photographs from Europe. Asia, South America, and North Africa.

 

Exhibition Publication

Published by the National Gallery of Art and distributed by Yale University Press, this 208-page illustrated volume explores Dorothea Lange’s decades-long investigation of how photography, through articulating people’s core values and their sense of self, helped to expand our current understanding of portraiture and the meaning of documentary practice. Lange’s sensitive, humane portraits of often-marginalised people galvanised public understanding of important social problems in the 20th century.

Compassion guided Lange’s early portraits of Indigenous people in Arizona and New Mexico from the 1920s and 1930s, as well as her depictions of striking workers, migrant farmers, rural African Americans during the Jim Crow era, Japanese Americans in internment camps, and the people she met while traveling in Europe, Asia, Venezuela, and Egypt. Drawing on new research, Philip Brookman, Sarah Greenough, Andrea Nelson, and Laura Wexler, examine Lange’s roots in studio portraiture and demonstrate how her influential and widely seen photographs addressed issues of identity as well as social, economic, and racial inequalities – topics that remain as relevant for our times as they were for hers.

Press release from the National Gallery of Art

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Mexican American Child, San Francisco' 1928

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Mexican American Child, San Francisco
1928
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 34 x 29.8cm (13 3/8 x 11 3/4 in.)
Mat: 16 x 20 in.
Frame (outside): 16 1/2 x 16 1/4 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Maynard and Dan Dixon' 1930, printed c. 1960s

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Maynard and Dan Dixon
1930, printed c. 1960s
Gelatin silver print
Image: 19 x 24cm (7 1/2 x 9 7/16 in.)
Sheet: 20.32 x 25.4 cm (8 x 10 in.)
Mat: 14 x 17 in.
Frame (outside): 15 1/4 x 18 1/4 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

In fall 1919 Lange met Maynard Dixon, a painter and illustrator of western subjects and one of the best-known artists in California. Early the following year, Lange and Dixon were married. Their first son, Daniel, was born in 1925 and their second, John, in 1928. This intimate portrait presents a close-up view of Dixon’s hands holding Dan in a gentle embrace, with the boy’s tiny fingers quietly resting on top of his father’s. Here Lange directed their pose to express both character and personal narrative, which recalls her training in New York portrait studios, as well as Alfred Stieglitz’s “portraits” of Georgia O’Keeffe that focused on her hands to convey her personality.

Label text from the exhibition

 

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) 'Georgia O'Keeffe – Hands' 1917

 

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Georgia O’Keeffe – Hands
1917
Silver-platinum print
National Gallery of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Mary Ann Savage, a Faithful Mormon All Her Life, Toquerville, Utah' 1931, printed c. 1950

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Mary Ann Savage, a Faithful Mormon All Her Life, Toquerville, Utah
1931, printed c. 1950
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 35.2 x 27.9cm (13 7/8 x 11 in.)
Mount: 38.2 x 28cm (15 1/16 x 11 in.)
Mat: 22 x 18 in.
Frame (outside): 23 x 19 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

Mary Ann Savage
was a faithful Mormon all her life.
She was a plural wife.
She was a pioneer.
She crossed the plains in 1856
with her family
when she was six years old.
Her mother
pushed her little children
across plain and desert
in a hand-cart.
A sister died along the way.
“My mother wrapped her in a blanket
and put her to one side.”

From Dorothea Lange Looks at the American Country Woman

Label text from the exhibition

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'San Francisco Waterfront' 1934

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
San Francisco Waterfront
1934
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 11.8 x 9.1cm (4 5/8 x 3 9/16 in.)
Mat: 14 x 11 in.
Frame (outside): 15 x 12 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'May Day, San Francisco, California' 1934, printed c. 1960s

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
May Day, San Francisco, California
1934, printed c. 1960s
Gelatin silver print
Image: 24 x 19 cm (9 7/16 x 7 1/2 in.)
Sheet: 25.4 x 20.32 cm (10 x 8 in.)
Mat: 16 x 14 in.
Frame (outside): 17 x 15 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Dispossessed Arkansas farmers. These people are resettling themselves on the dump outside of Bakersfield, California' from 'An American Exodus' 1935

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Dispossessed Arkansas farmers. These people are resettling themselves on the dump outside of Bakersfield, California from An American Exodus
1935
Gelatin silver print
Image: 24.1 x 18.8cm (9 1/2 x 7 3/8 in.)
Sheet: 25.3 x 20.7cm (9 15/16 x 8 1/8 in.)
Mat: 16 x 14 in.
Frame (outside): 17 x 15 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Black Woman Working in Field near Eutaw, Alabama' 1936

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Black Woman Working in Field near Eutaw, Alabama
1936
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 20.5 x 13.8cm (8 1/16 x 5 7/16 in.)
Mount: 21.2 x 14.5 cm (8 3/8 x 5 11/16 in.)
Mat: 15 x 12 in.
Frame (outside): 16 x 13 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Calipatria (vicinity), California. Native of Indiana in a migratory labor contractor's camp. "It's root hog or die for us folks."' February 1937

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Calipatria (vicinity), California. Native of Indiana in a migratory labor contractor’s camp. “It’s root hog or die for us folks.”
February 1937
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 24.1 x 19.1 cm (9 1/2 x 7 1/2 in.)
Mat: 16 x 14 in.
Frame (outside): 17 x 15 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Line of men inside a division office of the State Employment Service office at San Francisco, California, waiting to register for unemployment benefits January' 1938, printed c. 1960s

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Line of men inside a division office of the State Employment Service office at San Francisco, California, waiting to register for unemployment benefits
January 1938, printed c. 1960s
Gelatin silver print
Image: 19 x 24cm (7 1/2 x 9 7/16 in.)
Sheet: 25.08 x 20.32cm (9 7/8 x 8 in.)
Mat: 14 x 17 in.
Frame (outside): 15 x 18 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Funeral Cortege, San Joaquin Valley, California' 1938, printed early 1950s

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Funeral Cortege, San Joaquin Valley, California
1938, printed early 1950s
Gelatin silver print
Image: 20 x 19 cm (7 7/8 x 7 1/2 in.)
Sheet: 25.08 x 20.32 cm (9 7/8 x 8 in.)
Mat: 16 x 14 in.
Frame (outside): 17 x 15 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Hitch-hiking from Joplin, Missouri, to a sawmill job in Arizona. On U.S. 66 near Weatherford, western Oklahoma' August 12, 1938, printed c. 1960s

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Hitch-hiking from Joplin, Missouri, to a sawmill job in Arizona. On U.S. 66 near Weatherford, western Oklahoma
August 12, 1938, printed c. 1960s
Gelatin silver print
Image: 24 x 19.5cm (9 7/16 x 7 11/16 in.)
Sheet: 25.4 x 20.32cm (10 x 8 in.)
Mat: 16 x 13 in.
Frame (outside): 17 x 14 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Formerly Enslaved Woman, Alabama' from 'The American Country Woman' 1938, printed 1950s

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Formerly Enslaved Woman, Alabama from The American Country Woman
1938, printed 1950s
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 20.3 x 27.9cm (8 x 11 in.)
Mat: 14 x 18 in.
Frame (outside): 15 x 19 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

This formerly enslaved woman, whom Lange does not name, would have witnessed several events that transformed the nation. She would have experienced the tragedy of chattel slavery in the United States and the victory for enslaved people in the South through Emancipation, as well as the ups and downs of Reconstruction, the passage of Jim Crow laws that permitted segregation, and the Great Depression. The dilapidated home, falling and standing simultaneously, suggests her own perseverance amid a lifetime of racial, gender, and class oppression.

Label text from the exhibition

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Formerly Enslaved Woman, Alabama' from 'The American Country Woman' 1938, printed c. 1955

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Formerly Enslaved Woman, Alabama from The American Country Woman
1938, printed c. 1955
Gelatin silver print
Image: 24 x 19cm (9 7/16 x 7 1/2 in.)
Sheet: 25 x 20cm (9 13/16 x 7 7/8 in.)
Mat: 16 x 13 in.
Frame (outside): 17 x 14 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

Lange’s portraits of Depression-era people have inspired other artists, such as Elizabeth Catlett, to remember that time. In Survivor, Catlett translated the power of Lange’s photograph of a formerly enslaved woman into a linocut, an image cut into a linoleum block, inked, and then pressed onto paper, which prints it in reverse from the original.

Label text from the exhibition

 

Elizabeth Catlett (American, 1915-2012) 'Survivor' 1983

 

Elizabeth Catlett (American, 1915-2012)
Survivor
1983
Linocut
National Gallery of Art
Purchased as the Gift of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation in Honor of Mary Lee Corlett

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Member of the congregation of Wheeley's church who is called "Queen." She is wearing the old-fashioned type of sunbonnet. Her dress and apron were made at home. Near Gordonton, North Carolina' from 'The American Country Woman' July 1939, printed no later than 1965

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Member of the congregation of Wheeley’s church who is called “Queen.” She is wearing the old-fashioned type of sunbonnet. Her dress and apron were made at home. Near Gordonton, North Carolina from The American Country Woman
July 1939, printed no later than 1965
Gelatin silver print
Image: 38.7 x 31.9cm (15 1/4 x 12 9/16 in.)
Sheet: 39.5 x 34.1cm (15 9/16 x 13 7/16 in.)
Mat: 20 x 18 in.
Frame (outside): 21 x 19 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

Wheeley’s Church was a congregation of Primitive Baptists, conservative practitioners located primarily in the South. Lange had a knack for building rapport with people from various religious communities and worked to gain their trust and respect to make photographs. This portrait features one church member, “Queen” Bowes, a devout widow shaded by her elaborate sunbonnet. Lange captured her stern expression, with piercing eyes and a tightly closed mouth that hid her false teeth.

Label text from the exhibition

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Scandinavian Homesteader, Great Plains, South Dakota' from 'The American Country Woman' 1939, printed 1950s

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Scandinavian Homesteader, Great Plains, South Dakota from The American Country Woman
1939, printed 1950s
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 25.9 x 26.6cm (10 3/16 x 10 1/2 in.)
Mat: 18 x 18 in.
Frame (outside): 19 x 19 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Near Coolidge, Arizona. Migratory cotton picker with his cotton sack slung over his shoulder rests at the scales before returning to work in the field' November 1940, printed c. 1965

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Near Coolidge, Arizona. Migratory cotton picker with his cotton sack slung over his shoulder rests at the scales before returning to work in the field
November 1940, printed c. 1965
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 31.5 x 41cm (12 3/8 x 16 1/8 in.)
Mat: 24 x 20 in.
Frame (outside): 21 x 25 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Edison, Kern County, California. Young girl looks up from her work. She picks and sacks potatoes on large-scale ranch' April 11, 1940

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Edison, Kern County, California. Young girl looks up from her work. She picks and sacks potatoes on large-scale ranch
April 11, 1940
Gelatin silver print
Image: 18.7 x 24cm (7 3/8 x 9 7/16 in.)
Sheet: 20.2 x 25.3 cm (7 15/16 x 9 15/16 in.)
Mat: 13 x 16 in.
Frame (outside): 14 x 17 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Riley Savage, Toquerville, Utah' 1953, printed c. 1965

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Riley Savage, Toquerville, Utah
1953, printed c. 1965
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 27.9 x 21.5cm (11 x 8 1/2 in.)
Mat: 18 x 14 in.
Frame (outside): 19 x 15 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

Riley Savage, son of Mary Ann Savage (pictured in the photograph nearby), was a third-generation Mormon settler whose grandmother had crossed the plains to the Utah Territory in 1856.

