Stop Reading! Look!: Modern Vision and the Weimar Photographic Book

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Introduction How to Read a Photographic Book In the second half of the Weimar Republic in Germany, photographers produced books that consisted almost entirely of sequenced images. These books covered a wide variety of subjects: from plants and nature to the modern metropolis; from exotic cultures to the German Volk; from anonymous workers to historical figures. Beyond their content, Weimar photographic books contributed to debates on the potential of photography to uncover a purely visual form of communication. This study is about these debates and the role of the book format in the construction of modern visual experiences. The production of photographic books went hand in hand with a growing confidence in the ability of photography to convey information more efficiently and effectively than text. In a 1928 essay entitled “Stop Reading! Look!,” the typographer Johannes Molzahn envisioned a future in which reading would be an obsolete skill. “вЂStop reading! Look!’ will be the motto in education,” Molzahn wrote, “вЂStop reading! Look! ’ will be the guiding principle of daily newspapers.”1 Molzahn points to a photographic book he recently designed, Max Taut: Bauten und PlГ¤ne (Max Taut: Buildings and Plans), as an example of this new and visual form of communication.2 In an essay on the growing prevalence of photography in advertising, the Bauhaus professor LГЎszlГі Moholy-Nagy predicted, “those ignorant of photography, rather than writing, will be the illiterate of the future.”3 Repeated and paraphrased by critics, typographers, art historians, and photographers, Moholy’s prediction became a catchphrase of the era and justified the publication of countless photographic books.4 But what did Molzahn and Moholy mean when they declared that photographs would eventually replace text? Answers to this question have assumed that photographs function naturally in a rhetorical role. For example, Michael Jennings claims that Weimar photographic books “for the first time offered arguments based not on the interplay between image and text, but on photographs alone, arranged in discursive or polemical order.”5 The term “photo-essays,” often used by scholars to describe photographic books, implies that they are literary endeavors created by Page 2 →replacing text with images. In his groundbreaking book on Weimar photoessays, Daniel Magilow argues that Molzahn’s statement “highlights photography’s affinities to written language by implying that photographs could do the work of written words.”6 Magilow’s use of the term “photo-essay” refers to photographic sequences that appeared in newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets, as well as books during the Weimar Republic, thereby productively bringing these various forms of photographic distribution into dialog. For Magilow, the photo-essay provides a legible way to “investigate the political, aesthetic, and social crises of Weimar Germany.”7 His investigation depends on the clarity of photographic meaning and its seamless transition into the roles of text. This rhetorical approach has dominated the study of photography for the past thirty years. Roland Barthes famously argued that without textual accompaniment, the photograph remains a “message without a code,” lacking the ability to signify on its own.8 Barthes responded to modernist interests in medium specificity by arguing that photographic meaning is not generated from the medium itself, but from its textual surround. Since Barthes’s initiation of a postmodern turn in photography studies in the 1980s, many scholars have accepted the interchangeability of photography and text and applied literary methodologies of interpretation to the photographic realm. But such terms for photographic meaning seem particularly anachronistic when applied to the age of modern photography, when theorists such as Moholy were effectively promoting the autonomy of the medium. “After the brilliant period of the daguerreotype, photographers tried to imitate all directions, styles, and appearances of painting,” announced Moholy. “It took approximately 100 years for it [photography] to come into its own possibility of application.”9 While Weimar photographers were declaring their independence from the rules of painting, it seems unlikely they would alternatively assign the medium to “do the work” of text. For Moholy and many others, the possibilities of photography were not limited to the imitation of text. On the contrary, photography could potentially provide a completely new system of visual communication.

This book argues that statements such as Moholy’s and Molzahn’s announce a distinction between the visual and the textual realms, rather than an assimilation of photography to traditionally textual ways of making meaning. It shows how Weimar photographic books stood at the center of debates about photography’s ability to provide uniquely visual forms of perception and cognition that exceed the capacity of the textual realm. For example, in Max Taut: Bauten und PlГ¤ne, bold, black lines intersect at right angles to frame the photographs and then diverge, expanding our visual field and guiding us to other images or blocks of text. Often, these lines continue across the gutter between the pages, flattening out the book and unifying Page 3 →our view of the two separate pages. Max Taut: Bauten und PlГ¤ne consists primarily of photographs of Taut’s latest building project, the German Printers’ Union Building in Berlin. Yet the book’s design, rather than its architectural content, commands the most attention. Because of its dynamic layout, Molzahn declared it an example of the new hybrid media he called Buchkinema. Next to the text of his essay, “Stop Reading! Look!, ” Molzahn positioned eight open-faced views of his photographic book. These reproductions are arranged vertically to resemble a filmstrip and appear beside the essay’s standard typesetting. Despite the differences between the steady sequence of pages of a book and the illusion of movement created in film, Molzahn indicates that photographic books were seen as a new hybrid form of communication: The new optics—that is the reason for the things handled here, whose effective forms above all must carry out the corresponding functions. We seize a territory that is totally dependent on photography: the illustrated book! The images on the surrounding pages show the possibilities. The book-cinema [Buchkinema], an optical, logical development formed from this material.10 Molzahn’s inter-media neologism, Buchkinema, reinforces the need to redefine the book as a more modern and visual form of communication. Several pages in the book feature circular photographs. The shape adds to the dynamic, typographical design of the page, but it also emphasizes the act of viewing, as if the reader/viewer peers through a lens. In his essay, Molzahn describes photographs as “physical-chemical-technical wonders,” rather than addressing content or subject matter. Instead of simply describing the work of Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton as films, he uses the term “visual-kinetic pictorial succession.” These eccentric phrases frame photographic media as a form of interaction between viewer and object, a visual experience rather than a mode of representation. Molzahn’s Buchkinema suggests the book as film, and the result is a hybrid object that is adapted to the “new optics” of the modern world. Moholy’s photographic book, Malerei Photographie Film (Painting Photography Film), is known as one of the most important yet perplexing statements on photography’s potential to revolutionize vision and communication. In the twelve essays at the beginning of Malerei Photographie Film, each about three pages in length, Moholy not only argues for the consideration of photography as a “creative expression” rather than “a mechanical process of recording,” he announces that photography is the basis of perception in the modern world.11 Scholars have described Malerei Photographie Film as a “lavishly illustrated document” and treated it as a text-based Page 4 →manifesto of the Bauhaus and New Vision photography.12 Yet to consider the photographs in the book illustrations is to misjudge their significance, for it suggests that the primary function of these images is to supplement the book’s text. The proportion of text to image alone contradicts this assumption. Hardbound in a bright yellow linen cover with red type, the book consists of forty pages of text displayed in a captivating typographic design, over seventy photographs collected from scientific and popular books and periodicals, and a fourteen-page spread titled “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” (“Dynamic of the Metropolis”) described by Moholy as a filmscript although the film was never produced. Given the amount of visual material in the book (photographs, as well as typographical forms such as abstract symbols, grid-like patterns, and bold outlines), the fact that Malerei Photographie Film has only recently been considered a visual object rather than a textual record is a remarkable oversight in scholarship on the interwar avant-garde.13

Page 5 →Johannes Molzahn. “Stop Reading! Look!” Das Kunstblatt 12, no. 3 (1928): 81.

Malerei Photographie Film. Munich: Albert Langen, 1925. Cover. В© 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin. Page 7 →Malerei Photographie Film contains abundant text and typographical designs, suggesting that text and photographs have distinct roles to play in the production of modern cognitive experiences. This book invokes modern forms of perception and communication that were emerging in film and the illustrated press. A dizzying variety of photographs from popular and scientific periodicals reformulate the book as a city and its pages as streets. Its eye-catching abstract markers, oversized page numbers, and bold keywords guide us through like traffic signs. In the book’s last pages, photographs, an asymmetric layout, and directional signals keep the eye jumping from image to text. In Malerei Photographie Film, photography and text work together to train its viewers to interact productively with the stimulation of the modern world. This introductory look at the photographic books of Molzahn and Moholy reveals the replacement of text with photographs was not what they had in mind. But not all Weimar photographic books are as typographically dynamic. A text of two to ten pages, written by the photographer, editor, or a commissioned author, appears at the beginning of most photographic books, followed by a photographic sequence of fifty to one hundred pages. Strangely, these photographic sequences depend on introductory texts that often declare photography’s superior capacity to communicate. No matter how emphatically it declares the images “speak on their own, ” the accompanying text demands to be considered when analyzing the book’s photographic sequence. But scholars have rarely considered how these texts shape the meaning of the photographs that follow. The separation of the photographic sequence from the book’s introduction and identifying captions marks a distinction between the two realms of text and image, suggesting their dialog rather than their interchangeability. If the meaning of the photographic series remains in the realm of the visual, beyond the capabilities of language to express, then photographic meaning must function outside the realm of textual control.14 By examining the relationship between text and photography in these books, this study aims to define a middle ground between modern and postmodern conceptions of photographic meaning. My approach resists arguing that photographic sequences substitute for text and thereby relay narratives or arguments. In contrast to this approach, I explore how Weimar photographic books sought to provide perceptual experiences unique to the visual realm. However, this does not mean photography functions in isolation from other forms of communication. Complex interactions between text and image shape many photographic books. These books were collaborative projects, involving other authors besides the photographer themselves. A number of books collect the work of multiple photographers. Moholy produced only a handful of the images that appear in Malerei Photographie Film, yet his theory of photographic perception guides their selection and arrangement. Page 8 →Karl Blossfeldt’s Urformen der Kunst (Originary Forms of Art) and Helmar Lerski’s KГ¶pfe des Alltags (Everyday Heads) began as exhibitions. The curators of these exhibitions, Karl Nierendorf and Kurt Glaser respectively, wrote the books’ introductions and collaborated with the photographers on the organization and sequencing of images. While Nierendorf and Glaser were deeply invested in the photographers and the presentation of their work, publishers arranged other partnerships between writers and photographers. August Sander had little contact with the novelist Alfred DГ¶blin, who wrote the introduction to Antlitz der Zeit (The Face of our Time). The publisher, Kurt Wolff, arranged for DГ¶blin to contribute to the project.15 An examination of the various contributions to these book projects brings multiple voices and meanings into play. But it should be noted that the gender of these contributors was not diverse. Despite the proliferation of female photographers during the Weimar Republic, few of them produced photographic books.16 This might indicate the influence of publishers, editors, art historians, gallery owners, and photography critics on these projects, which were professions still dominated by men. Many Weimar photographic books address political, social, and cultural topics. Yet an evaluation of content depends on a thorough understanding of the medium in which that content is represented. In the words of media scholar Lisa Gitelman, “it makes no sense to think about вЂcontent’ without attending to the medium that both communicates that content and represents or helps to set the limits of what content can consist of.”17 My approach to photographic books addresses how they construct meaning and thereby explores how photography, as a modern media, shaped visual experiences during the Weimar Republic. While literary scholars have privileged the narrative aspects of the photographic book, art historians have analyzed their images without much

