Photography and Germany

Andrés Mario Zervigón

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781780237480
• eBook ISBN:
  9781780237947
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Photography

The meeting of photography and Germany evokes pioneering modernist pictures from the Weimar era and colossal digital prints that define the medium’s art practice today. It also recalls horrifying documents of wartime atrocity and the relentless surveillance of East German citizens. Photography and Germany broadens these perceptions by examining photography’s multi-faceted relationship with Germany’s turbulent cultural, political and social history. It shows how many of the same phenomena that helped generate the country’s most recognizable photographs also led to a range of lesser-known pictures that similarly documented or negotiated Germany’s cultural identity and historical ruptures.

The book rethinks the photography we commonly associate with the country by focus­ing on how the medium heavily defined the notion of ‘German’. As a product of the modern age, photography intervened in a fraught project of national imagining, largely productively but sometimes catastrophically. Photography and Germany covers this history chronologically, from early experiments in light-sensitive chemicals to the tension between analogue and digital technologies that have stimulated the famous contemporary art photography associated with the country.

Richly illustrated with many previously unpublished images, this is the first single-authored history of German photography.

Index

Illustration numbers are in italic

advertising photography 55, 56, 58, 98, 107–12, 179–82

Albert, Joseph, ‘Group Portrait after the Final Meeting, Frankfurt am Main, 1863’ 14, 34–5

Alexander, Gertrud 114

animal-themed photo books 136

Anschütz, Ottomar 12, 68–9

Storks 34, 70

anti-Semitism 85, 122, 124, 128, 132, 133, 135, 145

April fool jokes, photographic 66, 68

Arago, Dominique François 16, 17, 22–3

Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung (A-I-Z) 128

‘The A-I-Z Tells the Truth!’ 59, 112–14

Arndt, Ernst Moritz 33

Arnold, Ursula, Leipzig, Magazine Vendor 93, 174

art photography 75–6, 179–87, 189

Attie, Shimon, Writing on the Wall series 107, 194

Auerbach, Ellen (ringl + pit), Komol 55, 107–10

Augstein, Rudolf 162

Augusta, Kaiserin 22, 51

Autobahn 136

autochrome process 75

avant-garde photography

Dada movement 92–5, 160, 181

New Objectivity 96–103, 184, 199, 200

New Vision 104–7, 131, 184, 199–200

post-war 169–70, 171, 181, 184

Avenarius, Ferdinand

‘Propaganda and Truth, vol. I: The Photographic Documents’ 43, 85

Propaganda and Truth 87

Bade, Winfried, Germany Awakes 68, 131

Baedeker tour books 37, 41

Ball, Hugo 92

Barbizon painters 38

Barron, Stephanie 161

Barthes, Roland 170

Bauhaus art school 104–7, 130, 182

Bayer, Herbert 130

Becher, Bernd 182–3, 199, 200, 203

Cooling Towers Wood-Steel 99, 182

Becher, Max, ‘German Indians: Meeting’ 116, 203–4

Becher (née Wobeser), Hilla 182–3, 199, 200, 203

Cooling Towers Wood-Steel 99, 182

Beierle, Norman (Beierle + Keijser), Yoghurt Pots, an Homage 100, 182

Bellmer, Hans, The Doll 74, 142–3

Benjamin, Walter 49, 101, 104, 114

Bergemann, Sibylle

All-Kinds-of-Fur 102, 184–7

A Spectre is Leaving Europe 197

‘Untitled – Gummlin’ 109, 195–7

Berlin

Cesar Domela-Nieuwenhuis’s photomontage 131

Dada movement 92–5, 160, 181

East Berlin 176

fall of the wall 104, 187, 189, 190

light art installations 107, 194

Nollendorfplatz 88, 163–4

Radio Tower 54, 105–7

Reichstag building 105, 123, 190

slums 40, 76–9

Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung (BIZ) 66, 67, 68, 70, 87–8, 91, 134–5

Bieber, Emil, Kaiser Wilhelm II 29, 63–4

Biedermeier era 24–9

Biermann, Aenne, Ficus elastica 50, 101

Biot, Jean-Baptiste 22

Biow, Hermann 30–31, 33

Alexander von Humboldt 5, 30

The Doctor and Jurist Paul Hermann 12, 31

Bismarck, Otto von 24, 43, 47, 50, 52, 54, 76

Blackbourn, David 15

Blossfeldt, Karl 99–100

Adiantum pedatum 49, 99

Art Forms in Nature 115

Blumenfeld, The Dictator 65, 128

Bourke-White, Margaret 123, 149, 162

Ghastly View . . . Found by American Forces after they Liberated this

Camp 79, 149

Braatz, Julius, Plenipotentiary of the Bundesrat 24, 54

Brandenburg Gate 190

Brandt, Marianne 112

Self-portrait of Marianne Brandt taken in her Atelier in the Bauhaus, Dassau 42, 107

Brecht, Bertolt 101, 114

Broodthaers, Marcel 179

Die Bunte Welt (cigarette card album) 139

Bürckel, Joseph 134

cabinet cards 61

calotype (negative-positive) process (Talbot) 11, 17–19, 21–2, 23, 28, 41

Camera Work (periodical) 76

Cammenga, Nicolaas von 61–3

Capitalist Realism 178

Carol I 42–3

Carrière, Eva 37, 73

Carstensen, Pay Chr...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• one Belated Photography, 1839–1870
• two Photography and Nation, 1871–1918
• three The Weimar Era and Photo-consciousness, 1919–1932
• four The Alluring Surface, 1933–1945
• five History, the Future and Photography, 1946–1989
• six Photographic Promiscuity, 1990–2016
• References
• Select Bibliography
• Acknowledgements
• Photo Acknowledgements
• Index