Label text from the exhibition

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Man Walking Down a Country Road from the Kenneally Family Farm, County Clare, Ireland' from 'The Irish Countryman' 1954

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Man Walking Down a Country Road from the Kenneally Family Farm, County Clare, Ireland from The Irish Countryman
1954
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 31.2 x 26cm (12 5/16 x 10 1/4 in.)
Mat: 19 x 17 in.
Frame (outside): 20 x 18 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Man Walking Down a Country Road from the Kenneally Family Farm, County Clare, Ireland' from 'The Irish Countryman' 1954

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Man Walking Down a Country Road from the Kenneally Family Farm, County Clare, Ireland from The Irish Countryman
1954
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 26.5 x 21.5cm (10 7/16 x 8 7/16 in.)
Mat: 18 x 16 in.
Frame (outside): 19 x 17 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Nora Kenneally, Widow, County Clare, Ireland' from 'The Irish Countryman' 1954

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Nora Kenneally, Widow, County Clare, Ireland from The Irish Countryman
1954
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 22.6 x 28.5cm (8 7/8 x 11 1/4 in.)
Mount: 47.8 x 37.8cm (18 13/16 x 14 7/8 in.)
Mat: 22 x 18 in.
Frame (outside): 23 x 19 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Patrick Flanagan on Tubber Green, County Galway, Ireland' from 'The Irish Countryman' 1954, printed no later than 1965

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Patrick Flanagan on Tubber Green, County Galway, Ireland from The Irish Countryman
1954, printed no later than 1965
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 30.7 x 28.4cm (12 1/16 x 11 3/16 in.)
Mat: 19 x 18 in.
Frame (outside): 20 x 19 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Irish Child, County Clare, Ireland' from 'The Irish Countryman' 1954

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Irish Child, County Clare, Ireland from The Irish Countryman
1954
Gelatin silver print
Image: 25.4 x 25.4cm (10 x 10 in.)
Sheet: 35.2 x 27.9 cm (13 7/8 x 11 in.)
Mat: 16 x 18 in.
Frame (outside): 17 x 19 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

On assignment for Life magazine in 1954, Lange spent six weeks in Ireland with her son, Dan Dixon – her first time overseas. They stayed in Ennis, a small town in County Clare, and traveled extensively; Lange took some 2,400 photographs. Twenty-two of these were featured in Life the following year. Lange enjoyed working in Ireland and was particularly fond of this portrait of a smiling girl in a rain bonnet, which she pinned to a corkboard in her home kitchen. “Isn’t that a beautiful face?” she declared. “That’s pure Ireland.”

Label text from the exhibition

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'A Young Girl in Ennis, County Clare, Ireland' from 'The Irish Countryman' 1954, printed c. 1965

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
A Young Girl in Ennis, County Clare, Ireland from The Irish Countryman
1954, printed c. 1965
Gelatin silver print
Image: 30.9 x 29cm (12 3/16 x 11 7/16 in.)
Sheet: 34.1 x 29.3cm (13 7/16 x 11 9/16 in.)
Mount: 35 x 29.7cm (13 3/4 x 11 11/16 in.)
Mat: 19 x 17 in.
Frame (outside): 20 x 18 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Rebecca Dixon Chambers, Sausalito, California' from 'The American Country Woman' 1954

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Rebecca Dixon Chambers, Sausalito, California from The American Country Woman
1954
Gelatin silver print
Image: 22 x 29.6cm (8 11/16 x 11 5/8 in.)
Mount: 47.7 x 37.5cm (18 3/4 x 14 3/4 in.)
Mat: 20 x 18 in.
Frame (outside): 21 x 19 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Hand of Dancer, Java, Indonesia' 1958

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Hand of Dancer, Java, Indonesia
1958
Gelatin silver print
Image: 34 x 26.5cm (13 3/8 x 10 7/16 in.)
Sheet: 35.2 x 27.9 cm (13 7/8 x 11 in.)
Mat: 20 x 16 in.
Frame (outside): 21 x 17 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

During a 1958 trip to Indonesia with Paul Taylor, Lange observed a practice session of traditional gamelan music and Javanese dance. In this photograph, she focused on a gesture known as Ngrayung / Nangreu. Although such gestures can carry different meanings depending on the choreography, each highly controlled movement is believed to embody an expression of the soul and requires deep concentration.

Label text from the exhibition

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Vietnam' 1958

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Vietnam
1958
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 26.3 x 31cm (10 3/8 x 12 3/16 in.)
Mat: 16 x 20 in.
Frame (outside): 17 x 21 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Venezuela' 1960

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Venezuela
1960
Gelatin silver print
Image/sheet: 35.5 x 23.4cm (14 x 9 3/16 in.)
Mat: 20 x 16 in.
Frame (outside): 21 x 17 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

Lange joined Taylor on a trip to Venezuela, where he was consulting on agrarian reform. Here, she captured a man holding an axe in one hand and a machete in the other – blades used to clear corn stalks in the field. The presence of these sharp tools, along with the man’s torn clothing and bare feet, hint at the physical and economic vulnerability of farm labourers working on the land.

Label text from the exhibition

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Egypt' 1963

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Egypt
1963
Gelatin silver print
Image: 30.2 x 19.6cm (11 7/8 x 7 11/16 in.)
Mat: 18 x 14 in.
Frame (outside): 19 x 15 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) 'Egypt' 1963

 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Egypt
1963
Gelatin silver print
Image: 23.1 x 33.9cm (9 1/8 x 13 3/8 in.)
Mat: 18 x 14
Frame (outside): 19 x 15 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

 

 

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National Mall between 3rd and 7th Streets
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Exhibition: ‘Hildegard Heise: Photographer’ at Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

Exhibition dates: 17th September, 2021 – 20th March, 2022

 

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Karussellpferde, Halle a. d. Saale' (Carousel Horses, Halle a. d. Saale) 1929 from the exhibition 'Hildegard Heise: Photographer' at Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Sept 2021 - March 2022

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Karussellpferde, Halle a. d. Saale (Carousel Horses, Halle a. d. Saale)
1929
Gelatin silver paper
29 x 38.7cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Nachlass Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

 

Here is another woman photographer with an strong, passionate, objective but sensitive eye who seems to have slipped through the cracks of time, history and recognition. Would you believe it, this is the first comprehensive survey of the work of photographer Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979).

At first New Objectivity, New Vision to the fore… multiples, rows and grids. Carousel horses shot from below, town hall towers as a medieval encampment, and a mass of herring barrels so perfect in their unity higher than the surrounding buildings. An then my favourite, the mass and floating weight of the leaves of the Victoria Regia… the rigour of the composition, its cadences, and the tonality and feeling of the image are just superb. I could go on: the cactus, the crystal, the china – so pure and clean. Followed by glorious almost breathless landscape photographs – Wintry trees, Hamburg (1955, below) and Blossoming apple trees (1961, below). Where has this woman been?

The star of the show has to be her portrait photography. THIS is how you take a portrait, unlike those modestly proficient evocations we saw from Man Ray in the last posting. In these portraits Heise shows her strength and understanding of subject matter, she grasps the essence of the person she is photographing… the whimsy of Alfred Mahlau with film strips (1928-1933, below); the sensitivity of the hands of Carpet weaver Alen Müller-Hellwig at work (1930, below); the windswept bravura of Siegfried Leber, cow hand in Neuendorf on Hiddensee (1934-1938, below); and the composure of the mother in Mother and child on the inter-island steamer (1938, below) with the shadow of the hat covering her face, and the placement of the hands of both mother and child. You could almost pick these people out of the photo and shake them, ask them about their lives, empathise with them. They have true presence. Call me an old romantic, but I could rave on and on about this photographer’s work.

And to top it all off, we have a self-knowing, all-knowing self-portrait where Hildegard (which is a female name derived from the Old High German hild (‘war’ or ‘battle’) and gard (‘enclosure’ or ‘yard’), and means ‘battle enclosure’) appears as if a Sander archetype, staring directly at the camera like a Wagnerian god/ess, both masculine and feminine at the same time. A true enunciation of Gesamtkunstwerk, where art, design, creative process and life combine to create a single cohesive whole.

I take a lovely enjoyment, finally, in her success (Freudenfreude).

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to the Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Lübeck, Rathaustürme' (Lübeck, town hall towers) 1932 from the exhibition 'Hildegard Heise: Photographer' at Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Sept 2021 - March 2022

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Lübeck, Rathaustürme (Lübeck, town hall towers)
1932
Gelatin silver paper
17.2 x 23.3cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Estate Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

It was in the 1920s, a decade when new career prospects were opening up for women, that Hildegard Heise discovered her passion for photography.

Photography during this period reflected the upheavals and transformation of society in the wake of the First World War. Heise found innovative ways to picture these developments, often choosing unusual perspectives. In line with the “new” genre of object photography, which showcased the world of things, she emphasised the structure, surfaces and form of her subjects. Heise for example shot the “bathing machines” in the French beach town of Carolles from a plunging angle to highlight their graphic structures, and focused in on the shiny surfaces of technical vessels produced by a Berlin porcelain manufactory.

Heise found portrait models all around her, photographing mainly children and artists. In 1937 she took a long trip through the Caribbean, portraying people in their communities, their home settings and landscapes. A precise observer, she succeeded in painting a multifaceted picture of a foreign, still little-travelled region. Even at an advanced age, Heise was still capturing landscapes with her camera; her last pictures show the view out her window of passing cloud formations.

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Emden, Heringstonnen auf dem Gelände einer Heringsfischerei AG im Hafen' (Emden, herring barrels on the premises of a herring fishing company in the port) c. 1934

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Emden, Heringstonnen auf dem Gelände einer Heringsfischerei AG im Hafen (Emden, herring barrels on the premises of a herring fishing company in the port)
c. 1934
Gelatin silver paper
17.3 x 23.3cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Estate Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Blätter der Victoria Regia im Botanischen Garten in Berlin' (Leaves of the Victoria Regia in the Botanical Garden in Berlin) 1934-1945

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Blätter der Victoria Regia im Botanischen Garten in Berlin (Leaves of the Victoria Regia in the Botanical Garden in Berlin)
1934-1945
Gelatin silver paper
16.7 x 22.7cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Estate Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Deichlandschaft bei Emden' (Dike landscape near Emden) Before 1937

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Deichlandschaft bei Emden (Dike landscape near Emden)
Before 1937
Gelatin silver paper
17 x 23cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Nachlass Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Haus mit Garten, Christiansted, Insel St. Croix' (House with garden, Christiansted, Island of St Croix) 1937-1938

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Haus mit Garten, Christiansted, Insel St. Croix (House with garden, Christiansted, Island of St Croix)
1937-1938
Gelatin silver paper
18.3 x 16.8cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Nachlass Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Eisschollen am Elbstrand, Hamburg' (Ice floes on the Elbe beach, Hamburg) 1956

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Eisschollen am Elbstrand, Hamburg (Ice floes on the Elbe beach, Hamburg)
1956
Gelatin silver paper
17.1 x 23cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Nachlass Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'A Young Girl Cuts Her Nails' 1937-1938

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
A Young Girl Cuts Her Nails
1937-1938
from the series A Journey through the West Indies
Gelatin silver paper
17.2 x 16.2cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Estate Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Bergkette, Nußdorf am Inn' (Mountain range, Nußdorf am Inn) 1961

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Bergkette, Nußdorf am Inn (Mountain range, Nußdorf am Inn)
1961
Gelatin silver paper
23 x 17cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Nachlass Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Adolescents on the shore, Central Park, New York' 1970

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Adolescents on the shore, Central Park, New York
1970
C-Print
7.8 x 7.8cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Estate Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Städter auf der Parkbank schlafend, Central Park, New York' (Townsfolk asleep on park bench, Central Park, New York) 1970

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Städter auf der Parkbank schlafend, Central Park, New York (Townsfolk asleep on park bench, Central Park, New York)
1970
C-Print
11.8 x 12cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Estate Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

 

The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MK&G) is proud to present the first comprehensive survey of the work of photographer Hildegard Heise (1897-1979). The photographs she produced between 1928 and the early 1970s are nothing less than a revelation. In 1930, Heise exhibited alongside avant-garde photographers such as Max Burchartz, Andreas Feininger, Hans Finsler, Hein Gorny and Anneliese Kretschmer at the “Internationale Ausstellung – Das Lichtbild” in Munich. But this buoyant period of bright prospects was followed after 1945 by a systematic side-lining of women artists. Heise continued to privately pursue photography, but her work fell into oblivion and was little researched. With around 160 images on view, the exhibition now pays delayed tribute to this important photographer. As an exponent of the New Objectivity, Heise often focused in closely on details and emphasised the structure, surfaces and form of her subjects. Her images span the areas of object photography, portrai­ture, in particular portraits of children, city scenes, travel photography and landscapes. Heise lived in Lübeck until 1933 and in Hamburg from 1945 to 1959, where she helped shape the city’s cultural life together with her husband, Carl Georg Heise, director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle from 1945. The couple counted among their close friends the painter Anita Rée, the graphic artist and painter Alfred Mahlau, and the photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch. Heise did a number of portraits while in Hamburg, for example of Oskar Kokoschka, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and the weaver Alen Müller-Hellwig. Hildegard Heise’s estate, comprising around 3000 photographs and 2500 negatives, is housed at MK&G.