consideration for their original sequence. Many photographs now considered classic examples of Weimar photography were initially part of a sequence within a book, but little attention has been given to their interaction with text and other photographs. As part of its analysis of Weimar photographic books, this study recasts the photographic medium as a product of dialogues and relations between disparate formats. It focuses on intersections of diverse and often contradictory aspects of photographic meaning—image and text, stillness and motion—thereby emphasizing the incoherency of the medium and how this incoherency complicates attempts during the Weimar Republic to define and categorize it. Photographic books are products of dialogs between images and between texts and photographic sequences. While accompanying text shapes how a book’s photographs make meaning, so do the photographs put pressure on the style and format of text.18 As a result, these photographic books experiment with boundaries, thereby offering a unique model for theorizing what George Baker has described as an “expanded field of photographic meaning.”19 Page 9 →Weimar photographic books developed from older forms of photo-text interaction, such as travel guides, scrapbooks, albums, and catalogues of art illustrations. They also relate to the compositions of illustrated magazines, advertisements, archives, motion pictures, and other discursive spaces of photography that were reconfiguring ways of seeing and reading at this time. While discussing photographic books, Weimar writers often compared them to other media, such as film and the illustrated press. The photographer and critic Marc Maurus described the photographic books Berlin in Bildern, with photographs by Sasha Stone, and Halligen, with photographs by Renger-Patzsch, as “between image-book and film.”20 Comparing them to Walther Ruttmann’s 1927 film Berlin: Symphonie der Grossstadt (Berlin: Symphony of a City), Maurus claimed these books combine the “stirring power of sequential emphasis and techniques of combination, the spice of suggestive guidance and dramatic structure.”21 Although both books display photographs of a city, they do not provide a narrative history or a city tour. Like the cinematic montage of Ruttmann’s film, they are arranged “according to the laws of a theater of vision.”22 To the artist Theo van Doesburg, the saturation of books with images indicated “the modern book has stopped being only a cinematic sequence. In the place of вЂduration’ stands вЂintensity.’”23 Rather than imitating film’s construction of temporal continuity, photographic books relate to the more fragmented, non-narrative products of avant-garde experiments in montage. Weimar photographers and theorists considered their time as a period of media transition, during which photographic technology had developed to such a degree that it seemed to disrupt the communicative and cultural roles that other, more traditional media were assigned. After the development of halftone printing at the turn of the century, which allowed photographs and text to be reproduced side-by-side, the number of photographs in newspapers, magazines, and books increased dramatically.24 Kurt Korff, editor of the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, explained in 1927 that the newspaper had “adopted the editorial principle that all events should be presented in pictures with an eye to the visually dramatic and exclude everything that is visually uninteresting.” Text editors at BIZ were replaced “by those who are capable, like film writers and directors, of seeing life in pictures.”25 While Korff alluded to the cinematic aspects of the photographically illustrated newspaper, the critic Edlef KГ¶ppen lamented it resembled “the popular revue, the sort that all the larger theaters feel obliged to offer to their audiences at least once a year.В .В .В . Images of famous contemporaries, photographs of boxers, horse races, domestic and foreign abnormalities join in the parade.”26 Despite their contemporary development and the shared origins in the technological achievement of halftone printing, Weimar photographic books and illustrated newspapers were not one and the same. The photographic books I discuss in the following chapters were intended as an Page 10 →improvement on—rather than an extension of—the incoherent “parade” of photography in the Weimar illustrated press. The photographers, editors, and essayists that frame their meaning sought to reinvent the medium as a way of developing the visual skills of its modern audience. This study thus recognizes the ambivalence of photographic practices at this time. Photographers embraced the layout and sequencing of images within the illustrated press while also realizing the potential of this format remained unfulfilled.27

Teaching Modern Vision One ambition of Weimar photographic books was to train their audience to better manage the new ways in which

photography was being used in illustrated magazines and newspapers. The emphasis on photographic proficiency during the Weimar era differs from the rise of “technological literacy” in the late nineteenth century when a growing workforce of electricians, electrical engineers, and professional photographers shared a set of specialized skills.28 More than a new specialization among artists and image professionals, claims about photography’s eventual replacement of text implied a total and democratic social shift. The growing dominance of photographic media required readers to possess new sets of perceptual skills, and Weimar’s illustrated newspapers, magazines, and advertisements were experimenting with how to capture the modern viewer’s attention. An essay in the popular periodical Uhu from 1926 exemplifies one form of modern visual practices in which photographic books intervened. It asks the audience “Can you think quickly? Are you a good observer?” and presents the reader with a series of visual tests. One such test shows a photograph, a portrait of a stylish woman, and its mirrored copy and asks: “In an instant! Which one of these is the mirror image?”29 Although the puzzles appear light-hearted, Uhu took the skills they tested in earnest. “They are not a pointless pastime,” it states, “but a welcome way to train sharp vision and speedy thinking.”30 By demanding a quick response to the visual puzzles presented, magazines such as Uhu were drilling viewers in successful navigation through incessant confrontations with stimulation. “Good observers,” according to these tests, respond instinctively to the visual information put in front of them. Consumers of the illustrated press were being conditioned to think on their feet and constantly search for more stimulation. What is being trained here is the impulse (and the desire) to sustain a coherent space of perception that at once overcomes and depends on a world of fragmentation, shock, and simultaneity. This was one type of cognitive experience addressed in Weimar photographic books—a Page 12 →practice guided by an instinctual response to visual material. Some photographic books aimed to help viewers adapt to the stimulation of the metropolis. Others sought to recuperate visual experiences obscured by the prevalence of photography in the illustrated press.

Page 11 →“KГ¶nnen Sie schnell denken? Sind Sie ein guter Beobachter?” (Can you think quickly? Are you a good observer?) Uhu 2, no. 11 (1926): 108.

Photo Credit: bpk, Berlin/Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin Germany/Art Resource, NY. One of the most prevalent aims of Weimar photographic books was to teach their audience various strategies of photographic meaning. By learning these strategies, their audience would be better prepared for a future in which the photograph would be the main building block of communication. In most Weimar photographic books—including those discussed here—text serves a didactic purpose. It describes how the photographs make meaning but rarely addresses the content of the photographs directly. Text functions as training wheels, guiding the reader in the acquisition of new skills of photographic “literacy.” Reading a photographic book involved the introduction of a number of different skills—processing an overabundance of stimulation, recognizing montaged juxtapositions, conjuring up imagined associations, and identifying visual signs of social and national identity. Those who contributed to these books assumed their audience was not yet proficient in these skills. Weimar photographic books thus mark a moment of transition in which an imagined future of photographic communication was yet to occur. Although in dialog with text, the photographic books I discuss declare the potential of a photographic sequence to establish meaning based on visual experiences and associations. They also declare this form of meaning was definitively modern. But the degree to which vision can be historicized—that is, whether certain visual experiences and practices can be associated with a specific time period—has been the topic of scholarly debate. By way of introduction, I want to explore how Weimar photographic books mediate these debates. What do we mean when we refer to “modern vision”? To answer this question, scholars have looked to stylistic features of modern visual media as demonstrations of the conditions of modern visual experiences. According to advocates of the “modernity thesis,” the fragmented visual experience of modernity is best exemplified by film. For example, Tom Gunning has argued that early twentieth-century film imitates and competes with the aggressive shocks and distractions of modern life. According to Gunning, early films “trace out the visual topology of modernity: a visual environment which is fragmented and atomized; a gaze which, rather than resting on a landscape in contemplation, seems to be pushed and pulled in conflicting orientations, hurried and intensified, and therefore less coherent and anchored.”31 According to Gunning, film and modernity are experienced in the same way. The viewer is “positioned less as a spectator-in-the-text, absorbed into a fictional world, than a gawker who stands alongside, held for a moment by curiosity Page 13 →or amazement.”32 In his influential study of early film as a cinema of attractions, Gunning argues “attractions express the fugitive nature of modern life, with their brief form and lack of narrative development, as well as their aggressivity.”33 In this way, Gunning’s argument implies a correlation between the style of early cinema and the visual experience of the metropolis. Gunning’s search for the material forms of modern vision is inspired in part by those writing on film and photography during the Weimar Republic. Walter Benjamin associated modern vision with the distracted experience of the metropolis. He argued the bombardment of visual stimuli in the modern environment led to the predominance of fragmented and incoherent perceptual encounters, as opposed to more contemplative and coherent visual experiences that supposedly characterized a premodern world. Following an art historical tradition traced to AloГЇs Riegl and Heinrich WГ¶fflin, Benjamin and others based their study of modern vision on the premise that modes of human sense perception were relative to historical change. As I explore in this study, signs of historical coherence and unity were becoming increasingly difficult to identify during the Weimar Republic. Such concerns caution us to be weary of assuming a direct temporal correlation between visual practices and aesthetic form. In other words, photographic books such as Die Welt ist schГ¶n and Urformen der Kunst sought to visually demonstrate coherence because the correlation between form and meaning was considered under threat. In their attempt to establish a coherent system of visual meaning, Weimar photographic books reveal a crisis of legibility that was a defining aspect of modern life. In response to the association of modernity with a particular way of seeing, scholars such as NoГ«l Carroll and Malcolm Turvey have called for a more precise definition of the term “modern vision.” Turvey has argued that the concepts of stimulation, fragmentation, and shock that lie at the core of the modernity thesis are too vague to be applied to cinema in any way beyond the analysis of certain avant-garde films.34 Scholars have also

cautioned against arguments implying modernity has altered our visual faculties on a neurobiological level. According to David Bordwell, it is more plausible to consider modern vision as a group of visual skills, while also admitting that these skills are instilled unevenly across a population.35 Bordwell’s modification to the notion of modern vision invites us to explore how such visual skills and habits can be developed. While this debate most often occurs in the realm of film studies, Weimar photographic books require us to bridge a gap between the study of film and photography that remains too wide among scholars today. This study proposes a related discourse of modern vision, one in which the eye is trained to recognize meaning in the absence of textual guidance. Their purpose to train is what marks Weimar Page 14 →photographic books as particularly modern. They are not modern in the sense they mimic the experiences of film and modernity. I also do not see the photographic books I discuss as avant-garde creations that attempt to make the viewer experience the perceptual conditions of modern environments, as Turvey argues for films such as Fernand LГ©ger and Dudley Murphy’s Ballet mГ©canique (1924) and Francis Picabia and RenГ© Claire’s Entr’acte (1924). I do not believe photographic books sought to imitate the incoherent, fragmented nature of modern life. Rather, Weimar photographic books were inspired by the potential of modernity and called for utopian outcomes. In this way, this study defines modern vision as something imagined but never achieved. Whether or not modernity was capable of transforming visual skills and habits, artists central to this study and to the theorization of modern photography thought that it was, and this belief motivated their interest in the photographic book. A belief in the potential of new media is what makes Weimar photographic books an important contribution to modernism.

Old Media/New Media Despite their belief in a photographic future, Molzahn, Moholy, and others were reluctant to accept their own declarations about the obsolescence of “older” forms of communication, such as text and the book. Because of its associations with knowledge and its position in between the boundaries of still photography and cinematic motion, photographers saw the book as an ideal place to interrogate how modernity was changing cognitive practices. The importance of Weimar photographic books lies in their attempts to articulate in aesthetically innovative ways photography’s potential as the fundamental basis of modern visual experiences. My argument challenges the still widespread belief that modern artistic conceptions of old and new were rigid and oppositional. In contrast, photographic books are hybrid media, functioning in between stillness and motion, new and old, past and present. This hybridity is the mark of their radical yet unrealized potential to establish modern vision. Given that it was one hundred years old, references to photography as a new language and a new media during the Weimar Republic warrant the following questions: What does it mean to be described as new media? Why can photography still be talked about as new in the 1920s? The designation of media as “new” might have nothing to do with physical and mechanical innovation. Instead, the appropriate question might be: What does a culture or discourse gain, what values are placed on a medium, by describing it as new? Page 15 →Due to its traditional association with text and narrative, the book was a curious arena in which to explore the visual basis of photographic meaning and to define photography as a new form of communication. A year after the publication of Malerei Photographie Film, Joseph Albers, Moholy’s student at the Bauhaus, declared, “We read more newspapers than books. The bookseller sells less.В .В .В . Many newspapers replace essays with arrangements of key words. To this we prefer the illustrated press. Images instruct faster and better. A page of images can be grasped in an instant.В .В .В . Therefore, we shall distance ourselves from the book.”36 Declarations of the death of literature had been voiced at least since the invention of film and phonography in the late nineteenth century, just as the death of painting was announced with the invention of photography several decades before.37 In the 1920s, the book seemed to cultivate a form of attention that was quintessentially absorptive and in opposition to the fluctuation of modern perception due to the simultaneity, pace, and variety of stimuli. In his manual of experimental psychology published in 1920, Joseph FrГ¶bes contrasted the variations of stimulation in modern environments with “something like the printed pages of a book at which we thoughtlessly look.”38 According to FrГ¶bes, Moholy, and others, the printed page and its gradual unfolding of text were outpaced as a model of communication when surrounded by immediate stimulation such as street