The exhibition is organised along Heise’s major areas of focus. In her OBJECT PHOTOGRAPHY she highlighted graphic structures and the formal qualities of the objects depicted. In 1930, for example, she photographed the “bathing machines” in the French town of Carolles from an unusual camera angle and showed the turrets lined up atop Lübeck’s town hall. She devoted the same attention to the worn surfaces of Much-Loved Dolls (1928) as she did to the immaculate exteriors of technical vessels produced by a Berlin porcelain manufactory [see below].

Heise found models for her PORTRAITS all around her, for example among her friends or artists such as Oskar Kokoschka, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Alfred Mahlau. These are often half-length portraits concentrating on the sitter’s face, manifesting the great preoccupation during this period with physiognomy. Children’s portraiture – mainly the realm of women photo­graphers at the time – became a specialty that Heise continued to pursue over the years. She did such portraits on commission but also in her circle of friends, where she proved to be an attentive observer, seemingly capturing candid moments.

From 1934 to 1936 Heise created an extensive CITY PORTRAIT of Emden that interweaves photographs of people, the cityscape and the northern German dike landscape. Her study of Emden combines shots of boatmen, carters and other occupational groups with scenes of the harbour with its herring factory and views of the Hanseatic city’s architecture and cultural monuments. Heise would continue in the following decades to work with the stylistic device of linking varied perspectives.

In 1937-1938, Heise and her husband took an extended trip to the islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix, Jamaica and Hispaniola in search of traces of her Caribbean grandmother. The PHOTOGRAPHIC TRAVEL REPORTAGE she created during the journey conjoins portraits with scenes of the landscape and built environment. In addition to the sea, exotic vegetation and architecture, she evinced a keen interest in the people she encountered and the different ways of life of the various social classes. Her subjects include the wife of a priest, an elegantly dressed Caribbean lady she spied on a ferry as well as a chambermaid in a grand hotel and the children of market vendors. By addressing everyday human experiences, Heise’s work thus anticipates the humanist photography of the post-war period. After the war, Heise’s travel photography became even more spontaneous and situational. In Naples in the 1960s, she captured the colourful comings and goings at the harbour, and in 1969 she observed the process of wood being loaded onto ships at a port in Finland. The photographer’s pronounced interest in painting a broad portrait of society with its different classes and cultures is in evidence once more in her images of New York’s Central Park (1970).

Another consistent theme in Heise’s work is LANDSCAPE PHOTO­GRAPHY. Until an advanced age, she engaged in an almost meditative contemplation of trees and their root systems, remaining true to her matter-of-fact, objective approach. Her nature observations intensified even further after she moved to Nußdorf am Inn, where starting in 1960 she produced extensive series of scenes of the Upper Bavarian winter landscape surrounding her new home. Photography would remain an important means of expression for her until the very last; she was still photographing passing clouds from the window of the residential home where she spent her final years.

Hildegard Heise, born in Lübeck in 1897, initially trained during the First World War as a kindergarten teacher, baby nurse and social worker, unusual occupations for a woman from the upper middle class that testify to her social commitment. After marrying Carl Georg Heise in 1922, she gave up these activities and took up photography, studying in 1928 with her contemporary Albert Renger-Patzsch, a friend of the couple who was at the time a museum director in Lübeck. She accompanied Renger-Patzsch to Holland and Alsace as his assistant. From 1929 to 1930 she continued her training with Hans Finsler (head of the photography class at the Burg Giebichenstein School of Art in Halle) and spent three months working in Grete Kolliner’s portrait studio in Vienna. In 1930 Heise exhibited at the “Internationale Ausstellung – Das Lichtbild” in Munich. Thereafter she participated in a showing of the “Kurt Kirchbach Collection” at the Hamburger Kunstverein in 1932 and in an exhibition on “Contemporary German Photography” at Mills College in California around 1934. Her photographs were featured in magazines including Atlantis, Das Deutsche Familienblatt and the Allgemeiner Wegweiser. Heise sold her pictures through the photography agencies Bavaria and kind-foto and accepted commissions to document works of art and decorative art and architecture, including for the publication Das Lübecker Orgelbuch (1931). From 1945 until the early 1970s, Heise continued to pursue her artistic activities in private.

Press release from the Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

 

Anita Rée (German, 1885-1933) 'Portrait of Hildegard Heise' 1927

 

Anita Rée (German, 1885-1933)
Portrait of Hildegard Heise
1927
Oil on canvas
40.6 x 35.6cm
Hamburger Kunsthalle
© Hamburger Kunsthalle / bpk
Foto: Elke Walford

 

 

“I can no longer find my way in such a world, to which I no longer belong and I have no desire but to leave it. What is the point – without a family, without the once loved art and without any people – to continue to vegetate alone in such an indescribable, madness-riddled world … ?”


Anita Rée in her farewell letter to her sister before committing suicide in 1933

 

 

Anita Clara Rée (born 9 February 1885 in Hamburg, died 12 December 1933 in Kampen) was a German avant-garde painter during the Weimar Republic. After she took her own life the anti-Semitic government declared her work degenerate. Her works were saved by a groundskeeper. …

In 1930, she received a commission to create a triptych for the altar at the new Ansgarkirche in Langenhorn. The church fathers were not happy with her designs, however, and the commission was withdrawn in 1932 over “religious concerns”. Meanwhile, the Nazis had denounced her as a Jew and the Hamburg Art Association called her an “alien”. Shortly after, she moved to Sylt.

She was a suicide in 1933, partly as a result of having been subjected to such hostility and continuing harassment by antisemitic forces, partly due to disappointments on the personal level. In a note to her sister, she decried the insanity of the world. In 1937, the Nazis designated Rée’s work as “Degenerate art” and began purging it from museum collections. Wilhelm Werner, a groundskeeper at the Kunsthalle Hamburg preserved many of Rée’s paintings by hiding them in his apartment.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Anita Rée is one of the most fascinating and enigmatic artist of the 1920s. In many respects she lived a life in between worlds: as an independent woman in an art world on the verge between tradition and Modernism, as a regional artist with international aspirations, as a native from Hamburg brought up as a Protestant, with South American and Jewish roots. The works of Anita Rée (1885-1933) also reflect the at times radical changes in modern society at the beginning of the 20th century. Yet their main focus lies on the search for one’s own identity that is still highly topical and existential.

In hauntingly intense paintings, Rée depicts both people of different origins and the self as a foreign being. Her intimate female nudes continue to touch us today. Portraits of society gentlemen, the southern landscape as a place of yearning, worldly figure paintings with religious overtones or lone animals in stark dunes mirror the wide variety of her motives.

Text from the Hamburger Kunsthalle website [Online] Cited 12/02/2022. No longer available online

 

Hildegard Heise (1897–1979) 'Self-portrait' 1930s

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Self-portrait
1930s
Gelatin silver paper
22.7 x 16.8cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Estate Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Alfred Mahlau mit Filmstreifen' (Alfred Mahlau with film strips) 1928-1933

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Alfred Mahlau mit Filmstreifen (Alfred Mahlau with film strips)
1928-1933
Gelatin silver paper
23.2 x 17.4cm
Private collection
© Nachlass Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Alfred Mahlau (German, 1894-1967)

Alfred Mahlau (21 June 1894 – 22 January 1967) German painter, illustrator and teacher.

Alfred Mahlau was born in Berlin on 21 June 1894. He was best known for his graphical work and illustrations, and for the large stained glass window, Dance of Death, in the Lübeck Marienkirche (St. Mary’s Church in Lübeck), which paid homage to a famous mural of the Dance of Death in the church that was destroyed in the bombing of Lübeck during World War II. His books include a number of works with paintings and drawings of Hamburg and the Hamburg port. In the 1920s Mahlau created packaging design for Niederegger, and in 1927 he created the company profile that it still uses today.

During the Third Reich he was a celebrated artist, and was drafted only at a very late stage, to Berlin in April of 1945. He was captured by the Soviets, and held in custody for a couple of months. After the war he became a professor in 1946 at the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts in Lerchenfeld.

He died in Hamburg on 22 January 1967.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Hildegard Heise (1897-1979) 'Ulrike von Borries in a deck chair' 1928-1933

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Ulrike von Borries in a deck chair
1928-1933
Gelatin silver paper
39.2 x 29.3cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Estate Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Badekarren, Carolles' (Bathing carts, Carolles) 1928-1933

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Badekarren, Carolles (Bathing carts, Carolles)
1928-1933
Gelatin silver paper
17.2 x 23.1cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Estate Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Diwandecke von Alen Müller-Hellwig' (Divan corner of Alen Müller-Hellwig) c. 1930

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Diwandecke von Alen Müller-Hellwig (Divan corner of Alen Müller-Hellwig)
c. 1930
Gelatin silver paper
23.5 x 17.5cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Nachlass Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Alen Müller-Hellwig (German, 1901-1993)

Alen Müller-Hellwig, née Müller ( October 7, 1901 in Lauenburg in Pomerania – December 9, 1993 in Lübeck) was a German weaver.

Alen Müller learned hand weaving and embroidery, first at the Hamburg School of Applied Arts as a student of Paul Helms and Maria Brinckmann, then at the Munich School of Applied Arts with Else Jaskolla. In 1925 she passed the master’s examination as an embroiderer and in 1928 as a hand weaver.

From 1926 to 1991 she had a workshop for hand weaving in Lübeck. In 1934 she was given the castle gate (tower and the customs officer’s house to the east ) as a place to work and live. She had been married to the violin maker Günther Hellwig (1903-1985) since 1937, who also moved his workshop here and devoted himself specifically to building the viola da gamba .

As one of the first weavers, she created a tapestry using only undyed sheep’s wool, working solely with the natural shades and material appeal of the undyed and partially unwashed wool. When Der Baum, her first work of this kind, was exhibited in the Grassi Museum in Leipzig in autumn 1927, it caused a sensation. She was then invited to all major exhibitions of German arts and crafts abroad.

Her style came close to the ideas of the Bauhaus. She “invented constructive motifs from the technique of warp and weft.” With the exhibition Handwoven Carpets from the Best German Weaving Mills in the Behnhaus, Carl Georg Heise offered her the first great opportunity to present herself in Lübeck and showed her work again in the Hallway of the Behnhaus on the occasion of the major Lübeck Carl Milles exhibition in 1929. From 1929, Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich ordered a series of monochrome, hand-knotted sheep’s wool carpets from her for the Villa Tugendhat, the Barcelona pavilionand buildings in Paris and Milan. In 1931 she received the honorary award of the city of Berlin. She took part in the world exhibitions in Chicago in 1933 and in Paris in 1937. In Paris she received a gold medal.

Alfred Mahlau, Robert Pudlich and Ervin Bossányi, among others, provided designs for their carpets. A template by Bossányi was her first figurative weaving motif. In 1932 she was the only woman to co-found the artist group Werkgruppe Lübeck with the painters Curt Stoermer and Hans Peters, the graphic artist Alfred Mahlau, the garden architect Harry Maasz and the architects Wilhelm Bräck and Emil Steffann.

From 1934 to 1939, 70 carpets were made based on designs by Alfred Mahlau, mainly on behalf of the Reich Air Ministry, but also for municipalities and private individuals. This kept the growing workshop busy. In 1935 it comprised ten looms, a wool washer, a spinning mill with nine spinning wheels, a showroom and an office and sales room and employed three journeymen, four apprentices, two clerks, three unskilled workers, nine homeworkers and two interns. The first carpet in this series was the curtain Drei Möwen for Kiel-Holtenau Airport. Most of the works from this period have been destroyed or lost. Some examples including the cycle However, the four elements from 1939 have been preserved because they were acquired by Walter Passarge for the Kunsthalle Mannheim. The cooperation with Mahlau ended in 1940 because Alen Müller-Hellwig wanted to support Hildegard Osten, who had worked for many years, after opening her own workshop. In March 1942, during the German occupation, an exhibition was held in the Reichsmuseum Amsterdam under the title Exhibition of modern tapestries based on designs by Alfred Mahlau and Alen Müller-Hellwig Lübeck. fabrics and embroidery. Alfred Mahlau Lübeck. Cardboard boxes for tapestries from the workshop of Alen Müller Hellwig.

Alen Müller-Hellwig turned back to her own designs and created until 1942 a series of tapestries with plant motifs such as Foxglove Meadow (1940), Spiraea, Bear’s Hogweed and Mullein. Also after the air raid on Lübeck on March 29, 1942, where her workshop remained undamaged, she continued to run it in the Lübeck Burgtor (she brought her two children Friedemann and Barbara to safety in Timmendorfer Strand). After the end of the war, the work was expanded to include textiles for everyday use (bed linen, towels, tablecloths) and employed numerous women, especially from East Germany, e.g. Spinners from East Prussia. After the industrial production of textiles got going again, she limited her work to decorative pieces and floor carpets. In 1954 she received the Art Prize of the State of Schleswig-Holstein. Alen Müller-Hellwig ran her workshop until 1990.

Her last trainee Ruth Löbe (1959-2016) took over the workshop in 1992 and continued it until her death in January 2016.

Text translated by Google Translate from the German Wikipedia website

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Die Teppich-Weberin Alen Müller-Helwig bei der Arbeit' (Carpet weaver Alen Müller-Hellwig at work) 1930

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Die Teppich-Weberin Alen Müller-Helwig bei der Arbeit (Carpet weaver Alen Müller-Hellwig at work)
1930
Gelatin silver paper
23.3 x 17.3cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Nachlass Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Blick in das Kakteenhaus in Bonn/Rhein' (View of the cactus house in Bonn/Rhein) c. 1935

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Blick in das Kakteenhaus in Bonn/Rhein (View of the cactus house in Bonn/Rhein)
c. 1935
Gelatin silver paper
23.4 x 17.4cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Nachlass Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Bergkristall' (Rock Crystal) c. 1935

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Bergkristall (Rock Crystal)
c. 1935
Gelatin silver paper
23.8 x 17.8cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Nachlass Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Technisches Porzellan, Berliner Manufaktur, Berlin 1935' (Technical porcelain, Berlin manufacturer, Berlin 1935) 1935

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Technisches Porzellan, Berliner Manufaktur, Berlin 1935 (Technical porcelain, Berlin manufacturer, Berlin 1935)
1935
Gelatin silver paper
39.3 x 29.1cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Nachlass Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Rathaus Stadtseite, Emden' (Town hall city side, Emden) Before 1937

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Rathaus Stadtseite, Emden (Town hall city side, Emden)
Before 1937
Gelatin silver paper
23 x 17cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Nachlass Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Siegfried Leber, cow hand in Neuendorf on Hiddensee, Pomerania' 1934-1938

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Siegfried Leber, cow hand in Neuendorf on Hiddensee, Pomerania
1934-1938
Gelatin silver paper
22.7 x 16.7cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Estate Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Portrait of a Girl, Hispaniola' 1937-1938

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Portrait of a Girl, Hispaniola
1937-1938
Gelatin silver paper
17.3 x 12.4cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Estate Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Mutter und Kind auf dem Dampfer zwischen den Inseln' (Mother and child on the inter-island steamer) 1938

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Mutter und Kind auf dem Dampfer zwischen den Inseln (Mother and child on the inter-island steamer)
1938
From the series A journey through the West Indies
Gelatin silver paper
22 x 17cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Nachlass Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Albert Renger-Patzsch mit Zylinder' (Albert Renger-Patzsch with top hat) After 1950

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Albert Renger-Patzsch mit Zylinder (Albert Renger-Patzsch with top hat)
After 1950
Gelatin silver paper
23.3 x 17.3cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Nachlass Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Arnold Küstermann' 1951

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Arnold Küstermann
1951
Gelatin silver paper
23.2 x 17.1cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Nachlass Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Winterliche Bäume, Hamburg' (Wintry trees, Hamburg) 1955

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Winterliche Bäume, Hamburg (Wintry trees, Hamburg)
1955
Gelatin silver paper
23 x 17.3cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Nachlass Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

A consistent theme in Hildegard Heise’s work is landscape photography. Up until old age, the photographer repeatedly dealt with trees and roots in an almost meditative repetition, while remaining true to her objective, sober approach. After moving to Nußdorf am Inn, she intensified her engagement with nature observation, where from 1960 extensive series about the Upper Bavarian winter landscape in the vicinity of her new place of residence were created. Photography remained Heise’s most important means of expression until the end of her life. From around 1965, Hildegard Heise photographed simultaneously in black and white and with colour slides. Heise photographed the passing clouds from the window of the residential home where she lived between 1973 and 1975.

Esther Ruelfs on the Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg website Nd [Online] Cited 11/02/2022

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Blühende Apfelbäume, Nußdorf am Inn' (Blossoming apple trees, Nußdorf am Inn) 1961

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Blühende Apfelbäume, Nußdorf am Inn (Blossoming apple trees, Nußdorf am Inn)
1961
Gelatin silver paper
23 x 17.1cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Nachlass Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979) 'Städter im Park, New York' (Townsfolk in the Park, New York) 1970

 

Hildegard Heise (German, 1897-1979)
Städter im Park, New York (Townsfolk in the Park, New York)
1970
Gelatin silver paper
19.3 x 17.4cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Nachlass Hildegard Heise, MK&G

 

 

Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
Steintorplatz, 20099 Hamburg

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Sunday 10am – 6pm
Thursday 10am – 9pm
Closed Mondays

Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg website

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Exhibition: ‘Jakob Tuggener – Machine time’ at Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zurich

Exhibition dates: 21st October, 2017 – 28th January, 2018

Curator: Martin Gasser

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Fabrik' (book cover) 1943

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Fabrik (Factory) (book cover)
1943
Rotapfel Verlag, Erlenbach-Zurich

 

 

Rare magician, strange alchemist, tells stories through visuals

I am indebted to James McArdle’s blog posting “Work” on his excellent On This Date In Photography website for alerting me to this exhibition, and for reminding me of the work of this outstanding artist, Jakob Tuggener.

The short version: Jakob Tuggener was a draftsman before he became an artist, studying poster design, typography, photography and film. “In 1943, in the middle of the Second World War, Tuggerer’s book Fabrik (Factory) appeared. At first glance, the series of 72 photographs without a text contained therein seems to depict a kind of history of industrialisation – from the rural textile industry to mechanical engineering and high-voltage electrical engineering to modern power plant construction in the mountains. An in-depth reading, however, shows that Tuggener’s film-associative series of photographs simultaneously points to the destructive potential of unrestrained technological progress, as a result of which he sees the then raging World War, and for which the Swiss arms industry produced unlimited weapons. Tuggener was ahead of his time with the book conceived according to the laws of silent film.” (Press release)

Fabrik, subtitled Ein Bildepos der Technik (“Epic of the technological image” or “A picture of technology”) pictures the world of work and industry, and “is considered a milestone in the history of the photo book.” It uses expressive visuals (actions, appearances and behaviours; movements, gestures and details – Tuggener loves the detail) to tell a subjective story, that of the relationship between human and machine. While the book was well ahead of its time, and influenced the early work of that famous Swiss photographer Robert Frank, it did not emerge out of a vacuum and is perhaps not as revolutionary as some people think. Nothing ever appears out of thin air.

“German photographer Paul Wolff, often working in collaboration with Alfred Tritschler, produced a number of exceptional photo books through the 1920s and ’30s, at a time when Constructivism and the Bauhaus influenced many with visions “of an industrialized and socialized society” that placed Germany at “the forefront of European photography” (Martin Parr and Gerry Badger. The Photobook: A History Volume I, Phaidon Press, 2005, p. 86). Arbeit! (1937) is particularly noted for its architectural framing and lighting of massive machinery, its striking portraits of factory workers, and is frequently aligned with works such as Lewis Hine’s Men at Work (1932) and Albert Renger-Patzsch’s Eisen und Stahl (Iron and Steel) (1931).” (Anonymous. “Arbeit!,” on the Bauman Rare Books website [Online] Cited 03/02/2022)

François Kollar’s project La France travail (Working France) (1931-1934), E. O. Hoppé’s Deutsche Arbeit (1930), Heinrich Hauser’s Schwarzes Revier (Black Area) (1930) and Germaine Krull’s Metal (1928) all address the profound social and economic tensions that preceded the Second World War, through an avant-garde photography in the style of “New Vision” and “New Objectivity” – that is, through objective photographs that question common rules of composition, avoiding the more obvious ways subjects would have been photographed at the time. Obscure angles and perspectives abound in these striking photobooks, making their clinical, objective fervour “the great persuaders” of the 1930s and 40s, Modernist and propaganda books of their time.

What made Tuggener so different was the uncompromising subjectiveness of his work, “photographing the two worlds, privilege and labour.” His direct, strong images of factories and high society use wonderful form, light, and shadow to convey their message, never loosing sight of the human dimension, for they shift “our angle from the boss’ POV [point of view] to those unable to get any respite or distance from the situation,” that of the workers. They are a piece of time and human history, which gets closer to the lived reality of the factory floor, than much of the work of his predecessors. Tuggener portrays the mundanity of the “operational sequence” (la chaîne opératoire) of the machine, where the human becomes the oil used to grease the cogs of the ever-demanding “mechanical monsters.” (See Evan Calder Williams’ “Rattling Devils” quotations below)

Tuggener then adds to this new way of seeing which recorded the multiplicity of his points of view – “a modern new style of photography showing not just how things looked, but how it felt to be there” – through the sequencing of the images, which can be seen in the wonderfully combined double pages of the Fabrik book layouts below. Take for example, the photograph that is on the dust jacket, a portrait of a middle-aged worker with a grave look on his face that says, “why the hell are you taking my photograph, why don’t you just f… off.” In the book, Tuggener pairs this image with a whistle letting off steam, a metaphor for the man’s state of being. Tuggener creates these most alien worlds from the inside out, worlds which are grounded in actual lived experience – the little screws lying in the palm of a blackened hand; Navy Cut cigarettes amongst steel artefacts; man being consumed by machine; man being dwarfed by machine; man as machine (the girl paired opposite the counting machine); the Frankenstein scenario of the laboratory (man as monster, machine as man); the intense, feverish eyes of the worker in Heater on electric furnace (the machine human as the devil); and the surrealism of a small doll among the serried ranks of mass destruction, facing the opposition, the opposing lined face of an older worker. This is the stuff of alchemy, the place where art challenges life.