advertisements, illustrated magazines, and motion pictures. In order to adapt to these new conditions, Moholy argued that “even philosophical works” would one day be printed in the same way as today’s “American magazines.”39 The predominance of visual material in everyday life was straining the stable definitions of reading and seeing. No longer defined as a continual duration of time in which the reader turned inward, reading, according to Moholy, now demanded “a state of increased activity in the observer.”40 While it might appear from these statements that a confrontation between “old” and “new” media occurred, in which the latter battled for dominance over the former, the book was a key arena for explaining and demonstrating photography’s transformation of perception. Rather than abandoning the book, those that declared its form to be out of touch with the synchronicity and stimulation of the modern world sought to update it. “Is it not possible to find a new material that corresponds to modern tastes for convenience and sleekness? ” an article published in the journal Die Form asked. The issue in which the article appeared addressed the future of books in the face of photography, film, and the illustrated press. “Is it not possible to bind the book’s pages in a way that results from mass production?”41 The article then suggests various forms associated with the organizational tools of the modern office. The card-file, register book, and the binder offer alternatives based on the storage of information. Other forms, such as the loose-leaf book or Page 16 →the carbon-copy plate, suggest models in which pages are completely separate from a binding, able to be reshuffled and reordered at any time. Aligned with the terms of modern mass reproduction, the book is transformed into a collection that creates new perceptual and spatial interactions with the reader that stimulate the “increased activity” that Moholy associated with photography. The collaboration, rather than contestation, between the book and photographic technology marks the Weimar Republic as a period of transition. Weimar photographic books require us to move beyond conceptions of “new” and “old” media as incompatible forms. As media theorists such as Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin have argued, “What is new about new media comes from the particular ways in which they refashion older media and ways in which older media refashion themselves to answer the challenges of new media.”42 Media transition can thus be considered as a moment of hybridity, in which old and new are in dialog to produce something in between the conventions of the past and the new ways of an imagined future. In the case of the photographic book, photographic media such as film and the illustrated newspaper intertwine with the book. The processes of seeing and reading interact to create what was described at the time as “New Vision” and “Neue Sachlichkeit” (“New Objectivity”), ways of reevaluating the principles of perception in terms of the technological capacity of photography. The photographic book emerges as an experimental product of this moment of transition, a dialog between old and new. In their discussion of the development of new media, AndrГ© Gaudreault and Philippe Marion identify three stages. In the process of its cultural establishment, a new media undergoes a “second birth,” characterized by the medium’s “increasing self-awareness.”43 Gaudreault and Marion locate the daguerreotype craze in the 1850s as this second birth of photography. Yet I would argue the 1920s should be considered an equally significant rebirth of the medium, a period in which photography is radically redefined in terms of the visual practices of modernity. Most important, Gaudreault and Marion’s discussion of new media emphasizes the gradual and complex nature of its emergence. They argue that new media must first learn preestablished codes of communication. Then new media eventually distinguish themselves from these codes by resisting dominant and established languages. I see Weimar photographic books as part of this second phase of photography’s development. The photographic sequence arranged in the book served as the format in which photography distinguished itself from the established conventions of textual meaning. Therefore, it would be wrong to interpret the proliferation of photography in the Weimar Republic as a rapid takeover or “colonization” of established media.44 The relationship between old and new is much more interactive and complex. Page 17 →By taking the Weimar photographic book as its primary focus, that relationship is the subject of this study. It addresses a moment of media history by studying the way photographic books attempt to shape particular modes and habits of perception. But I do not consider this moment to be on an evolutionary track that ends in a future moment of photographic literacy. Quite obviously, text never disappears from modern communication, and photography remains in large part a “message without a code,” dependent on textual intervention to focus

and frame an intended meaning. Nonetheless, photographic books are traces of what was considered possible during the Weimar Republic. They can be considered as part of an historical rupture, defining what contemporary viewers were not yet ready for and preparing them for a future that never occurred. Although the photographic books that organize this study are disparate in subject matter and appearance, they all make ambitious claims about photography’s visual potential. Today, the notion that photography could improve our cognitive capacity—at least in the way that some Weimar photographers intended—reads as a farfetched, utopian claim of modernist thinkers. In 1931, Walter Benjamin looked back on the history of photography—including the recent swell of photographic books—from the twilight of the Weimar Republic. “Isn’t inscription bound to become the most essential component of the photograph?” he asked.45 With this question, Benjamin suggests the ultimate dependence of photographic meaning on text, specifically the caption, after an era of modernist imaginings that photography could operate otherwise. In 1931, Benjamin might have already realized that photography would not replace text, as Moholy and others predicted, but collaborate with it. Nonetheless, I believe it is crucial to recuperate this ambition as an alternative to scholarly approaches that limit photographic meaning to the construction of arguments in a rhetorical form. One goal of this book is to expand upon this restricted conception of photographic meaning. To this end, I focus on books that articulate specific claims for the potential of photography to offer new visual experiences. I did not select these books because they are considered fine art publications today (although several of them are). I chose them because they most explicitly reflect upon photography’s capacity to organize meaning in new ways. They announce an alternative to the limitation of photographic meaning to the conventions of text. The first chapter explores the theorization of new relationships between photography and text in LГЎszlГі Moholy-Nagy’s Malerei Photographie Film and three books associated with the landmark Film und Foto exhibition of 1929. These books have the didactic goal of acclimating their audiences to the perceptual conditions of the modern world. Due to the integration of text, photography, and typographic design in these books, they stand apart from the others that organize this study. However, Page 18 →this chapter establishes the relationship between photography and modern perception to which the books by Renger-Patzsch, Blossfeldt, and Lerski respond—that is, the notion that photography can uncover knowledge and visual experiences that are otherwise inaccessible. Moholy adopted the book-format as a way to train viewers to respond more efficiently to the visual stimulation of the modern world. Moholy’s theories and experimentation with the book directly inspired the landmark Film und Foto exhibition of 1929. Three photographic books published to accompany the exhibition, Franz Roh and Jan Tschichold’s Foto-Auge (Photo-Eye), Werner GrГ¤ff’s Es kommt der neue Fotograf! (Here Comes the New Photographer!), and Hans Richter’s Filmgegner von Heute, Filmfreunde von Morgen (Film Enemy Today, Film Friend Tomorrow), expand upon the lessons put forth in Malerei Photographie Film. I argue that these three books were an integral part of Film und Foto because they provided explorations of interrelations between film and photography, text and image that were better facilitated by the book than the exhibition’s walls. While Moholy was training viewers to process the excessive quantity of visual stimulus in the modern world, the term “photo-inflation” emerged in response to anxieties about the rapidly increasing circulation of photography. Outcries of photo-inflation were partly a response to the growing popularity of photographic books, referring to the staggering quantity of photographs within them. But it also referred to the inflated value given to the objects, animals, people, and places they reproduced. While some saw the ubiquity of photography as a sign of the chaos of modern times, others championed the medium’s potential to reveal an underlying unity of the modern world that only existed in the visual realm. In chapter two, I explore how Albert Renger-Patzsch’s photographic book Die Welt ist schГ¶n (The World is Beautiful) (1929) articulates the specific value of the visual realm as a response to photography’s potential inflation and meaninglessness. Through a series of one hundred images, Die Welt ist schГ¶n, claims to present a subject no less expansive than the world. It collects photographs of an overwhelming variety of subjects: cobblestone pavement, church spires, monkeys, cacti, cooking pots, and many others. By presenting a large collection of photographs, Die Welt ist schГ¶n attempts to reveal formal unity among a diverse range of objects, thereby restoring a stable system of value to modernity. In

the book’s introduction, the art historian Carl Georg Heise, who can be considered the author of Die Welt ist schГ¶n as much as Renger, claims the photographs reveal underlying visual characteristics that unite all objects in the world. Close-ups and radical camera angles pare down objects to spirals, grids, and other abstract forms. Die Welt ist schГ¶n posed this new system of formal equivalence as a solution to the inflated value of objects in the Page 19 →age of photographic reproduction. In the midst of worries about photo-inflation and the volatility of Germany’s economy, Die Welt ist schГ¶n abstracted everyday objects and reconfigured them in an economy of visual meaning contained within the book format. While many believed photography could reveal the underlying unity of the modern world, others celebrated the medium’s ability to provide a unique perspective on history. The visual realm of photography was able to bring the past and present into alignment, thereby challenging notions of linear, chronological progress. Such claims often focused on Karl Blossfeldt’s photographic book Urformen der Kunst (Originary Forms of Art) (1928), which is the focus of chapter three. While Die Welt ist schГ¶n aims to reveal a cross-categorical unity among objects, Urformen der Kunst attempts to establish formal continuities between past and present. According to the gallerist Karl Nierendorf, who wrote the brief introduction to the book, Blossfeldt’s photographic enlargements of plants reveal the forms from which all artistic production in history derived. Blossfeldt’s photographs of plants suggest the basic forms of diverse monuments from history, such as an Assyrian temple and Rodin’s Thinker. While the photographs aim to collapse the distance between various historical time periods, the circumstances surrounding the publication of Urformen der Kunst are also strikingly anachronistic. Blossfeldt was already sixty-three years old when it was published, establishing him as a “new” photographer at the forefront of modern art. Despite this reputation, most of the photographs included in this volume were taken in the 1890s. Used in his courses on design at the Museum of Decorative Art in Berlin, Blossfeldt’s photographs originally assisted students in recognizing abstract motifs in nature that reappear throughout the history of art. Urformen der Kunst appealed to cultural critics in search of continuity and stability at a moment when technology and modern life were reconfiguring traditional concepts of time. Yet to critical theorists like Walter Benjamin, the book inspired a radical conception of the relationship between history and modernity. Drawing on physiognomic theories, the last chapter positions photographic books of portraits in the context of Germany’s fascination with the face during the Weimar Republic. Photographic books of portraits like Helmar Lerski’s KГ¶pfe des Alltags (Everyday Heads) contributed to debates about the legibility of the human face. After working for fifteen years as a cameraman in the German film industry, Lerski published this photographic book in 1931. The book presents a series of eighty portraits of anonymous social types accompanied by brief labels such as “maid,” “typist,” and “wife of a chauffeur.” Lerski’s photographs resemble cinematic close-ups that magnify every wrinkle, freckle, and whisker of their subjects. Scholars have focused on the dramatic lighting and intense proximity of the portraits in Page 20 →KГ¶pfe des Alltags, yet the importance of the book-format to Lerski’s project has been ignored. This chapter explores how the temporal experience of paging through the book complicates the legibility of the face and forces us to modify our understanding of physiognomic practices during the Weimar Republic. Lerski’s close-ups unfold as a series of temporal pauses, breaking up the concatenation from page to page. Yet the faces also attempt to form a collective representation of Weimar society that creates a sense of progression and flow. KГ¶pfe des Alltags exemplifies the hybridity of the photographic book, existing in between motion and stasis, film and photography. The brief conclusion considers the afterlife of the Weimar photographic book and whether its employment at the hands of the Third Reich is the appropriate place in which to end a study of Weimar photographic possibility. Scholars have debated the existence of a distinctly modern form of vision and have declared the need for a more precise definition of the changes in visual experiences that took place in the early twentieth century. Although it is unlikely photography altered the biological capacity of human vision during this time, it provided the potential for new visual habits to be developed and for lost visual skills to be revived. Photographic books articulated various forms of modern vision in the Weimar period, testifying to the multivalence of the photographic medium and to why the photographic book remains a compelling format for artists and photographers today.

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One Visualizing the Book LГЎszlГі Moholy-Nagy’s Malerei Photographie Film For those inspired by how the illustrated press was asking its audience to read visually, books seemed to be behind the times. According to Moholy, the growing prominence of photography and film in mass culture could provide a new form of communication to match the pace of modern life. In the essay, “New Typography,” published in 1923, six months after Moholy joined the Bauhaus faculty as master of the preliminary course and metal workshop, the school’s newest faculty member declared the precarious future of books in the face of photography and film: Books (mostly scientific) with photographic reproductions already exist, but the photographs within are secondary illustrations of the text. Development will overcome this phase, and photographs will replace text as individual, interpretable concepts and expressions.В .В .В . One could say that the application of photography must lead in a short time to the replacement of an important part of literature by film.1 Moholy states that photography is an improvement on the “originary image-writing [Urbildschrift] that the Egyptians had begun.”2 Photography is a new language made up of image-symbols, “individual, interpretable concepts and expressions” more efficient, transient, and universal than words. Scholars have frequently pointed to such statements by Moholy as evidence of the replacement of text with photography during the Weimar Republic. Yet the prophetic nature of his words has been overlooked. Moholy marks his time as a period of development toward a future shaped by an imagined, yet never fully realized, autonomy of visual meaning. In this passage, Moholy defines the present as a moment of media transition, one in which the proliferation of photography and film foreshadows the eventual obsolescence of text and literature. It implies that Moholy sees the formulation and demonstration of his theories on modern vision as a way of training his audience for what will come. In the 1920s, a number of photographers turned to the book format to both explain and approximate what they conceived of as New Vision. In the cases of Moholy’sPage 22 → Malerei Photographie Film and a trio of books published on the occasion of the landmark Film und Foto exhibition in 1929, content provides an explanation of modern vision while structure and layout shape its experience. Conceived as treatises but also as forms of training, these books have a didactic purpose. What will be explored here is why the book was considered a productive format for simulating and explicating the conditions of modern vision. In these cases, the book allows for the approximation of cognitive and perceptual experiences that photographers and theorists associated with modernity.

The New Vision Moholy published Malerei Photographie Film in 1925 as the eighth in the fourteen-volume Bauhausbücher series. Yet Moholy seems to avoid referring to the project as a book when, in December of 1923, he wrote to the Russian Constructivist Alexander Rodchenko about the Bauhausbücher and described it as a “series of brochures.”3 Due to its variety of page designs and wealth of visual information, as well its underlying obsession with film and illustrated magazines, it is no wonder that Malerei Photographie Film’s very status as a book was questionable. Rather than emphasizing the more permanent, structured space of the book, Moholy aligned the project with the ephemeral, fleeting reading material of the modern city. An advertisement from 1926 prices the book at 7 marks, which would have been quite reasonable to middle class consumers, the target audience of most illustrated magazines produced at this time.4 Similarities between Malerei Photographie Film and the increasingly visual, rather than textual, face of magazines and newspapers were not lost on Moholy’s

audience. One reviewer described it as “A magazine, as it should be. A passionate book. A book that seems to get out of control.”5 The critic Adolf Behne brought Malerei Photographie Film into a discussion of the growing prominence of photography in die Illustrierten. He wrote, “Moholy has assembled the best material from German and foreign journals in his Bauhaus book Malerei Photographie Film (with Albert Langen in Munich); this will be known as a captivating, surprising, and famous book.”6 Immediately after mentioning the book, Behne discussed the “tension between image and text that exists in today’s magazines.В .В .В . More and more, text becomes empty filler between images, and the вЂWeltspiegel’ already refrains from text on principle and wants to be a pure image-magazine (with puzzle corners and novellas).”7 The dominance of the image in periodicals caused “new difficulties” for typography, for “one can not simply stuff in image after image.”8 According to Behne, Page 24 →typographers must learn to adapt the new visual possibilities of photography to the printed page so that image and text work together in a dynamic way. Behne was aware that these issues were changing the way illustrated publications conveyed their information to the public. “One consciously deviates from the schematic filling of four corners or the division of the mid-line. A loose balancing of images attempts to create various elements of form, details, contents, slants, black-white effects, size, image contrast, running parallels or movement that thrusts through the field.”9 Behne’s description of the new primacy of photographic images reveals that the issue was not whether the image would take over the space of text, but how photography’s incorporation into newspapers and magazines was transforming the way in which information was organized. The challenge was to create connections between various parts of the visual field. Pages were no longer organized into stable columns and quadrants, and the objective was now to move the eye through the entire field to create a stimulating and also fluid design in order to catch, direct, and retain the attention of consumers.

Page 23 →Moholy-Nagy. Advertisement for the BauhausbГјcher series, 1925. В© 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Bauhaus-

Archiv, Berlin. In an introductory note, Moholy proclaims Malerei Photographie Film was “assembled” in the summer of 1924.10 A portion of the book draws on material that Moholy had previously produced. Several of the essays printed at the beginning of the book had already been published elsewhere.11 “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt,” the book’s finale, appeared in the Hungarian avant-garde journal MA several months before Malerei Photographie Film was published, although in a preliminary version without photographs.12 Although Moholy, with the assistance of his first wife Lucia Schultz, began experimenting with cameraless photography in 1922, he was just beginning to take photographs with a camera when Malerei Photographie Film was published.13 Far from an expert photographer, he interacts with the medium at this time as a collector, typographer, and theorist.14 The first edition of Malerei Photographie Film contains ten works by Moholy, including photograms, photomontages, and advertisement posters.15 But I would argue that we should see the book foremost as a deliberately sequenced collection of photographs. It responds to calls by Behne and others for new strategies of organizing information—text, typographical symbols, and photographs—that train viewers to interact effectively with the visual stimulation of the modern world. Rather than employing them as illustrations, Moholy relies on these photographs as the raw material of his artistic practice. More than an indirect explanation of modern artistic practice, Malerei Photographie Film is the product of that artistic practice. In an essay published in 1928, Moholy explains how he selected the book’s photographic material from hundreds of images he had clipped and saved from the illustrated press and other publications.16 As an enthusiast for Germany’s thriving Page 25 →illustrated press industry, Moholy combed through a variety of publications and cut out his favorite images.17 In one of the book’s most self-reflexive statements, Moholy comes close to directly addressing the way he chose the book’s visual material: “Only now and then does one find really вЂgood’ photographs among the millions which appear in illustrated papers and books. What is remarkable about this and at the same time serves as proof is that (after a fairly long visual culture) we always infallibly and with sure instinct discover вЂgood’ photos, quite apart from the novelty or unfamiliarity of the вЂthematic’ content.”18 Despite a “long visual culture,” which has accustomed viewers to certain conventional habits, the “purely optical” dimension of photography manages to connect with a somatic instinct in viewers. According to Moholy, this instinct can be revived, even trained, by immersing oneself in the enormous amount of photographic material being produced in illustrated magazines and books. At the same time that he implies his interest in the photographs of the illustrated press, Moholy expresses his dissatisfaction with limiting the use of photography to practices of sheer accumulation or the illustration of subjects seen with the naked eye. “In this way photography becomes the main tool for the creation of a visual encyclopedia,” he writes. “Today that is not enough for us. We want to systematically produce what is for life the creation of new relationships of importance.”19 Although indirect, Moholy’s statements about the process of assembling the book suggest that it is a result of exposure to the perceptual stimulation presented by the illustrated press. Malerei Photographie Film aims to intensify the conditions that Behne describes, training the observer to stay alert and ready to respond to new and thrilling visual information that incessantly arises. Despite the book’s published and polished form, Moholy’s selection of photographs from the illustrated press links Malerei Photographie Film to more private artistic projects produced in the second half of the Weimar Republic. Hannah HГ¶ch’s media scrapbook, a collection of photographs from various illustrated publications the artist began in the late 1920s, serves as an important point of comparison.20 For instance, the photograph by Charlotte Rudolf on page 46 showing the famous dancer Gret Palucca in mid-leap is also preserved in HГ¶ch’s scrapbook, and so is the photograph of zebras and guineas on page 78, which was taken from the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung. Despite their obvious and important differences in form—published versus private, typographic versus strictly photographic—these books have much in common as products of interaction with the new perceptual world of photographic imagery in mass culture. As with HГ¶ch’s scrapbook, Moholy’s encounter with photographs while thumbing through illustrated magazines and newspapers motivated Malerei Photographie Film’s assemblage. Avant-garde practices of collecting photographs, beginning roughly in 1925, have been discussed as a Page 27 →sharp turn away from the earlier photomontage practices of Dada, which deployed various tactics of fragmentation to intervene in the growing dominance of mass-media photography.21 Benjamin Buchloh has described this change in approach as part of a developing “confidence

in photography’s versatility and reliability.”22 But Malerei Photographie Film is neither a project of Dada critique, nor does it demonstrate the narrative or mnemonic capacities of photography. Instead, the book, developed out of perceptual practices emerging at this time and Moholy’s process of collecting “good” photographs from the illustrated press, attempts to manage over-stimulation brought about by photographic media.

Page 26 →Hannah HГ¶ch. Scrapbook, 1925–1933. В© 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Moholy’s theory of perception determined the assemblage and sequencing of photographs in Malerei Photographie Film. In the first section of the book, Moholy resolves that our eyes can no longer be a reliable source of perception. In an unabashedly technophilic tone, he declares the human body and especially the human eyes to be ill-suited for direct interaction with the quick pace and simultaneity of the modern world. These new conditions of perception demand photography be used as a supplement to our own inadequate and atrophied visual facilities. Beyond its reproduction of a subject, a photograph is a perceptual model that induces particular sensations, stimuli, and responses. Moholy defines photography as a productive medium, one that expands the world of the visible and leads to a “transformation of human perception.” Photography reveals “existences, which are not perceptible or recordable with our optical instrument, the eye,” and that only “can be made visible with the help of photography.”23 Better equipped to process the visual stimuli of the modern world than the human eye, photography “can complete our optical apparatus.”24 Moholy argues that not only is photography able to show us things never before seen, but it also represents a mode of perception separate from our habitual desire to decipher what we see through association and memory. Because photography stands in opposition to conventional vision, showing us that which is unfamiliar to our eyes, it offers

a chance for perception in its purest and most immediate form, freed completely from associations with the past. Moholy states reproduction or the “repetition of already existing relationships” is “no more than a matter of virtuosity.”25 In this way, Moholy speaks of photography as if it was not a medium of representation, but a turn to pure vision without the interference of the mind. “Through formal and spatial connections,” he writes, “our eye completes the received optical phenomenon with our intellectual experience to create an image-concept, while the photographic apparatus reproduces the purely optical image and therefore shows recordings, distortions, shortenings, and so forth that are preserved in the optical.”26 But despite Moholy’s insistence on the “purely optical Page 28 →image,” his discussion of photography is not limited to optical effects, forms, or intensities. His insistence on purity has more to do with photography’s ability to isolate perception away from our instinct to assimilate what we perceive through memory than with the dissociation of vision from other bodily senses. As we will see, Malerei Photographie Film’s photographic material stages a form of perception based on instinctual response rather than habit and experience. Moholy’s theory of perception creates a dialectical tension between the fragmentation and disembodiment of the senses through technology and a reconfiguration of the sensory system through photography. The visual apparatus is not assumed to be the binocular faculties of the individual spectator, but rather the monocular lens of the camera, which constructs an unsettling and even traumatic relationship between the viewer and the object viewed through distortions in scale, size and overall appearance. For Moholy, photography’s greatest advantage is its ability to dehumanize vision and transform it into an objective, measurable system. Photography provides for the improvement of human sensory capacities by introducing the viewer to new forms of stimulus and by forcing a confrontation with unknown information. “The hygiene of the optical, the health of the visible, is slowly seeping through,” he writes with naive enthusiasm for the potential of photography to somehow cleanse vision of the impurities of the mind.27 The camera-eye disrupts and unsettles the perceiver, creating an experience based on photographic rather than bodily faculties. The disembodiment of vision is due in part to Moholy’s insistence on photography’s isolation from the interpretive processing that takes place in the mind—yet he never holds to this claim and constantly conflates forms of visual perception with other sensorial experiences, such as the acoustics of the modern city. A theory of vision that relates the optical to other senses relies on an embodied conception of vision, yet Moholy continually celebrates photography as removing vision from the body and placing it in the more “truthful” realm of the mechanized and objective machine. While he describes vision in terms of the purity of optics, he insists on photography’s ability to produce a visceral reaction in the viewer. The viewer’s response to photographic material is embodied, yet the mechanism through which stimulus is obtained is not. Moholy also assumes the viewer’s response translates into consistent, predictable, and objective data. In other words, the viewer’s own body produces a certain response to visual stimulus, but this response isn’t an individual one; it is predictable, testable, and, most importantly, trainable. Moholy’s language reveals his conception of the human body as a network of receivers and processors of stimuli, “The realization of such plans will place new demands on the capacities of our optical organPage 29 → of reception, our eyes, and our reception center, the brain.”28 The embodiment of vision is necessary for its ability to be controlled, reconfigured, and improved by external stimulus such as photography. Yet, read how Moholy conceives of this improvement taking place: One can say that the assemblage of man lies in the synthesis of all his functional-apparatus, i.e. that man has now reached a period when he is the most complete, when his assembled functionalapparatus—from cells to the most complicated organs—are being built-up to the limits of his capacities. Art brings about this training—and this is its most important purpose. The entire system of activity depends on the perfection of the sensory organs, which attempts to create new connections between optic, acoustic and other functional phenomenon and forces the integration of the functionalapparatus.29 Moholy glosses over the tension between embodied and disembodied vision that arises in his theory by reconfiguring the human subject as mechanical, as a biological system that can be perfected through its exposure

to external, unknown stimulus.