“As Arnold Burgaurer cogently states in his introduction, Tuggener is a jack-of-all-trades: he exhibits, ‘the sharp eye of the hunter, the dreamy eye of the painter; he can be a realist, a formalist, romantic, theatrical, surreal.’ Tuggener’s moves effortlessly between large-format lucidity and grainy, blurred impressionism, in a book that is a decade ahead of its time.” (Martin Parr and Gerry Badger. The Photobook: A History Volume I, Phaidon Press, 2005, p. 144.)

James McCardle observes that, “the meaning of Fabrik is left to the viewer to discover between its pictures, its glimpses of an overwhelming industrial whole; it is essentially filmic on a cryptic film-noir level, a revelation to Frank.” Tuggener’s influence on the early work of Robert Frank can be seen in a sequence from the book Portfolio: 40 Photos 1941/1946 by Robert Frank that was republished by Steidl in 2009 (see below). “Like Tuggener, Frank tackles the task of seemingly incongruous subject matter and finds a harmony through edit and assembly. Again and again throughout this portfolio, Frank is not just trying to show his prowess in making images but in pairing them. They define conflicts in life.” Pace Tuggener. At Frank’s suggestion, Tuggener’s work appeared in both Edward Steichen’s Post-War European Photography and in The Museum of Modern Art’s seminal exhibition, The Family of Man, the latter an essentially humanist exhibition which took the form of a photo essay celebrating the universal aspects of the human experience.

McCardle goes onto suggest that Fabrik, as a photo book, was a model for Frank’s Les Américains: The Americans published fifteen years later in Paris by Delpire, 1958. On this point, we disagree. While his early work as seen in Portfolio: 40 Photos 1941/1946 may have been heavily influenced by Tuggener’s photo book, by the time Frank came to compose Les Américains (for that is what The Americans is, a composition) his point of view had changed, as had that of his camera. While The Americans has many formal elements that can be seen in the construction of the photographs, they also have an element of jazz that would have been inconceivable to Tuggener at that time. Grainy film, strange angles, lighting flare, street lights, night time photography, jukeboxes and American flags portray the American dream not so much from the vantage point of a knowing insider (as Tuggener was) but as a visitor from another planet. Not so much alienating world (man as machine) as alien world, picturing something that has never been recognised before. These are two different models of being. While both are photo books and both pair images together in sequences, Frank had moved on to another point of view, that of an “invalid” outsider, and his photo book has a completely different nature to that of Tuggener’s Fabrik.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Word count: 1,366


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

 

 

For Jakob Tuggener, whose works can be seen within the context of social documentary photography, the individual and the industrial boom of the 19th and 20th centuries were central themes. His often somber, black and white photographs seem to confront this new world with a sense of fear as well as admiration. Will technology help relieve us of physically hard labour or replace us altogether? Tuggener owes his renown to his photo book Fabrik (Factory) that was published in 1943. With an aesthetic approach that was unique for his time, Tuggener explores in his photographic essay the relationship between humans and the perceived threat as well as progress of technology. The labourers depicted are grave, their faces worn marked by deep folds, while a factory building in the background stands strong, enveloped in a vaporous cloud. This “Pictorial Epic of Technology,” as Tuggener himself described it, is today considered a milestone in the history of photography books.

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (1904-1988) Page layout from the book Fabrik 1943

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Steam whistle, Steckborn artificial silk factory' 1938 from the exhibition Exhibition: 'Jakob Tuggener – Machine time' at Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zurich, Oct 2017 - Jan 2018

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Steam whistle, Steckborn artificial silk factory
1938
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Selection from the book 'Portfolio: 40 Photos 1941/1946' by Robert Frank

 

Selection from the book Portfolio: 40 Photos 1941/1946 by Robert Frank (Steidl, 2009)

 

The ‘weightless’ and the ‘grounded’ are two opposing themes that Frank repeatedly uses to move us through this sequence. Three radio transistors in a product shot float into the sky while a music conductor, his band and a church steeple succumb to gravity on the facing page. Even in this image Frank shifts focus to the sky and beyond – the weightless. When he photographs rural life, the farmers heft whole pigs into the air and another carries a huge bale of freshly cut grain which seems featherlight but for the woman trailing behind with hands ready to assist.

Considering this work was made while fascism was on the move through Europe, external politics is felt through metaphor. A painted portrait of men in uniform among a display of pots and pans for sale faces a brightly polished cog from a machine – its teeth sharp and precise. In another pairing, demonstrators waving flags in the streets of Zurich face a street sign covered with snow and frost, a Swiss flag blows in the background. in yet another of a crowd of spectators face the illuminated march of a piece of machinery – its illusory shadow filling in the ranks. These pairings feel under the influence of Jakob Tuggener, whose work Frank certainly knew. Like Tuggener, Frank tackles the task of seemingly incongruous subject matter and finds a harmony through edit and assembly.

Again and again throughout this portfolio, Frank is not just trying to show his prowess in making images but in pairing them. They define conflicts in life. One boy struggles to climb a rope while a ski jumper is frozen in flight. Fisherman bask in sunlight while two pedestrians are caught in blinding snowfall.

Text from the SB4 Photography and Books website December 14, 2009

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Autoritratto, Zurigo [Self-portrait, Zurich]' 1927 from the exhibition Exhibition: 'Jakob Tuggener – Machine time' at Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zurich, Oct 2017 - Jan 2018

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Autoritratto, Zurigo (Self-portrait, Zurich)
1927
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Budenzauber (Charm of the Attic Room) Jakob Tuggener with friends' 1935

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Budenzauber (Charm of the Attic Room) Jakob Tuggener with friends
1935
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Plant entrance, Oerlikon Machine Factory' 1934

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Plant entrance, Oerlikon Machine Factory
1934
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Work in the boiler' 1935

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Work in the boiler
1935
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Running girl in the Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon' 1934

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Running girl in the Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon
1934
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Façade, Oerlikon Machine Factory' 1936

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Façade, Oerlikon Machine Factory
1936
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (1904-1988) Page layout from the book Fabrik 1943

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Nell'ufficio della fonderia, fabbrica di costruzioni meccaniche Oerlikon' [In the foundry office, Oerlikon mechanical engineering factory] 1937

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Nell’ufficio della fonderia, fabbrica di costruzioni meccaniche Oerlikon (In the foundry office, Oerlikon mechanical engineering factory)
1937
From Fabrik 1933-1953
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

 

“Above all, the contrast between the brilliantly lit ballroom and the dark factory hall influenced the perception of his artistic oeuvre,” [curator] Martin Gasser explains. “Tuggener also positioned himself between these two extremes when he stated: ‘Silk and machines, that’s Tuggener’. In reality, he loved both: the wasteful luxury and the dirty work, the enchanting women and the sweaty labourers. For him, they were both of equal value and he resisted being categorised as a social critic who pitted one world against the other. On the contrary, these contrasts belonged to his conception of life and he relished experiencing the extremes – and the shades of tones in between – to the most intense degree.”

 

“Jakob Tuggener’s ‘Fabrik’, published in Zurich in 1943, is a milestone in the history of the photography book. Its 72 images, in the expressionist aesthetic of a silent movie, impart a skeptical view of technological progress: at the time the Swiss military industry was producing weapons for World War II. Tuggener, who was born in 1904, had an uncompromisingly critical view of the military-industrial complex that did not suit his era. His images of rural life and high-society parties had been easy to sell, but ‘Fabrik’ found no publisher. And when the book did come out, it was not a commercial success. Copies were sold at a loss and some are believed to have been pulped. Now this seminal work, which has since become a sought-after classic, is being reissued with a contemporary afterword. In his lifetime, Tuggener’s work appeared – at Robert Frank’s suggestion – in Edward Steichen’s ‘Post-War European Photography’ and in The Museum of Modern Art’s seminal exhibition, ‘The Family of Man’, in whose catalogue it remains in print. Tuggener’s death in 1988 left an immense catalogue of his life’s work, much of which has yet to be shown: more than 60 maquettes, thousands of photographs, drawings, watercolours, oil paintings and silent films.”


Book description on Amazon. The book has been republished by Steidl in January, 2012.

 

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Tornos Machine-tool Factory, Moutier' 1942

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Tornos Machine-tool Factory, Moutier
1942
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Navy Cut, Ateliers de construction mécanique Oerlikon (MFO)' [Navy Cut, Machine Shops Oerlikon (MFO)] 1940

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Navy Cut, Ateliers de construction mécanique Oerlikon (MFO) [Navy Cut, Machine Shops Oerlikon (MFO)]
1940
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Pressure pipe, Vernayaz' 1938

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Pressure pipe, Vernayaz
1938
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Grande Dixence power station' 1942

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Grande Dixence power station
1942
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener Foundation

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Laboratorio di ricerca, fabbrica di costruzioni meccaniche Oerlikon' [Research laboratory, Oerlikon mechanical engineering factory] 1941

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Laboratorio di ricerca, fabbrica di costruzioni meccaniche Oerlikon (Research laboratory, Oerlikon mechanical engineering factory)
1941
From Fabrik 1933-1953
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Heater on electric furnace' 1943 (detail)

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Heater on electric furnace (detail)
1943
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Heater on electric furnace' 1943

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Heater on electric furnace
1943
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Worker, Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon' 1940s

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Worker, Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon
1940s
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener Foundation

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) '"Amore", Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon' 1940s

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
“Amore”, Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon
1940s
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener Foundation

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Weaving mill, Glattfelden' 1940s

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Weaving mill, Glattfelden
1940s
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener Foundation

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Lathe, Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon' 1949

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Lathe, Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon
1949
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Lathe, Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon' 1949 (detail)

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Lathe, Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon (detail)
1949
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Jacob Tuggener at the popular pavillion Montpellier manufactures an epic of industrial photographs of workers' portraits' Montpellier magazine 1943

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Jacob Tuggener at the popular pavillion Montpellier manufactures an epic of industrial photographs of workers’ portraits
Montpellier magazine
1943
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Forgeron dans une fabrique de wagons de Schlieren' [Blacksmith in a Schlieren wagon factory] 1949

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Forgeron dans une fabrique de wagons de Schlieren [Blacksmith in a Schlieren wagon factory]
1949
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Untitled (Arms of work)' c. 1947

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Untitled (Arms of work)
c. 1947
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

 

Jakob Tuggener (1904-1988) is one of the exceptional phenomena of Swiss photography. His personal and expressive recordings of glittering celebrations of better society are legendary, and his 1943 book Fabrik (Factory) is considered a milestone in the history of the photo book. At the centre of the exhibition “Machine time” are photographs and films from the world of work and industry. They not only reflect the technical development from the textile industry in the Zurich Oberland to power plant construction in the Alps, but also testify to Tuggener’s lifelong fascination with all sorts of machines: from looms to smelting furnaces and turbines to locomotives, steamers and racing cars. He loved her noise, her dynamic movements and her unruly power, and he artistically transposed them. At the same time, he observed the men and women who keep up the motor of progress with their work – not without hinting that one day machines might dominate people.

Machine time

Jakob Tuggener knew the world of factories like no other photographer of his time, having completed an apprenticeship as a draftsman at Maag Zahnräder AG in Zurich and then worked in their design department. Through the photographer Gustav Maag he was also introduced to the technique of photography. However, as a result of the economic crisis in the late 1920s, he was dismissed, after which he fulfilled his childhood dream of becoming an artist by studying at the Reimannschule in Berlin. For almost a year he dealt intensively with poster design, typography and film and let himself be carried away with his camera by the dynamics of the big city.