A “Purely Optical” Book Given Moholy’s use of the book’s images as part of a discussion on the perceptual potential of photography, it is clear that Malerei Photographie Film is not what we expect from a collection of photographs. Rather than assembling photographs to preserve the past, Moholy’s collection is explicitly anti-mnemonic.30 The photographs are examples of the processes and techniques that seemed marvelous and new in the 1920s. Their sources are typed in a chart on the book’s last pages, and the sprawling list records an overwhelming variety of subjects: photograms, X-rays, microscopic views of plants, close-ups of animals and machinery, photographs of stars and lightning, a worm’s eye view of a factory tower, photomontages, split-second exposures, and timedelayed images. The sequence presents views and suggests connections to which Moholy expected his audience in the 1920s to be unaccustomed, a Weltanschauung determined by the productive possibilities of photography and not yet assimilable through association or memory. The images are printed on both the verso and recto of the pages, which sets up a series of pairs, as well as a continuous confrontation with visual information. Groups germinate and then abruptly end, like the small group of portraits—a publicity photo of the Page 30 →actress Gloria Swanson, a double exposure of the artist Hannah HГ¶ch—that forms toward the end of the book not long after a cluster of photograms. Moholy has kept some groups bunched together, but others are scattered throughout. Moments of faint recognition arise during which photographs vaguely reference earlier ones. For example, the photograph of hands placed around the perimeter of a table (a film still from Fritz Lang’s classic Dr. Mabuse der Spieler) on page 81 echoes the X-ray of hands arranged around the periphery of the image like hands on a Ouija board on page 60. Yet other subjects, other thoughts that lie in between, disturb these connections between images, hindering our ability to remember what we just saw several pages back. According to Moholy’s theory of photographic perception, we are supposed to respond instinctively to the variety of dramatic views assembled here. This instinctive response opposes a form of understanding based on memory and experience. The photographs expose us to recondite visual information and, accordingly, strive to improve our perceptual capacity. The first two pairs of images in the book demonstrate the distinction between reproductive and productive photography. On the left is a photograph of Paris by Alfred Stieglitz taken in 1911. The caption reads: “The conquest of Impressionism or photography misunderstood. The photographer becomes painter.”31 On the right, a similar admonition accompanies a photograph of a zeppelin, situated in the middle of clouds and flying above a tumultuous body of water: “This is the вЂRomantic’ landscape. After the brilliant period of the daguerreotype, photographers tried to imitate all directions, styles, and appearances of painting. It took approximately 100 years for it [photography] to come into its own possibility of application.”32 As examples of art photography and a prephotographic conception of vision, these two photographs stand as a preface to the rest of the photographic material in the book. They serve to distinguish between past and present and attempt to teach the book’s audience to identify such a distinction. Moholy associates them with the tradition of providing an aesthetic complement to how our eyes see and opposes them to photography’s potential to introduce a new, unconventional form of perception, which his book then presents. We flip the page to find the theme of flight continued by a flock of cranes on the left and a squadron of seaplanes on the right. But in this pair, the rules of perspective are abandoned; the visual field is tilted from the upright plane to the unanchored field of the blank, grey sky. These views are stripped of any indication of depth or scale. As on many pages in the book, the photographs are reproduced vertically and horizontally, which forces the viewer to turn the book to recognize the content. But Moholy expects his viewers to be unable to assimilate them to familiar conventions of representation. Many of the images in the sequence are accompanied by captions that teach Page 32 →the viewer to experience the photographs in a new way. The caption underneath the “cameraless photograph” on page 66 reads, “Organized light and shade effects result in a new enrichment of vision.”33 The text underneath the gramophone record on page 52 states, “Heightened reality of the everyday. A ready-made poster.”34 Here, Moholy draws attention to the commercial possibilities of the “heightened reality” that photography provides. Repeatedly, the text draws attention to the photograph’s visual effects rather than its content. Although a brief label identifying what is shown accompanies almost every image, it implies the subject of the photograph is not always clear. For example, the aerial view of St. Paul’s Cathedral on page 50 abstracts the

pews and aisles into a geometrical pattern. The photograph on page 49 transforms “the biggest clock in the world” into a field of black and white lines. The text describes the image as “the experience of oblique vision and shifting proportions.”35 The text explains what we see and how to see it, thereby supporting the visual experience of the photographs that Moholy intends to create. The relationship between text and image indicates a difference in the two forms of communication. Rather than serving as a form of textual substitution, the images Page 33 →are meant to produce uniquely visual experiences and sensations in the viewer. The text describes and supports that experience.

Page 31 →MoholyNagy. Malerei Photographie Film, 40–41. В© 2014 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin.

Moholy-Nagy. Malerei Photographie Film, 42–43. Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin.

Malerei Photographie Film, 48–49. Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin. Given Moholy’s theorization of the new visual experiences made possible by photography, it is likely he would have been interested not only in the individual photographs but also the experience of viewing them as an unfolding sequence within the book. Before the sequence begins, two facing pages make the reader aware of the book as a constructed perceptual experience. A thick, vertical line runs next to the gutter on the page on the right, and the text appears at the top and bottom, leaving the middle of the page blank. This layout creates a suspenseful pause; the left page is blank except for a massive dot in the lower right that emphatically ends the text that came before. The stark bareness of these pages hangs like a stage curtain that will be lifted when we turn the page. In bold, clear type, Moholy writes, “I have placed the illustrative material separately following the text because continuity in the illustrations will make the problems raised in the text VISUALLY clear.”36 That is, paging through the book’s photographic material will initiate the instinctual, anti-mnemonic perceptual experience Moholy’s text previously described. This experience is largely based on the book’s temporal unfolding, but individual images also address the theme of photographic time. Pages 46 and 47 exhibit the camera’s ability to record split-second motion. A photograph by Charlotte Rudolf of the dancer Gret Palucca in mid-leap is coupled with an image of a motorcyclist racing around a corner. This pair of images shows us motion not as our eyes see it, which would look something like an illegible blur, but as the camera captures it. To dispel doubt that the motorcyclist was in motion when the photo was taken, Moholy includes the brisk phrase, “Racing speed captured,” in the upper right corner. The book’s photographs are not totally isolated from text, as Moholy’s introductory note suggests. Nonetheless, these photographs externalize and break up time experienced with our own eyes and replace it with a temporality that can only be formed in the photograph. The temporal instant of the photograph has been understood as the basis for the paradoxical experience of time in the age of photography and film. Thierry de Duve has argued the time captured in the photograph is unique—that is, it never exists outside the space of the photograph.37 It immobilizes the dancer forever in midleap, for example, and leads to a reconceptualization of time, which de Duve explores as an important feature of the photographic condition. He defines this condition as a paradox, for there is no truly instantaneous photograph but only the asymptotic movement toward an indivisibly small measure of time. Each moment of exposure, however instantaneous, always defines a duration, and thus the difference between instant and duration is entirely arbitrary, the one dissolving into the other. The snapshot demonstrates a movement in time that depends on the aid of the camera. Yet it does not convey the sensation of seeing that movement in “real Page 35 →time.” When looking at a snapshot, such as the one of the dancer or the motorcyclist, time is made strange and uncanny, only remotely related to the real. Moholy uses the photographic series in the book to reinforce the paradoxical temporality of photography. Placing a photograph within a series emphasizes its status as part within a whole, as instant within the overall temporal experience of flipping through the book. Yet the sequence of discontinuous instances in the book does not relate to the continuous flow of real time, to the experience and perception of time as duration.

Moholy-Nagy. Malerei Photographie Film, 46–47. В© 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin. Several pages after the pairing of dancer and motorcyclist, an image shows the movement of street traffic across the picture plane, along with glows emanating from street lamps and other stationary sources. As in the earlier snapshots, this image complicates the difference between instant and duration. The split-second depiction of traffic is also a record of continual motion, of light moving through space over a period of time. Inversely, the luminous glows appear like instant bursts of light from flash photography. As we move through the next few pages, the theme of light continues. From the eternity of the astral to the lightning flash, the subjects of the photographs grow increasingly ephemeral. On pages 56 and 57, photographs of celestial bodies, a “spectrum of stars photographed through a prism” and a “spiral cloud of stars,” display the infinite reaches of photographic vision and reduce the subject of that vision to abstract contrasts between light and dark. These telescopic enlargements reveal imagery inaccessible to the human eye. Light is obviously fundamental to photography, part of the word itself. However, it appears entirely different in a photograph than it does to the naked eye. Photography’s representation of light thus exhibits the distinction of photographic vision from the perception of “real time” and “real space.” The theme of light continues on the next two pages, which show electrical currents and three images of lightning. These images are moments of split-second exposure, preserving an instant barely visible to the naked eye. The dramatic contrasts of dark and light and the changing formal patterns in this sequence evoke the intense visual experience of a lightning storm, but this series of images also suggests a filmstrip, time created through a series of punctuated events. Malerei Photographie Film is filled with such temporal and spatial reconfigurations. Two photographs near the middle of the book show the perception of space through mirrored spheres. Toward the end of the book, three strips of film display the creation of motion through the representation of successive instants. Such distortions are not limited to the individual photographs but shape the viewer’s own perception of the book itself. The serialization of these diverse instances leads to the experience of time as foreign and malleable, as a series of discontinuous fragments Page 37 →of the real. Vacillating between the two poles of instant and duration, the rhythm of paging through the book is jerky, caused by successive lags and restarts, drifts and commanding pulls, focusing, indifference, and refocusing. The book’s uneven pace forces us to readjust our attention on every page. Like contemporary experiments in nonnarrative, nonlinear cinema, the photographic sequence shows time and space fractured, warped, sped up, drawn out, multiplied, and externalized.38 Time in Malerei Photographie Film is perpetually present, yet also incoherent, and its fragmentary pace makes us particularly aware of the photographic sequence’s paradoxical relationship to time.

Bonn. Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin.

Moholy-Nagy. Malerei Photographie Film, 56–57. Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin. In his analysis, de Duve searches for photographic meaning beyond the semiotic, linguistic features by exploring the nature of our psychological response to the medium. The experience of timelessness, of nonspace, that is associated with the photographic medium induces an uncontrollable, instinctual response.39 “The sudden vanishing of the present tense, splitting into the contradiction of being simultaneously too late and too early, is properly unbearable,” writes de Duve.40 Moholy collected these photographs, not as a group of illustrations but as an assemblage that would create a complex perceptual experience, which he describes as “a state of increased activity in the observer who—instead of meditating upon a static image and instead of immersing himself in it—is forced simultaneously to comprehend and participate in optical events.”41 In this modern understanding of perception, absorption impedes response. Moholy describes a “kinetic composition” that enables the observer “to participate, to seize instantly upon new moments of insight.”42 This experience relies on the ability of photography to defy the expected worldview. Visual experiences encountered through photography that we are unable to recognize, discern, or process generate cognitive activity. Moholy positions photography’s ability to unsettle and distort as the basis of a new epistemological model. Malerei Photographie Film can thus be understood as a photographic paradox itself, as an attempt to build a new form of communication and perception with what he also defines as inassimilable. The hybridity of Malerei Photographie Film—its combination of textual and visual spaces and its evocation of film and the newspaper—blur the boundaries between reading and seeing. This new perceptual process is one of irreducibly mixed modalities, combining reading and seeing, as well as evoking other nonvisual components such as touch and sound.43 A musical score, PrГ¤ludien fГјr Klavier und Farblicht von Alexander LГЎszlГі, Op. 10, 2. Gelb (Prelude for Piano and Colored Light by Alexander LГЎszlГі, Op. 10, 2. Yellow), is situated roughly in the middle of the book and introduces the possibility of translating what we see into other types of perceptual experiences—in this case, an acoustic one. The score layout on the page forces Page 38 →the viewer to turn the book to the side and interrupts the steady flow of photographic images. In LГЎszló’s prelude, musical notes and sounds correspond in a reliable and predictable way with a particular color or image. It suggests we could hear the music as well as see the color yellow by reading the score. This musical prelude is surrounded by images from “reflective light plays,” created by two students at the Bauhaus. Determined by rhythmic patterns, these images were produced through cinematic projections, and the blurs and quivers were created through movement. When photographed, these visual symphonies look like the photograms Moholy included in the book. The images from the reflective light play not only correspond to the space of film but are also meant to trigger acoustic sensations. For Moholy, photography is a gateway into this trans-sensorial world. Color, motion, and rhythm are

evoked through the purified realm of photography; a fluid relationship between the senses becomes possible through mechanical reproduction. Despite the apparent obsolescence of books in the face of more modern forms of communication, Moholy employs the book-format as a site of dialectical tension designed to train the viewer to manage perceptual overstimulation. Malerei Photographie Film stages the multimedia fragmentation of the modern city, yet the book also collects and cohesively synthesizes its overwhelming content, training the viewer to overcome it via a New Vision able to process it all simultaneously. This hybrid form of perception is best described as scanning, for the term suggests the copresence of verbal information and visual images. Scanning continually preoccupies the observer and provides no opportunity to process or reflect. To Moholy, pausing for the contemplation of stimuli would have meant incorporating memory and the mind into the perceptual process, which would distance the observer from the “optical truth” of photography.