After returning to Switzerland in 1932, he began working as a freelancer for the Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon (MFO), especially for their house newspaper with the programmatic title Der Gleichrichter (The Rectifier). Although the company already employed its own photographer, he was entrusted with the task of developing a kind of photographic interior view of the company. This was intended to bridge the gap between workers and office workers on the one hand and management on the other. By the end of the 1930s, in addition to multi-part reports from the production halls, as well as portraits of “members of the MFO family”, one-sided, album-like series of unnoticed scenes from everyday factory life appeared. From 1937 Tuggener also created a series of 16mm short films – always black and white, silent, and representing the tension between fiction and documentation. This includes, for example, the drama about death and transience (Die Seemühle (The Sea mill), 1944), which was influenced by surrealism and staged by Tuggener with amateur actors in a vacant factory on the shores of Lake Zurich. or the cinematic exploration of the subject of man and machine (Die Maschinenzeit (The Machine Time), 1938-1970). This ties in with the earlier book maquette of the same name and transforms it into a moving, immediately perceptible, but also fleeting vision of the Tuggenean machine age.

In 1943, in the middle of the Second World War, Tuggerer’s book Fabrik (Factory) appeared. At first glance, the series of 72 photographs without a text contained therein seems to depict a kind of history of industrialisation – from the rural textile industry to mechanical engineering and high-voltage electrical engineering to modern power plant construction in the mountains. An in-depth reading, however, shows that Tuggener’s film-associative series of photographs simultaneously points to the destructive potential of unrestrained technological progress, as a result of which he sees the then raging World War, and for which the Swiss arms industry produced unlimited weapons. Tuggener was ahead of his time with the book conceived according to the laws of silent film.1 Neither his uncompromisingly subjective photography nor his critical attitude matched the threatening situation in which Switzerland was called to unity and strength under the slogan “Spiritual Defense”.

Although the book was not commercially successful, Tuggener’s Fabrik was a great artistic success and continued to explore the issues of work and industry. He produced two more book maquettes: Schwarzes Eisen (Black Iron) (1950) and Die Maschinenzeit (The Machine Time) (1952). They can be understood as a kind of continuation of the published book, which the journalist Arnold Burgauer described as a “glowing and sparkling factual and accountable report of the world of the machine, of its development, its possibilities and limitations.” In the mid-1950s, on the threshold of the computer age, Tuggener’s classic “machine time” came to an end. On the one hand, the mechanical processes that had so fascinated Tuggener evaded his eyes. On the other hand, he could not or did not want to make friends with the idea that one day even a human heart could be replaced by a machine.

Portrayer of opposites

As early as 1930 in Berlin, Tuggener had begun to take pictures of the then famous Reimannschule balls. He was fascinated by the tingling erotic atmosphere of these occasions, and he found photography in sparsely lit rooms a great challenge. Back in Zurich, he immediately plunged into local nightlife to surrender to the splendour and luxury of mask, artist and New Year’s balls. Again and again he let himself be abducted by elegant ladies with their silk dresses, their necklines, bare back or shoulders in a glittering fairytale world, whose mysterious facets he sought to fathom with his Leica. Although Tuggener’s ball recordings were only perceived by a small insider audience for a long time, many quickly saw him as a “masterful portrayer of our world of stark contrasts,” a world torn between a brightly lit ballroom and gloomy factory hall. Tuggener also positioned himself between these extremes when he stated, “Silk and machines, that’s Tuggener.” Because he loved both the lavish luxury and the dirty work, the jewelled women and the sweaty men. He felt that he was equal and resisted being classified as a social critic.

In whatever world he moved, Jakob Tuggener did it with the elegance of a grand seigneur [a man whose rank or position allows him to command others]. He was an eye man with a casual, loving look for the inconspicuous, the superficial incident; not just a sensitive picture-poet, but the “photographische Dichter römisch I,” as he used to call himself self-confidently. Critic Max Eichenberger wrote of the Fabrik photographs: “Tuggener is able to make factory photographs that reveal not only a painter, but also a poet, and a rare magician and strange alchemist – lead, albeit modestly turned into gold.”

The exhibition Jakob Tuggener – Maschinenzeit includes vintage and later prints from the early 1930s to the late 1950s, which for the most part come from the photographers estate. In an adjoining room the exhibition will also feature a selection of his 16mm short films from the years 1937-1970, which revolve around the topic of “man and machine” in various ways. These films were newly digitised specifically for the exhibition (in collaboration with Lichtspiel / Cinematheque Bern).

Press release from Fotostiftung Schweiz

 

1/ The story in silent film is best told through visuals (such as actions, appearances and behaviours). Focus on movements and gestures, and borrow from dance and mime. Large, exaggerated motions translate well to silent films, but balance these also with subtlety (ie. a raised eyebrow, a quivering lip – especially when paired with a close-up shot).
Karlanna Lewis. “8 Tips for Making Silent Movies,” on the Raindance website June 1, 2014 [Online] Cited 03/02/2022

 

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (1904-1988) Page layouts from the book Fabrik 1943

 

 

Extracts from Shard Cinema by Evan Calder Williams London: Repeater Books, 2017

“All gestures are perhaps inhuman, because they enact that hinge with the world, forging a bridge and buffer that can’t be navigated by words or by actions that feel like purely one’s own. In Vilém Flusser’s definition, a gesture is “a movement of the body or of a tool connected to the body for which there is no satisfactory causal explanation” – that is, it can’t be explained on its own isolated terms.26 The factory will massively extend this tendency, because the “explanation” lies not in the literal circuit of production but in the social abstraction of value driving the entire process yet nowhere immediately visible. We might frame the difficulty of this imagining with the concept of “operational sequence” (la chaîne opératoire), posed by French archaeologist André Leroi-Gourhan, which designates a “succession of mental operations and technical gestures, in order to satisfy a need (immediate or not), according to a preexisting project.”25

26. Vilém Flusser, Gestures (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), p. 2.
27. Catherine Perlès, Les Industries Lithiques Taillées de Franchthi, Argolide: Presentation Generate et Industries Paleolithiques (Terre Haute: Indiana University Press, 1987), p. 23.

 

“Which is to say: we build factories. And in those factories, the process of the exteriorization of memory and muscle becomes almost total, as “the hand no longer intervenes except to feed or to stop” what Leroi-Gourhan, like Larcom, will call “mechanical monsters,” “machines without a nervous system of their own, constantly requiring the assistance of a human partner.”30 But along with engendering the panic of becoming caregiver to the inanimate, this also poses the problem of animation in an unprecedented way. Because if a “technical gesture is the producer of forms, deriving them from inert nature and preparing them for animation,” the factory constitutes us in a different network of the animated and animating.31 It’s a network that can be seen in those writings of factory workers, with their distinct sense of not just preparing those materials but becoming the pivot that eases, smooths, and guides the links of an operational sequence. In particular, a worker functions as the point of compression and transformation between tremendous motive force and products made whose regularity must be assured. The human becomes the regulator of this process, the assurance of an abstract standardization.”

30 André Leroi-Gourhan, Gesture and Speech, trans. Anna Bostock Berger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), p. 246
31. Ibid., p. 313

 

“… what I’m sketching here in this passage through scattered materials of the century prior to filmed moving images is something simpler, a small corrective to insist that by the time cinema was becoming a medium that seemed to offer a novel form of mechanical time, motion, and vision, one that historians and theorists will fixate on as the unique province and promise of film, many of its viewers had themselves already been enacting and struggling against that form for decades, day in, day out. The point is to place the human operator back in the frame, to ask after those who tended the machine before it was available as a spectacle, and to listen to how they understood what they were tangled in the midst of. But this is neither a humanist gesture of assuring the centrality of the person in the mesh that holds them nor a historical rejoinder to the forgetting and active dismissal of many of these personal accounts. Rather, it’s an effort to show how only with the operator’s experience made central can we see the real historical destruction of such illusions of centrality and, in their place, the novel construction of the human as tender and mender of a flailing inhuman net, the pivot who forms the connective tissue that enacts the lethal animation around her. In short, to see how the real subsumption of labor to capital is not only a systemic or periodizing concept that marks the historical transformation of discrete activities in accordance with the abstractions of value. It also is the granular description of a lived and bitterly contested process by which those abstractions get corporally and mechanically made and unmade, one which we can understand differently if we shift our angle from the boss’ POV to those unable to get any respite or distance from the situation.”

Excerpt from Evan Calder Williams. “Rattling Devils,” on the Viewpoint Magazine website July 13, 2017 [Online] Cited 29/12/2017

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Ballo ungherese, Grand Hotel Dolder, Zurigo, 1935' [Hungarian dance, Grand Hotel Dolder, Zurich, 1935] 1935

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Ballo ungherese, Grand Hotel Dolder, Zurigo, 1935 (Hungarian dance, Grand Hotel Dolder, Zurich, 1935)
1935
From the series Nuits de bal, 1934-1950
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Ballo ungherese, Grand Hotel Dolder, Zurigo, 1935' [Hungarian dance, Grand Hotel Dolder, Zurich, 1935] 1935

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Ballo ungherese, Grand Hotel Dolder, Zurigo, 1935 (Hungarian dance, Grand Hotel Dolder, Zurich, 1935)
1935
From the series Nuits de bal, 1934-1950
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Hotel Belvédère, Davos, 1944' 1944

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Hotel Belvédère, Davos, 1944
1944
From the series Nuits de bal, 1934-1950
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Carlton hotel, St. Moritz' Nd

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Carlton hotel, St. Moritz
Nd
From the series Nuits de bal, 1934-1950
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Palace hotel, St. Moritz' 1948-1949

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Palace Hotel, St. Moritz, San Silvestro
1948-49
From the series Nuits de bal, 1934-1950
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Ballo Acs, Grand Hotel Dolder, Zurigo, 1948' 1948

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Ballo Acs,Grand Hotel Dolder, Zurigo, 1948
1948
From the series Nuits de bal, 1934-1950
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Ball Nights' 1934-1950

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Ball Nights
From the series Nuits de bal, 1934-1950
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

 

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Exhibition: ‘Robert Doisneau – Photographs. From Craft to Art’ at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin

Exhibition dates: 9th December, 2016 – 5th March, 2017

 

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994) 'Le Baiser de l'Hôtel de Ville' (The Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville) Paris, 1950 from the exhibition 'Robert Doisneau – Photographs. From Craft to Art' at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Dec 2016 - March 2017

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994)
Le Baiser de l’Hôtel de Ville (The Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville)
Paris, 1950
© Atelier Robert Doisneau, 2016

 

 

I have waited nearly ten years to do a posting on this artist and his “humanist photography” (he was part of Steichen’s Family of Man exhibition). Of itself, that says enough, that there are so few exhibitions of his work.

I admit that he is not one of my favourites. His photographs, while containing a good dose of humour and occasional irony, seem to lack panache; his simply crafted ‘imperfect of the objective’ never really cuts it against Cartier-Bresson’s ‘imagination, from life’, or the wonder of artists like Walker Evans (from an earlier era) and the incomparable Helen Levitt.

His juggling act – “juggler, tightrope walker, illusionist to achieve even more realism” – leaves most of the work feeling brittle, over controlled with a salutary sense of stage fright.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to Martin-Gropius-Bau for allowing me to publish some of the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photograph for a larger version of the image.

 

 

“People like my photos because they see in them what they would see if they stopped rushing about and took the time to enjoy the city…”


Robert Doisneau

 

“Doisneau always approached his work with a little self mockery, perhaps it was his antidote to the anguish of not being a jester, a tight-rope walker, a magician as he was too much of a realist: and here lies the paradox of one who wished to carry out his work like a street artist, with the chaste joy and fun of an artist malgré lui [in spite of himself] ….

There was a real bond between him and Henri Cartier-Bresson; if they were equally childlike in their joking, they were just as ready to consult each other on professional questions. ‘Our friendship is lost in the darkness of time’, wrote Cartier-Bresson in 1995. ‘We will no longer have his laugh, full of compassion, nor his hard-hitting retorts, so funny and profound. Never told twice: each time a surprise. But his deep kindness, his love for all beings and for a simple life will always exist in his work’. They did not have the same conception of photography, given the difficulty of ‘conjugating’ Doisneau’s ‘imperfect of the objective’ (imparfait de l’objectif) with the ‘imagination, from life’ (imaginaire d’après nature) of Cartier-Bresson, who was more inclined to rigour, influenced by painting and drawing and averse to reframing…

Doisneau always took an ironic approach to his work, which for him was only an antidote to the anxiety of not being. Juggler, tightrope walker, illusionist to achieve even more realism: such is the deceptive paradox of someone who wanted to ‘carry off his tricks like the sidewalk artists’, with the modest lucidity of an artist in spite of himself.”