Teaching Film und Foto Malerei Photographie Film established the photographic book as a way to define practices of modern vision and to train its audience to engage with these practices. Discussions of New Vision photography in the Weimar Republic used Malerei Photographie Film as a pedagogical model. One such discussion materialized as Film und Foto, an ambitiously large exhibition organized by the German Werkbund. Although the term has become synonymous with Moholy’s photographic theories, “New Vision” first appeared in the overwhelming amount of published reviews to this exhibition and the many others like it that addressed the increasing predominance of photography in modern visual culture.44 After its initial display in StuttgartPage 39 → from May 18 to July 7, 1929, FiFo (as it was called) moved on in variant forms to Zurich, Berlin, Danzig, Vienna, Zagreb, and Munich before traveling to Tokyo and Osaka in 1931. Explanations of the focus and purpose of the exhibition reference Moholy’s conception of media transition developed in Malerei Photographie Film. Hans Hildebrandt, an art historian and member of the Werkbund’s selection committee, describes how Moholy’s book “on present and future questions of film and photographyВ .В .В . has become an indispensable resource for those who want to tackle photography and film as cultural factors of extraordinary importance.”45 In the guide to the exhibition in Berlin, Wolfgang Hermann explains that in the past, photography had been mistakenly understood as the imitation of how the human eye sees. “Man attempted to adapt the lens of photography to the lens of the eye, thereby violating its character.”46 As Moholy claimed, photography is able to show us information and produce perceptual experiences unattainable with the naked eye. “Through both [film and photography],” Hermann writes, “our experience of the world is substantially expanded.В .В .В . The German Werkbund has assembled this exhibition in order to show these new possibilities of photography.”47 As Olivier Lugon has recently pointed out, photographers played a minimal role in FiFo’s development.48 Most of the selection committee’s members were curators and scholars interested in how art reflects the visual practices of a particular time and place. In the exhibition catalog for FiFo in Vienna, the art historian Wolfgang Born observed, “We have known for a long time that the history of art—approached formally—is a history of vision. This is the reason for the astounding fact that apparently pure, mechanical photography has become the Kunstwollen of the time.”49 Like many other art historians involved in the production of FiFo, such as Hildebrandt, Walter Dexel, and Franz Roh, Born sought to inscribe photography into an historical progression of distinctive modes of seeing, thereby framing recent photographic developments in art historical terms.50 Referencing Alois Riegl’s Kunstwollen, a familiar but fraught concept for art historians in the 1920s, Born declares photography to be the embodiment of the conditions of his time. By demonstrating how photography could generate modern vision, Malerie Photographie Film underscored these art historical claims.51 Not only did Malerei Photographie Film guide FiFo’s conceptual approach to photography, the book’s selection and display of photographs served as a model for the exhibition’s design. Like in Malerei Photographie Film in which Moholy describes how he chose “good” photographs from the abundance of imagery in manuals and the illustrated press, photographs for FiFo were selected from modern visual culture in order to demonstrate the new visual possibilities of photographic imagery. Rather than touting the work of famous

names and photographic authors, Page 41 →the exhibition featured a wealth of images produced by anonymous photographers contributing to modern visual culture in a variety of ways. In his preview of the exhibition in the journal Das Kunstblatt, Gustav Stotz, the lead curator of the exhibition in Stuttgart, listed various discourses in which photography had expanded the awareness of an “objective” form of knowledge, including medicine, physics, criminology, sports, and war.52 Rather than displaying photography as a form of fine art with mounted and framed prints, the few surviving images of the exhibition rooms of FiFo show photographs hung more casually, as a working collection or a series of instructional charts. When the exhibition traveled to Berlin, photographs hung in asymmetrical groups in the Staatliche Kunstbibliothek’s atrium. Unmounted and unframed, prints were affixed to the walls with nails. These curatorial choices seemed to purposefully avoid presenting photography as fetishized objects of material value and instead displayed them as didactic tools that demonstrate historical Page 42 →development and intellectual ideas. One purpose of the exhibition, then, was to instruct its audience in an art historical lesson: photography embodied a specific way of seeing that was associated with modern life.

Page 40 →Film und Foto—International Exhibition of the Deutsche Werkbund, Berlin 1929. Poster. bpk, Berlin/Kunstbibliothek, Staatlichen Museen, Berlin, Germany/Art Resource, NY.

Kunstgewerbemuseum, atrium, the exhibition “Film und Foto.” 1929. Photo credit: bpk, Berlin /Kunstbibliothek, Staatlichen Museen, Berlin, Germany/Art Resource, NY. While the exhibition informed its audience about the rediscovery of the “true” principles of photography, three photographic books published in association with the FiFo—Jan Tschichold and Franz Roh’s FotoAuge: 76 Fotos der Zeit (Photo-Eye: 76 Photos of the Time), Werner Gräff’s Es kommt der neue Fotograf! (Here Comes the New Photographer!), and Hans Richter’s Filmgegner von heute, Filmfreunde von morgen (Film Enemy Today, Film Friend Tomorrow)—attempted to teach viewers how to look at photographs in a particularly modern way. Although the Werkbund supported and advertised the publication of all three books as part of the exhibition, their relationship to FiFo is difficult to categorize. Like Malerei Photographie Film, all three resist description as a particular type of publication, functioning as extended exhibition catalogs, didactic primers, and informative pamphlets. Stotz’s preview of FiFo published in Das Kunstblatt describes Richter’s and Gräff’s photographic books as addendums to the exhibition.53 In a letter from Roh and Tschichold to Hannah Höch asking to reproduce one of her photographs in Foto-Auge, they describe their book rather awkwardly as a project with “material taken primarily from the Film und Foto exhibition in Stuttgart in 1929 that was made available to us by the leadership of the exhibition for this purpose.”54 These books reproduce some of the photographs exhibited in FiFo, yet they also include many that were not part of the exhibition. Despite their supplementary relationship to FiFo, they serve as valuable record of the content and theoretical approach of the exhibition. Expanding FiFo’s didactic goals, these three books explicitly attempt to teach their audience how to see photographs “correctly.” In various ways, they testify to the influence of Moholy’s ideas about photography and modern vision and the capacity of the photographic book to demonstrate this relationship. Like many of the photobooks published at this time, Foto-Auge: 76 Fotos der Zeit announces the number of photographs included in its title and thereby associates itself with a tradition of didactic primers or “ABC” books, a lighthearted pedagogical approach that instructs through the enumeration of examples or the unfolding of a logically defined sequence. Printed with a soft cover and using a technique common for brochures, Roh and Tschichold attempted to make the book accessible to a broad audience. “My goal was to create a modest, unpretentious book that was attractive but also inexpensive,” Tschichold later recalled.55 According to Tschichold, he and Roh selected the book’s photographs together. Roh then focused on the book’s introductory text, while Tschichold developed the book’s design and sequential arrangement of photographs.

Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/ Art Resource, NY. El Lissitzky, “Self Portrait as Constructor” В© 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Page 44 →The book’s title appears in letterpress in German, French, and English at the bottom of the cover. Roh’s introductory essay, “Mechanism and Expression: the Essence and Value of Photography,” and the brief captions for each photograph in the book’s sequence are also printed in these three languages. The decision to translate the text no doubt reflects the international audience of FiFo and the photobooks associated with it.56 But the effort to print the book’s text in triplicate also makes a statement about the communicative capacity of text versus photography. The decision to print the book’s text in three languages constitutes an attempt to update text to the presumed universal standards of photography. Yet, the repetition of text also draws attention to the limitations of language, which supposedly contrasts with the efficiency and universal comprehensibility of photographic images. Roh’s text draws our attention to this. Without mentioning him by name, Roh aligns Foto-Auge with Moholy’s ideas when he writes, “The statement is right, that not to be able to handle a camera will soon be looked upon as equal to illiteracy.”57 Roh and Tschichold adopted Moholy’s strategy in Malerei Photographie Film to keep the photographs separate from the text to make “visually clear” Roh’s discussion of photographic vision. The contrast between the inconvenience of language and the presumed communicative efficiency of the book’s photographic sequence demonstrate and reinforce Moholy’s prediction. In one of the few attempts to provide a sustained analysis of the book’s photographic sequence, Michael Jennings interprets Foto-Auge as a critical statement of modernist dystopia and unrest. “The myth evoked here is that of a society going under water,” he writes, “Weimar is figured as Atlantis.”58 Jennings’s reading depends on his selection of a handful of images—ships, aerial views of coastlines, a diver caught in the split-second before she disappears underneath the surface of a pool. He then interprets these images metaphorically, as subtly construed symbols of Weimar society as a sinking ship. From a twenty-first century perspective, it is tempting to read the book as a statement that anticipates the eventual demise of the Weimar Republic. The violent content of several photographs in the book is difficult to avoid. Toward the end of the book, a photograph from the central police office in Stuttgart of a brutal murder appears beside an image of a dead horse lying in the ruins of a damaged bridge. In addition to the few images of water, Jennings selects photographs such as these to support his reading of the book as modernist critique. Yet I would argue the photographic sequence exceeds Jennings’s metaphorical interpretation. While their content alludes to the Weimar Republic’s undercurrent of crisis, these two images of violence appear among photographs with less disturbing subjects. On the page before, Walter Funkat’s photograph shows a room reflected and distorted through the surface of a glass ball. An advertisement for mechanicalPage 45 → parts designed by Max Burchartz appears on the page after the crime photo. Jennings’s reading, which finds a critique of modernism in a handful of the photographs’ content, overlooks how the book’s structure influences meaning. The even pace of the book’s pages imparts equal value among all its images. A photograph of a reflective glass ball is as prominent as the more chilling images of murder that follow. It is perhaps this measured, impartial pace of the book’s pages, which gives as much prominence to advertisements as crime scenes, that makes the scenes of murder all the more disturbing. Nonetheless, the diversity of photographed subjects and the book’s steady presentation of its content confound a straightforward analysis of iconography or symbolism. It is not what we see, the content of the photographs, but how we see them that motivated Roh and Tschichold’s arrangement of the photographic sequence of Foto-Auge. Roh states the reawakening of photographic development during his own time can be most effectively experienced by perusing “the photos of this volume and many вЂanonymous’ pictures published in the illustrated press.”59 Like Moholy, Roh aligns the photographic sequence that follows his essay with the visual experience of illustrated magazines of the modern city. And like the photographic sequence in Malerei Photographie Film, its inability to be assimilated to coherent, unified meaning constitutes Foto-Auge’s status as a modern visual experience. Photographs are printed on the recto and verso of each page, creating pairs of images as well as an unbroken progression of photographs. Certain pairs of photographs demonstrate the ability of cinematic montage to create meaning through association. For example, the assembly of Russian workers in photograph 26 appears to be listening to the words coming from Der Sprecher, a close-up of an orator’s mouth, on the opposite page.

Other pairs emphasize photography’s ability to abstract its subject into formal arrangements. The scattering of people enjoying a day at the beach in photograph 12 rhymes visually with the close-up of a card catalog in photograph 11. These pairings demonstrate ways of constructing meaning that are based on montage, considered to be one of the definitive characteristics of photographic and cinematic meaning. Other pairs in the book have much less in common, formally or thematically. A photograph of a street drain in Paris by Moholy is followed by a photomontage prospectus, an aerial photograph of dikes along a beach, and a portrait by Edward Weston. Tschichold’s layout of the photographic sequence resists any attempt to identify an overall thematic logic. Rather than presenting a coherent narrative or argument, the photographic sequence purposefully confounds the way of making meaning that Moholy and Roh describe as “reproductive” or “conventional.” Like Malerei Photographie Film, Foto-Auge attempts to provide a new way of seeing and expects its audience to learn to respond to its visual stimulus.