Anonymous text. “Views & Reviews: Imperfect of the Objective, From Craft to Art, Robert Doisneau Photography,” on the Bint Phootbooks on Internet website 19 May 2016 [Online] Cited 20/11/2021

 

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994) 'The Melted Car' 1944 from the exhibition 'Robert Doisneau – Photographs. From Craft to Art' at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Dec 2016 - March 2017

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994)
The Melted Car
1944
© Atelier Robert Doisneau, 2016

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994) 'Les 20 ans de Josette' 1947

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994)
Les 20 ans de Josette (20 years of Josette)
1947
© Atelier Robert Doisneau, 2016

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994) 'Les tabliers de la Rue de Rivoli' 1978

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994)
Les tabliers de la Rue de Rivoli
1978
© Atelier Robert Doisneau, 2016

 

Dustjacket of Robert Doisneau's 'La Banlieue de Paris' (The Suburbs of Paris) 1949

 

Dust jacket of Robert Doisneau’s La Banlieue de Paris (The Suburbs of Paris)
1949

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994) 'African Games' 1945

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994)
African Games
1945
© Atelier Robert Doisneau, 2016

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994) 'Mademoiselle Anita' 1951

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994)
Mademoiselle Anita
1951
© Atelier Robert Doisneau, 2016

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994) 'Les frères, rue du Docteur Lecène, Paris' (The brothers, street of Doctor Lecène, Paris) 1934

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994)
Les frères, rue du Docteur Lecène, Paris (The brothers, street of Doctor Lecène, Paris)
1934
© Atelier Robert Doisneau, 2016

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994) 'Le nez au carreau' 1953

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994)
Le nez au carreau (The nose against the pane)
1953
© Atelier Robert Doisneau, 2016

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994) 'Le cadran scolaire, Paris' 1956

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994)
Le cadran scolaire, Paris (The school clock, Paris)
1956
© Atelier Robert Doisneau, 2016

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994) 'La concierge aux lunettes, Rue Jacob' (The concierge with the glasses, Rue Jacob) 1945

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994)
La concierge aux lunettes, Rue Jacob (The concierge with the glasses, Rue Jacob)
1945
© Atelier Robert Doisneau, 2016

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994) 'La mariée chez Gégène' (The bride at Gégène) 1946

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994)
La mariée chez Gégène (The bride at Gégène)
1946
© Atelier Robert Doisneau, 2016

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994) 'Hommages respectueux' (Respectful tribute) 1952

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994)
Hommages respectueux (Respectful tribute)
1952
© Atelier Robert Doisneau, 2016

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994) 'Jacques Prevert au guéridon' (Jacques Prevert and table) 1955

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994)
Jacques Prevert au guéridon (Jacques Prevert and table)
1955
© Atelier Robert Doisneau, 2016

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994) 'La dernière valse du 14 juillet' (The last waltz of 14 July) 1949

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994)
La dernière valse du 14 juillet (The last waltz of 14 July)
1949
© Atelier Robert Doisneau, 2016

 

 

Very few photographers have become famous through a single picture. “Le Baiser de l’Hôtel de Ville” (The Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville) is such a picture, which Robert Doisneau (1912-1994) took in March 1950 in front of a Parisian street café in the Rue de Rivoli. The image of the couple kissing was a work commissioned by LIFE magazine. Although it was staged, it contains an entire story: It became the symbol of Paris as the “city of love”. It is one of the iconic photographs of the 20th century.

However, Doisneau’s oeuvre is much deeper and more complex. It is comprised of approximately 350,000 photographs, including professionally crafted shots and others which have the force and charisma of an artistic solitaire. He worked as a photojournalist for the major magazines such as Vogue, Paris Match, Le Point and LIFE. His most famous photographs were shot while wandering through the French metropolis. The exhibition provides an inside view of Doisneau’s work with around 100 selected photographs most of them taken during the 1940s and 50s. It shows his fascination for the normal, for the petit bourgeois and for the melancholic and fragile.

During the first half of the 20th century, Paris was one of the leading art metropolises of the world. The French capital attracts artists from all nations as it is multi-faceted and an ideal environment to capture in snapshots. Artists such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï, André Kertész, Martin Munkácsi, Germaine Krull, Robert Doisneau, use the new technical features of a camera with short exposure time and cultivate a photography of the moment. They focus on people and on a parallel trend, illustrating the increasing invasion of public life into the private sphere and making the private, intimate and personal visually public. Achieving this moment requires new aesthetic value measures. The relegation of the remaining is no longer the focal point of attention but rather the beauty of spontaneity becomes more and more noticeable.

Doisneau’s clients were photo agencies, fashion magazines and revues. They looked for photojournalists whose photographs can convey a momentary event comprehensively and with their own impressions. Doisneau delivered.

He prowled around the centre and outskirts of Paris with his Rolleiflex in his spare time. He was concerned with securing evidence. He did this less systematically than his great role model Eugène Atget (1857-1927), who catalogued street by street with his unwieldy large-format camera. Doisneau, however, was concerned with the atmosphere itself. He photographed building facades, interior rooms, quays, children playing, passers-by, wedding couples and moments that are often condensed into a sentimental story. He befriended intellectuals, journalists and poets like Robert Giraud (1921-1997), Jacques Prévert (1900-1977) and Blaise Cendrars (1887-1961). They took him with them to bars and music halls. In 1949, he published the book “La Banlieue de Paris” (The Suburbs of Paris) with Blaise Cendrars.

Doisneau was born in the suburb in the small village of Gentilly southwest of Paris in 1912. He finished his studies at the École Estienne in Paris in 1928 with a diploma in lithography and engraving. He first worked as an assistant to the “Encyclopédie photographique de l’art” photographer and publisher André Vigneau (1892-1968) in 1931 and then as a factory photographer for the car manufacturer Renault between 1934 and 1939. He stopped working for Renault to become a freelance photojournalist at the renowned Rapho Agency. During the Second World War, he documented daily life in occupied and later liberated Paris. He wanted his work to be understood as an encouragement to life.

To this day, Robert Doisneau stands for what is called “humanist photography”: a photography, which turns to people in their everyday life. The surprising moments of everyday life in the big city of Paris made him one of the most important chroniclers of the 20th century.

Text from the Martin-Gropius-Bau

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994) 'Palm Springs' 1960

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994)
Palm Springs
1960

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994) 'Palm Springs' 1960

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994)
Palm Springs
1960

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994) 'Palm Springs' 1960

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994)
Palm Springs
1960

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994) 'Palm Springs' 1960

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994)
Palm Springs
1960

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994) 'Palm Springs' 1960

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994)
Palm Springs
1960

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994) 'Palm Springs' 1960

 

Robert Doisneau (French, 1912-1994)
Palm Springs
1960

 

 

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Exhibition: ‘Sabine Weiss’ at Jeu de Paume – Château de Tours

Exhibition dates: 18th June – 30th October, 2016

Curator: Virginie Chardin, independent curator

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'Cheval, Porte de Vanves' Paris, 1952 from the exhibition 'Sabine Weiss' at Jeu de Paume – Château de Tours, June - Oct, 2016

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
Cheval, Porte de Vanves (Horse, Porte de Vanves)
Paris, 1952
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

 

A photographer I knew very little about before assembling this posting. The undoubted influence of Henri Cartier-Bresson can be seen in many images (such as Vendeurs de pain, Athènes 1958 and Village moderne de pêcheurs 1954, both below), while other images are redolent of Josef Koudelka (Marriage gitan, 1953) and Paul Strand (Jeune mineur, 1955).

Weiss strikes one as a solid photographer in the humanist, Family of Man tradition who doesn’t push the boundaries of the medium or the genre, nor generate a recognisable signature style.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


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

 

 

 

Sabine Weiss – Jeu de Paume Château de Tours

“Sabine Weiss”: exhibition at Jeu de Paume Château de Tours from 18 June 2016 until 30 October 2016.

Sabine Weiss is the last representative of the French humanist school of photography, which includes photographers like Robert Doisneau, Willy Ronis, Édouard Boubat, Brassaï and Izis.

Still active at over 90 years of age, she has accepted for the first time to present her personal archives, thereby providing a privileged insight into her life and career as a photographer. The exhibition at the Château de Tours will showcase just a few milestones from her long career. 

Through almost 130 prints, as well as numerous period documents – many of which are being shown for the first time – this exhibition provides visitors with an overview of the multiple facets of this prolific artist, for whom photography was first and foremost, a fascinating occupation.

Text from the Vimeo website

 

 

Sabine Weiss au Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'Vendeurs de pain' Athènes Grèce, 1958 from the exhibition 'Sabine Weiss' at Jeu de Paume – Château de Tours, June - Oct, 2016

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
Vendeurs de pain, Athènes (Sellers of bread, Athens)
Greece, 1958
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss is the last representative of the French humanist school of photography, which includes photographers like Robert Doisneau, Willy Ronis, Édouard Boubat, Brassaï and Izis.

Still active at over 90 years of age, she has accepted for the first time to present her personal archives, thereby providing a privileged insight into her life and career as a photographer. The exhibition at the Château de Tours will showcase just a few milestones from her long career. Through almost 130 prints, as well as numerous period documents – many of which are being shown for the first time – this exhibition provides visitors with an overview of the multiple facets of this prolific artist, for whom photography was first and foremost, a fascinating occupation.

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'Village moderne de pêcheurs, Olhão, Algarve' Portugal, 1954

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
Village moderne de pêcheurs, Olhão, Algarve (Modern fishing village, Olhão, Algarve)
Portugal, 1954
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'I Am A Horse, Spain' 1954

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
I Am A Horse, Spain
1954
Gelatin silver print
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'Times Square, New York' États-Unis, 1955

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
Times Square, New York
United States, 1955
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'Feux de Bengale, Naples' Italie, 1955

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
Feux de Bengale, Naples (Fires of Bengal, Naples)
Italy, 1955
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'André Breton chez lui, 42, rue Fontaine' Paris, 1956

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
André Breton chez lui, 42, rue Fontaine (André Breton at home, 42 rue Fontaine)
Paris, 1956
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'Françoise Sagan chez elle, lors de la sortie de son premier roman Bonjour tristesse' Paris, 1954

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
Françoise Sagan chez elle, lors de la sortie de son premier roman Bonjour tristesse
(Françoise Sagan at home, with the release of his first novel Bonjour Tristesse)

Paris, 1954
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'Enfant perdu dans un grand magasin, New York' États-Unis, 1955

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
Enfant perdu dans un grand magasin, New York (Lost child in a department store, New York)
United States, 1955
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'Vieille dame et enfant' Guadeloupe 1990

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
Vieille dame et enfant, Guadeloupe (Old lady and child, Guadeloupe)
1990
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'La Petite Égyptienne' 1983

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
La Petite Égyptienne (Little Egyptian)
1983
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

 

Sabine Weiss is the last representative of the French humanist school of photography, which includes photographers like Robert Doisneau, Willy Ronis, Édouard Boubat, Brassaï and Izis.

Still active at over 90 years of age, she has accepted for the first time to present her personal archives, thereby providing a privileged insight into her life and career as a photographer. The exhibition at the Château de Tours will showcase just a few milestones from her long career. Through almost 130 prints, as well as numerous period documents – many of which are being shown for the first time – this exhibition provides visitors with an overview of the multiple facets of this prolific artist, for whom photography was first and foremost, a fascinating occupation.