Roh and Tschichold. Foto-Auge, 26–27. Digital Image В© The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY. Page 46 →In its diversity of imagery and partial role as a catalog of FiFo, Foto-Auge resists being read as an interpretable argument or narrative. The introductory text supports an approach to the book’s photographic sequence as a demonstration of modern visual experiences. Roh draws a connection between two key periods of photographic development—the invention of photography and his own contemporary moment. Like Moholy, Roh describes the photographic production lying in between these two periods as “questionable,” due to its imitation of the effects of painting. Yet I would agree with Jennings that Roh and Tschichold’s conception of the New Vision put forth in their photographic sequence is much less technophilic than that of Malerei Photographie Film. “Our book does not only mean to say вЂthe world is beautiful,’ but also: the world is exciting, cruel and weird,” Roh writes in the introduction.60 Roh references Albert Renger-Patzsch’s recently published photographic book, Die Welt ist schГ¶n. As discussed in the next chapter, photographic books often struggled to provide more than simple aesthetic pleasure to Page 47 →the audience. But despite Roh’s awareness of photography’s problematic tendency to provide a hypnotic visual experience, Foto-Auge is no exception. It serves as a deliberately thorough catalog of the visual potential of photography, yet does not provide a sustained narrative or social critique. The layouts of Filmgegner von heute, Filmfreunde von morgen and Es kommt der neue Fotograf! differ

significantly from Foto-Auge. While the photographic sequence in Foto-Auge unfolds without interruption by text, these two books instruct through an integrated dialog between text and photographs. These two books were often advertised and discussed as a related set in Die Form and other journals, testifying to their shared approach to teaching an audience how to see photographically. The forward to GrГ¤ff’s Es kommt der neue Fotograf! describes the book as a different kind of textbook, a “Fotolehrbuch,” that provides a new set of guidelines about composing photographic images, guidelines that break from those dictated by traditional (painterly) composition. But it also announces itself as an instructional manual for viewer as much as producer of photographs. According to GrГ¤ff, modern vision demands a new type of “FachblГ¤ttern,” or training manual, not only in content but in form. Viewers need to learn how to view photographic material “correctly, ” and the layout and interaction of text and image in Es kommt der neue Fotograf! sets out to provide such as lesson. Daniel Magilow acknowledges the status of Es kommt der neue Fotograf! as a training manual.61 Yet here, I want to emphasize photographic “literacy” has not yet occurred. In this way, its function as a training manual underscores the status of the photographic book as being born from a moment of transition. The interaction between text and photo unfolds like an instructional slide show. Like a teacher’s lesson, the text refers to the photographs to demonstrate a point. Continually, the text points to the photographs, using semiotic shifters such as “here” and “these.” The book begins with the statement, “Here you have two photographs that are in accordance with commonly learned rules.”62 Underneath the text, two photographs demonstrate compositions organized around a stable horizon line. The text directs the viewer to how they are supposed to see the photographs. Then, the book turns to other photographs that break these painterly compositional rules, pointing to the ability of the camera to expand human vision. “Would you like to show what is seen when a potter at work is observed? This is without doubt a very nice image.”63 The text is then interrupted by a photograph of a potter at his wheel, observed from the side. The text continues, “But maybe you have another purpose. For example, you want to show what the worker himself sees while working.”64 We then see a photograph of the same potter from above. In this case, the text guides us to contrast the two camera angles, the first aligned with the Page 49 →“Renaissance painter” and the second with the new photographer, and to focus on this aspect of the compositions while ignoring other potential distractions.

In this way, Es kommt der neue Fotograf! exemplifies a paradoxical characteristic of most Weimar photographic books. Photography is declared to be the fundamental communicative building block of the modern future. Yet throughout these books, the meaning of photographs is determined by accompanying text. As in Malerei Photographie Film, GrГ¤ff’s text tells us how to look at the photographs, guiding us to notice certain aspects of the composition and encouraging a particular way of seeing them. For example, the photograph on page 86 by Sasha Stone shows a figure splashing into the water at the end of a slide. The text below states, “Increasing focus forces the eye to follow the slide,” and guides us to notice the contrast between the blurred slide at the bottom of the image and the crisp appearance of the slide’s edge and the splash at the center.65 Another statement below the photograph—for example, one that noted the image’s content or suggested a symbolic analogy of some sort—would shift our understanding of this photograph’s purpose. If photography is the new alphabet as Moholy declared, then these photographic books do not manage to demonstrate the autonomy of photographic meaning. The format of Es kommt der neue Fotograf! makes explicit the necessary interaction between text and image and demonstrates that text and photographs have distinct roles to play in the production of modern cognitive experiences. In this way, Es kommt der neue Fotograf! shows us that GrГ¤ff and others did not consider text and photograph, “old” and “new” media, to be incompatible forms. Es kommt der neue Fotograf! does not demonstrate photography’s ability to autonomously create meaning or to replace text. However, the book’s function as a manual suggests the possibility of this role in the future if a modern audience is properly trained in the visual and compositional potential of photography. The language of photography is not immediately comprehensible and universal, it would seem. Rather, it must be learned. And acquiring this new language depends on textual guidance, thus producing the media multilingualism of the Weimar present. In Filmgegner von heute, Filmfreunde von morgen, Richter continues GrГ¤ff’s didactic efforts. In the book’s forward, Richter explains that the book attempts to instruct its audience in the optical and cognitive possibilities of film. As Richter declares, the book intends to show its audience why most films of the current moment are “bad” and to “sharpen the judgment” of its readers, so they can “demand better films” in the future. As in GrГ¤ff’s Es kommt der neue Fotograf!, text and photographs consciously, selfreflexively point to one another. Their interaction cultivates the audience’s awareness of what distinct yet interrelated roles each is playing. Page 51 →In Richter’s book, this interaction demonstrates the visual experience of film and provides an explanation of the medium’s mechanics and fundamental operations.

In the forward, Richter notes the difficulty of demonstrating the potential of film within the space of the book. The “tempo of movement” in film cannot be replicated in the reproduction of still images. However, Richter explains the filmstrips reproduced in the book attempt to show what the public audience for film normally overlooks: cinematic motion is produced through the rapid succession of individual, still frames. Like Malerei Photographie Film, Filmgegner demonstrates the photographic book’s ability to explore film’s complex relationship to time. While the photographs show films broken down into still frames, the text asks the audience to imagine how they might produce motion. Text and image work together to reveal various tricks and techniques of film, thereby sharpening the eye of its audience. On page 21, five cinematic shots of the same actor at different camera angles are arranged vertically along the page. Each shot is accompanied by a phrase that describes the angle from which it was taken. This layout emphasizes a dialog between text and image. Like in Es kommt der neue Fotograf!, the text addresses the composition of the photographs and encourages the audience to notice particular formal aspects. Although GrГ¤ff’s and Richter’s books were published in tandem, each referring to the other, scholars have overlooked Filmgegner’s association with FiFo.66 This oversight is perhaps because FiFo ultimately focused much more on photography than film. From its title, one might expect Film und Foto to have defined a relationship between the two modern media. However, the exhibition seems to have failed to foster such a discussion. Richter served as the director of the film program of FiFo, which ran from the 13th to the 26th of June at the KГ¶nigsbaulichtspiele in Stuttgart. Few critics attempted to define connections between the film program and the photographic exhibition. Looking back on FiFo in Stuttgart, the art historian Walter Riezler, editor of Die Form, admitted the film program was somewhat isolated from the rest of the exhibition. “A great service to the people of Stuttgart has been done, and one must only regret, that relatively few witnessed these presentations,” wrote Riezler.67 In his review of the exhibition, Andor Kraszna-Kraus noted the difficulty of integrating film into an exhibition format. “The initiative of planning film-exhibitions is by no means new,” he writes. “The result has been mostly—in the best of cases—a representative show of advertisements or of cinema-apparatus, and sometimes also a mass-performance of films. Apparently without a clear aim, or a system according to the material, and without being convincing.”68 Given the struggle to bring the two parts of FiFo into dialog, Richter’s photographic book can be understood as an opportunity to explore the relationship between Page 53 →film and photography that was not facilitated by the exhibition. By examining the convergence of still photography and cinematic motion, it demonstrates the formal connection between the two media.

In the context of Film und Foto, these three photographic books developed various strategies to test Moholy’s theories about modern relationships between photography, film, and text. They also provided a space between still photography and cinematic motion that attempted to train their audience to visually and cognitively process these modern media more effectively. These aspects of the photographic book are worth pursuing further by returning to the final section of Malerei Photographie Film.

“The New Visual Literature” Moholy refers to the filmscript at the end of Malerei Photographie Film, “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt,” as a “typophoto,” which is based on the combination of photomechanical printing techniques and modern typography. Moholy explains the typophoto in an efficient tone: “Typography is communication composed in type. Photography is the visual presentation of what can be optically apprehended. Typophoto is the visually most exact rendering of communication.В .В .В . The typophoto regulates the new tempo of the new visual literature.”69 Moholy’s neologism emphasizes the hybridity of Malerei Photographie Film, an object produced from the interaction of the old (text) and the new (photography and film). As a form of “new visual literature,” “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” is twelve pages of graphically structured chaos, as if Moholy felt the need to pick up the pace, increase the tempo of his perceptual onslaught before the pages of the book ran out. It consists of a combination of photographic and typographic material that appears as much like a Constructivist poem as a filmscript.70 Although Moholy described “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” as a film, these pages do not mimic the structure of film, in which images are concealed then revealed one by one in a temporal concatenation. Simultaneity is the driving force behind the filmscript’s exhausting effect. “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” relies on textual cues, letters, numbers, abstract symbols, and photographs to invoke the stimulation of the modern city. The script’s abundant stimuli force the eye to constantly jump from image to text and prevent it from ever resting in one place. The organization of the filmscript into sections divided by black lines evokes the space of the newspaper. Due to the gridded format of this film, the black lines also suggest a map-like coordination of streets. These black bands work to divide the pages into irregular quadrants, yet they do Page 54 →not extend from edge to edge of the pages. Instead, they fall short, indicating their status as dynamic parts of the design rather than stagnant boundaries around the images and text. Arrows, traffic indicators, and train signals accompany these lines, leading our eyes to various attractions and evoking the visual stimulus of the modern city. Although these road signs point us to photographs and words on which our visual attention should be focused, we are guided around in no particular order, all at once to everywhere. The simultaneity—of the metropolis and Moholy’s filmscript—is disorienting; and just like traveling through the streets of an unfamiliar city, we often lose our way through these pages. Near the end of “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt,” we read, “The entire film will be shown BACKWARDS (shortened) from here until the JaZZ-BAND (also reversed).”71 Time in the space of photography moves backward and forward. Yet strangely, Moholy’s instruction here implies a coherent focus, as if the filmscript had been moving fluidly “starting from here” in a continual, unfolding duration. But where, precisely, is “here”?

The type’s liberation from standard left-to-right, top-to-bottom progression in “Dynamik der GrossStadt” responds to the new relationships between word Page 55 →and image in modern advertisements and magazines. Pithy words are used in the script to give direction or to describe a scene. Like Behne notes of the new role of text in illustrated magazines, words here act as “empty filler” between the images. On the second page of the script, the words “very clear—high above—train signals” are above abstract drawings of train signals, with the word “close-up” below. Scattered in between rows of arrows, the words “up” and “down” unnecessarily reinforce what has already been conveyed visually. No longer serving as the primary carrier of meaning, the text adds to the cacophony of the page and the effect of simultaneity.72 “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” demonstrates modernity’s aggressive visuality by attempting to produce a visceral, emotional response in the audience. Page 117 shows a caged tiger at the top of the column on the left side of the page. “A tiger paces furiously in its cage,” we read below the image. Text on the right side of the page also refers to the tiger: “The tiger: Contrast the open, uninhibited running with the distressed, cramped conditions. The public already begins to get used to the shocks and illogic.”73 Moholy’s text explains the response in the audience the image is meant to evoke. When the audience grows accustomed to the uncomfortable tension conveyed through the image of the caged tiger, the motif is no longer effective. “Dynamik der GrossStadt” attempts to prevent its audience from adapting to the “shocks and illogic” of its design, thereby maintaining “a state of increased activity in the observer.”74 Moholy’s choice to use images of voracious felines in his filmscript suggests its close relation to eccentric forms of entertainment, such as the circus and the sideshow, that were based on the continuous introduction of new visual thrills.75 The text next to the lion on page 127 lists a series of objects that would presumably be shown in sequence in the film: “Lion. Sausage machine. Thousands of sausages. Snarling lion’s head (close-up). Theater.В .В .В . The lion’s head. TEMPO-o-O Police with rubber baton at Potsdamer Platz. The BATON (close-up). The theater audience. The head of the lion becomes increasingly larger until finally its enormous maw fills the screen.”76 As the text describes, the sequence of images would return to the lion three times, and this repetition would constitute an increasingly aggressive assault. An image of a theater audience would confront the film’s viewers with their own status as audience and refer to the ability of the filmscript to control their response. While the text describes the content of the film, smaller text in the lower right corner of the page explains its effects: “The frequent and unexpected appearance of the lion’s head should bring about discomfort and oppression (again and again and again). The theater audience is cheerful and STILL the HEAD comes! And so forth.”77 The words in capital letters convey the intensity of the relentless visualPage 56 → assault. The text describes the image’s effect on the audience as a visual beating that continues until the emotion of the audience has changed. Moholy undoubtedly conceived of “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” as a film. In its introduction, he associates his script with avant-garde films such as Ballet mechanique and Entr’acte. The script that Moholy includes in Malerei Photographie Film describes what the film would have looked like if it had been produced. But Moholy explains how scarce financial support prevented the production of the film. “Large companies such as UFA did not take risks on bizarre productions at that time [in 1921–22, when the script was written]. Other film people have вЂdespite the good idea found nothing in the plot’ and therefore filming was turned down.”78 The realization of “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” remains, to some degree, in the realm of the hypothetical. Although it seems he fully intended to produce the film, its liminal state of being not yet realized is an important part of its demonstration of Moholy’s theory of photographic perception. In other words, the filmscript prompts viewers to enact the film version in their minds. The aggressive visual attractions he presents—the caged tiger, the snarling maw of the lion—are meant to compel the active participation of the audience. Through the combination of text and image, the film encourages viewers to complete it. Rather than functioning as intertitles, Moholy’s text serves as directive cues and instruction. The text compensates for the stillness of the images by telling the reader what the effects would be on the screen. It attempts to animate the images and thereby draws attention to the gap between still photography and cinematic motion that must be bridged in the mind. However, the produced film is in no way left up to the imagination of the viewer. Given his belief in the objectivity and commensurability of the cognitive effects that photography can produce, Moholy assumes all