Née Weber in Switzerland in 1924, Sabine Weiss was drawn to photography from a very early age and did her apprenticeship at Paul Boissonnas’ studio, a dynasty of photographers practising in Geneva since the late nineteenth century. In 1946, she left Geneva for Paris and became the assistant of Willy Maywald, a German photographer living in the French capital, specialising in fashion photography and portraits. She married the American painter Hugh Weiss in 1950, and at this time embarked upon a career as an independent photographer. She moved into a small Parisian studio with her husband – where she continues to live today – and socialised in the artistic circles of the post-war period. This allowed her to photograph Georges Braque, Joan Miró, Alberto Giacometti, André Breton and Ossip Zadkine, and later numerous musicians, writers and actors.

Circa 1952, Sabine Weiss joined the Rapho Agency thanks to Robert Doisneau’s recommendation. Her personal work met with immediate critical acclaim in the United States with exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Walker Art Institute in Minneapolis and the Limelight Gallery, New York. Three of her photographs were shown as part of the famous exhibition “The Family of Man”, organised by Edward Steichen in 1955, and Sabine obtained long-lasting contracts with The New York Times Magazine, Life, Newsweek, Vogue, Point de vue-Images du monde, Paris Match, Esquire, and Holiday. From that time and up until the 2000s, Sabine Weiss continued to work for the international illustrated press, as well as for numerous institutions and brands, seamlessly passing from reportage to fashion features, and from advertising to portraits of celebrities or social issues.

In the late 1970s, her work returned to the spotlight thanks to a growing revival of interest in so-called humanist photography on behalf of festivals and institutions. This interest encouraged Sabine to return to black and white photography. At over sixty years of age, she began a new body of personal work, punctuated by her travels in France, Egypt, India, Reunion Island, Bulgaria and Burma, and in which a more sentimental melody may be heard, centred on the pensive and solitary moments of human existence. At the same time, Sabine became the focus of a growing number of tributes, all of which has contributed to her reputation as an independent and dynamic photographer, with a great humanist sensibility and an eye for the detail of everyday life.

Virginie Chardin

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'Petit matin brumeux, Lyon, France' 1950

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
Petit matin brumeux, Lyon, France (Misty early morning, Lyon, France)
1950
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'Marchande de frites' Paris, 1952

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
Marchande de frites (French fries seller)
Paris, 1952
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'L'homme qui court' Paris 1953

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
L’homme qui court, Paris (The man who runs, Paris)
1953
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'Vitrine, Paris' 1955

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
Vitrine, Paris (Showcase, Paris)
1955
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'Prêtre devant une trattoria, Rome' Italie, 1957

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
Prêtre devant une trattoria, Rome (Priest before a trattoria, Roma)
Italie, 1957
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'Terrain vague, Porte de Saint-Cloud' Paris, 1950

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
Terrain vague, Porte de Saint-Cloud (Vacant Land, Porte de Saint-Cloud)
Paris, 1950
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'Enfants prenant de l’eau à la fontaine, rue des Terres-au-Curé' Paris, 1954

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
Enfants prenant de l’eau à la fontaine, rue des Terres-au-Curé
(Children taking water from the fountain, rue des Terres au Curé)

Paris, 1954
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'Mariage gitan' Tarascon, 1953

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
Mariage gitan (Gypsy wedding)
Tarascon, 1953
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'Enfants jouant, rue Edmond-Flamand' [Children playing, rue Edmond-Flamand] Paris, 1952

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
Enfants jouant, rue Edmond-Flamand (Children playing, rue Edmond-Flamand)
Paris, 1952
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'Jeune mineur, Lens' 1955

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
Jeune mineur, Lens (Young minor, Lens)
1955
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'Mendiant, Tolède' Espagne, 1949

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
Mendiant, Tolède (Beggar, Toledo)
Espagne, 1949
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'Portraits multiples, procédé Polyfoto' Genève, 1937

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
Portraits multiples, procédé Polyfoto (multiple portraits, Polyfoto process)
Genève, 1937
Silver gelatin print
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'Chez Dior, Paris' 1958

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
Chez Dior, Paris
1958
© Sabine Weiss

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021) 'Anna Karina pour la marque Korrigan' [Anna Karina for the brand Korrigan] 1958

 

Sabine Weiss (Swiss-French, 1924-2021)
Anna Karina pour la marque Korrigan (Anna Karina for the brand Korrigan)
1958
© Sabine Weiss

 

Studio Fllebé. 'Sabine Weiss chez Vogue' Paris 1956

 

Studio Fllebé
Sabine Weiss chez Vogue, Paris
1956
Silver gelatin print
© Studio Fllebé

 

 

Jeu de Paume – Château de Tours
25 avenue André Malraux
37000 Tours

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Sunday: 2pm – 6pm
Closed Mondays

Jeu de Paume – Château de Tours

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Exhibition: ‘War from the Victims’ Perspective, Photographs by Jean Mohr’ at the Moscow Manege, Moscow

Exhibition dates: 11th November – 14th December, 2014

An exhibition produced by the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, and the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Curator: Jean Mohr

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'Greek children, Strovolos camp planned for 1,600 people, Cyprus, 1974' from the exhibition 'War from the Victims' Perspective, Photographs by Jean Mohr' at the Moscow Manege, November - December, 2014

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
Greek children, Strovolos camp planned for 1,600 people, Cyprus, 1974
1974
© Jean Mohr, Musée de l’Elysée

 

 

It’s always the women and children that suffer.

Marcus


Many thanxk to the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne and the Moscow Manege for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'Bullet-holes in a façade, Cyprus, 1974' from the Victims' Perspective, Photographs by Jean Mohr' at the Moscow Manege, November - December, 2014

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
Bullet-holes in a façade, Cyprus, 1974
1974
© Jean Mohr, Musée de l’Elysée

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'Palestinian refugees camp, Gaza, 1979'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
Palestinian refugees camp, Gaza, 1979
1979
© Jean Mohr, Musée de l’Elysée

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'Portrait of a Greek refugee, Larnaca, Cyprus, 1976'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
Portrait of a Greek refugee, Larnaca, Cyprus, 1976
1976
© Jean Mohr, Musée de l’Elysée

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'Young Mozambican refugee, Nyimba camp, Zambia, 1968'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
Young Mozambican refugee, Nyimba camp, Zambia, 1968
1968
© UNHCR / J. Mohr

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'Young Mozambican refugee who gave birth at the Lundo clinic, Tanzania, 1968'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
Young Mozambican refugee who gave birth at the Lundo clinic, Tanzania, 1968
1968
© HCR/J.Mohr

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'School, Kyangwali camp, Uganda, 1968'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
School, Kyangwali camp, Uganda, 1968
1968
© Jean Mohr, Musée de l’Elysée

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'A camp of 300 tents for 1,400 refugees, Lefkaritis, near Lamaca, Cyprus, 1974'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
A camp of 300 tents for 1,400 refugees, Lefkaritis, near Lamaca, Cyprus, 1974
1974
© HCR/J.Mohr

 

 

War from the Victims’ Perspective, Photographs by Jean Mohr

 

 

Early on, Jean Mohr sought to understand and explain the drama of civilians trapped in belligerent situations. His reportages are the result of decades of experience, which saw a ICRC and UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) delegate transform himself into a full-time photographer, after a spell at an academy of painting.

More than 80 exhibitions worldwide have been dedicated to his work, including two at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne that holds his collection. In 1978, at Photokina (Frankfurt’s major Photography Fair), Jean Mohr was awarded the prize for the photographer who had most consistently served the cause of human rights. He is one of the best representatives of humanist photography, masterfully balancing sensitivity and rigour, emotion and reflection, art and documentary evidence.

The exhibition addresses the issues of victims of conflicts, refugees and communities suffering from war and still under potential threat. It focuses on the emblematic cases of Palestine, Cyprus, and Africa. Other examples illustrate the universal problems of populations directly or indirectly enduring repercussions of war (in Iran, Pakistan, Nicaragua…).

Palestine, its refugee camps, precarious sanitary conditions, and the Gaza stalemate, whilst being the subject of major media attention, is a case worthy of reconsideration. It needs to be regularly re-explained and repositioned in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict. The case of Cyprus serves as a reminder that the refugee problem still remains an issue for certain members of the European Union. Several hundreds of thousands of people were forced into exile. Africa too needed to be addressed, as the post-colonial conflicts forced millions into displacement. The fragility of these States, outlined as they are by inherited colonial borders, regularly fuels turmoil which leads to humanitarian crises. The refugee problem is present throughout the continent.

Focussing upon these three geographical regions presents the problem of war victims in an historical setting classified by theme: “Portraits of Exile”, “The Children’s Diaspora”, “Temporary Landscapes”, and “Life Goes On”. These photographs render a face to the casualties and retrace the steps of their displacement, from their settlement in the precariousness of the camps and reception centres to their attempts to adapt to an enduring situation.

Portraits of Exile

Featuring portraits of refugees from different countries and cultures, the first section gives a human face to the impact of conflict.

Temporary Landscapes

The second section deals with the impact that war has on people’s homes. The photos document the displacement process and the precarious settlement of victims in camps, reception centres, mosques and shanty towns.

The Children’s Diaspora

Featuring images that capture the day-to-day lives of war’s youngest victims, this section reveals the gamut of situations faced by child refugees, as well as the many and diverse activities they engage in. Some photos show children attending a medical centre or clinic, while others show them playing, dancing or in class at a temporary school.

Life Goes On

The final section documents how people adapt to temporary situations that stretch out indefinitely. The images illustrate how important the distribution of food and clothing is, as well as documenting efforts to ensure that refugees can continue their schooling and education. This section includes the iconic image of a young Mozambican refugee and her newborn baby in a clinic in Lundo, Tanzania.

Press release from the Musée de l’Elysée

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'A few days after the Six-Day War, an Israeli officer considers an ICRC proposal, under the gaze of a Palestinian boy, Kalandia village between Jerusalem and Ramallah, 1967'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
A few days after the Six-Day War, an Israeli officer considers an ICRC proposal, under the gaze of a Palestinian boy, Kalandia village between Jerusalem and Ramallah, 1967
1967
© ICRC / Mohr, Jean

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'A needs assessment visit to stricken families, Khan Yunis, Gaza, 2002'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
A needs assessment visit to stricken families, Khan Yunis, Gaza, 2002
2002
© ICRC/MOHR, Jean

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'A needs assessment visit to stricken families, Khan Yunis, Gaza, 2002'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
A needs assessment visit to stricken families, Khan Yunis, Gaza, 2002
2002
© ICRC/MOHR, Jean

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'A young Mozambican refugee, Muhukuru clinic, Tanzania, 1968'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
A young Mozambican refugee, Muhukuru clinic, Tanzania, 1968
1968
© HCR/J.Mohr

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'Young Greek refugee, Cyprus, 1976'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
Young Greek refugee, Cyprus, 1976
1976
© Jean Mohr, Musée de l’Elysée

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'Kurdish refugees waiting for a food distribution, Qatr camp, Mahabad, Iran, 1991'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
Kurdish refugees waiting for a food distribution, Qatr camp, Mahabad, Iran, 1991
1991
© ICRC/Mohr, Jean

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'The photographed photographer, Jerusalem, 1979'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
The photographed photographer, Jerusalem, 1979
1979
© Jean Mohr, Musée de l’Elysée

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'Mozambican refugee at Sunday mass, Lundo installation area, Tanzania, 1968 The photographed photographer, Jerusalem, 1979'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
Mozambican refugee at Sunday mass, Lundo installation area, Tanzania, 1968
1968
© UNHCR / J. Mohr

 

 

Moscow Manege
Manezhnaya ploschad (Manege Square), 1
Moscow 125009

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday 12.00 – 22.00
Closed Monday

Moscow Manege website

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