viewers will produce the same film. The viewer completes the film, but it remains in the realm of the optical, uninfluenced by the viewer’s subjective comprehension. Its status as a filmscript or “typophoto” also allows “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” to approximate the conditions of modern vision. Scholars have aligned modern vision—defined by distraction and overstimulation—with film, arguing that film is distracting in a manner akin to a modern environment. This characterization of film has become “a major explanatory paradigm in film studies in the last twenty years.”79 And yet, compelling arguments against accepting that film imitates the perceptual experience of modernity have also been put forth. Malcolm Turvey, for example, has discussed the differences between the sequential nature of film, in which images change over time, and the simultaneity of stimulus in a modern environment like the urban street. “Distraction by definition consists of having one’s attention drawn away Page 57 →from one thing by another, and in order for this to happen the two things must be copresent.” Turvey argues film is unable to achieve the kind of distraction associated with the modern city because the images that make up a film unfold sequentially. “By contrast, the modern environment contains multiple things that simultaneously compete for our attention, which is why it can distract us.”80

Moholy-Nagy. Malerei Photographie Film, 128–29. Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin. Turvey admits there are films that attempt deliberately to shock the viewer in ways that mimic modern distraction, such as Picabia and Clair’s Entr’acte. From his references to this film and others like it in “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt’s” introduction, we can assume this is the kind of cinematic experience Moholy had in mind. Yet as a hybrid product of a moment of media transition, the photographic book manages to re-create the copresence of visual material associated with modernity and to explore the distracted mode of perception known as modern vision. Unlike film, the photographic book can potentially approximate the distractive experience of modern vision because of the copresence of material on a single page. Ultimately, I suspect this might be why Moholy left “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” in this “incomplete”Page 58 → form. The photographic book relates to cinema but also is separate from it, existing somewhere in between the instantaneity of the photograph and film’s reconstitution of time. Moholy’s theory of modern vision, which articulates the shocks and distractive nature of modernity through the anti-mnemonic nature of photography, depends on the liminal space between photo and text, stillness and motion that the book format provides.

Page 59 →

Two The Value of Photography Albert Renger-Patzsch’s Die Welt Ist SchГ¶n In response to the ubiquitous Film und Foto exhibition, a new term developed to describe the rapidly increasing circulation of photography in German visual culture. ErnГ¶ KallГЎi, the editor of the journal bauhaus, coined the term “photo-inflation” in the title of a 1929 article to express his exasperation with the prevalence of photographic imagery. But he also conceded his own journal was intoxicated with the subject. “You will perhaps argue that bauhaus has also brought out a photo issue. Correct. To be honest, by now we almost regret it. However, our publication did not amount to a jubilant transfiguration of photography as the only visual experience conducive to human happiness, as was claimed in other places—from highly serious design publications to gaily colored magazines.”1 Critics that called attention to a looming crisis referred not only to an increase in photographic activity but the inflated value given to objects photographed. The critic F. Matthies-Masuren castigated FiFo and predicted, “The success of the exhibition will without any doubt lead to a вЂcrisis of photographic activity’ in the future. In fact, it is already here. It is not difficult to photograph parts of architecture, lively streets and squares, parts of plants, glasses and bottles, gramophones and typewriters or any other objects in a prescribed manner.”2 The most mundane objects of modern life were now considered worthy of pictorial representation and multiplication through photographic reproduction. Even the photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch critiqued the blind euphoria over photography. “In place of quality, quantity,” he wrote. “Proof: the almost unanimous enthusiasm of the press. The recipe for success: shoot from above or below. Enormous enlargements or reductions, the trash can as the most satisfying motif. Send negative prints to the press, the monster eats everything.”3 Renger singles out the Stuttgart exhibition as “a selection of photographic ephemera in pretentious get-up.”4 Not incidentally, Renger’s work was conspicuously absent from the exhibition. Although his distaste for FiFo might reflect his disappointment at being overlooked for inclusion in such an important exhibition, his comments nonetheless express a desire to separate his work from an allconsuming, injudicious craze for photography. Page 60 →Such cries of photo-inflation began in the months leading up to the stock market crash in the fall of 1929 and associated the increasing omnipresence of photographs with the economic catastrophe several years before. Between 1914 and 1924, German currency depreciated from 4.2 marks to the dollar to 4.2 trillion marks to the dollar. This economic crisis had a traumatic effect on the German psyche for years to come.5 Inflation not only left Germans economically destitute, but instilled a sense of disorientation and loss of systematic control on psychological and cultural levels. In other words, a belief in the underlying unity and order of modern society had been severely compromised. Discussions of photo-inflation would have triggered a very real sense of fear and anxiety associated with the instability of German currency. Beyond the term’s convenient alarmism, photography and the Reichsmark had much in common during the Weimar Republic; both were defined by circulation and were experiencing a hypertrophic crisis.6 Economically speaking, inflation is caused by a disruption in the balance between circulating currency and mass-produced goods. As the comments quoted above indicate, photography critics invoked economic inflation to refer to an overwhelming quantity of reproductions as well as an inflated importance placed on objects reproduced. For these critics, the proliferation of photographic imagery exemplified the chaos and disorder of modern society in which visual communication lies in the hands of the insatiable “monster” of the press. If photography’s own particular value lay in providing knowledge, then the increased circulation of photographs distorted the value of the objects and information they contained. Photography’s own inherent features, to multiply and to circulate, were threatening its ability to inform. By drawing a connection between photography and money, “photo-inflation” emphasized photography’s ability to abstract its subject, that is, to separate objects from social connections and reposition their fetishized forms within new systems of meaning. Rather than limiting abstraction to a formalist sense,

nonrepresentational or without referent, abstraction becomes a social process under these conditions. The link between money and photography arises from this process of abstraction. As George Baker has acknowledged, both participate in the “violent decontextualization, voiding, and recoding of objects endemic to the principles of capitalist modernity.”7 The comparison to money implicates photography as a product of capitalism. After all, photography is one of the primary ways in which meaning is circulated, reified, and abstracted in the modern world. Through a series of one hundred images, Albert Renger-Patzsch’s book Die Welt ist schГ¶n, published several months before FiFo opened, claims to present a subject no less expansive than the world.8 It collects photographs of a vast array of subjects: cobblestone pavement, church spires, monkeys, cacti, cooking pots, and many others.Page 61 → The book has often been considered a chief example of the inflated value placed on everyday objects at the hands of the photographer. “Is the world only beautiful?” asks the title of Fritz Kuhr’s 1929 review.9 Extending the title to admit its status as “yet another Renger critique,” Kuhr bemoans the ubiquity of not only photographic imagery but discussions about that imagery and one of its most celebrated producers. Walter Benjamin’s mention of Die Welt ist schГ¶n in his famous feuilleton of 1931, “Little History of Photography,” is perhaps the most well-known and damaging characterization of Renger’s book. “The world is beautiful—this, precisely, is its motto,” he writes. “In it is unmasked the posture of a photography that can endow any soup can with cosmic significance but cannot grasp a single one of the human connections in which it exists.”10 To Benjamin, the formal connections established between objects in the book did little to illustrate the social, technical, and cultural reality of modern production. Benjamin recognized the connection between photography and capitalist economies, suggesting the photographic innovations of his own time “had an underground connection with the crisis of capitalist industry.”11 Photography as a product of capitalism was, for Benjamin, not in dispute. At stake was photography’s potential to subvert a capitalist system of meaning, to turn this system of overwhelming circulation on its head. These concerns motivated Benjamin’s sustained interest in photographic book production during the late Weimar Republic. The projects Benjamin mentions in “Little History of Photography” are culled almost exclusively from recent publications.12 As discussed in the next chapter, Karl Blossfeldt’s Urformen der Kunst was one book that received the critic’s high praise. But for Benjamin, Die Welt ist schГ¶n remained aligned with the phantasmagoric effects of fetishism, fashion, and advertisement and was unable to fulfill photography’s revolutionary potential. Scholars have been unwilling to look beyond the terms of Benjamin’s scathing critique. In his innovative article on the perceived crisis of “photo-inflation,” Olivier Lugon describes Die Welt ist schГ¶n as little more than “a collection of odds and ends,” suggesting the book embodies the loss of meaningful focus to which critics, like Benjamin, referred.13 Matthew Simms acknowledges Die Welt ist schГ¶n is an attempt to restore a sense of stability and order to the modern world, while the terms of his astute analysis of the book’s “impulse to totality” derive from Benjamin’s essay.14 An eagerness to learn from Benjamin’s response to photography has eclipsed other approaches to the subject of his analysis and the cultural and conceptual conditions of the book’s production. The reluctance to read Die Welt ist schГ¶n against a Marxist perspective has created a scholarly blind spot, precluding a consideration of other desires (non-Marxist ones for sure) that Die Welt ist schГ¶n might have been produced to fulfill. My purpose here is by no means to refute the Page 62 →importance of Benjamin’s essay but to offer a fuller understanding of the perceived possibilities of photographic abstraction within the Weimar photographic book. However tenuous they might seem to us today, Die Welt ist schГ¶n’s connections between objects, its photographic economy, attempted to bring the quantity and circulation of photography under control. Due to contradictions arising from this ambition, Die Welt ist schГ¶n was the focal point of a debate about the potentially dangerous ability of photography to revalue objects.

Renger-Patzsch and the Photobook Industry Like Malerie Photographie Film, Die Welt ist schön claims to offer a reality beyond what can be seen with the naked eye. But if Moholy’s book creates a new world that arises only in the realm of the photographic, then Die Welt ist schön sets out to showcase photography’s ability to capture and classify a world of preexisting forms.15 Die Welt ist schön is a deliberately diverse catalogue of a subject no less broad than “the world,”

covering it bit by bit, photograph by photograph, until the parts convince us of a whole. The title captures the book’s attempt to convey an impossibly large subject through the sequencing of details. Flowers, camels, commercial wares, fishing nets, exotic masks, landscapes, machines, and churches are bound together to define this world and to render it “beautiful” through photography. Despite the hodgepodge of objects presented, Die Welt ist schГ¶n has a simple structure. After a brief introduction by the art historian Carl Georg Heise, the photographs unfold on the recto of each page. The book features a variety of angles and distances between the camera and the objects photographed. However, the photographs are all emphatically “straight,” focusing on an object or view rather than the effects of photographic manipulation. Die Welt ist schГ¶n takes advantage of the book’s particular ability to gather and sequence its material. Its one hundred photographs are organized into eight categories so viewers can visually explore the world through small, coherent portions. The verso of each page is blank, which allows each photograph a generous and tranquil space within the book and creates a slow and steady pace. Die Welt ist schГ¶n does not require us to take in text and image simultaneously; only a number is printed under each photograph. Its orderly taxonomy of images attempts to convince us of photography’s ability to capture the world consistently and thoroughly. In many ways, Die Welt ist schГ¶n amounts to an anthology of Renger’s career before 1928. The book includes photographs Renger produced for various commercial clients, such as the GГјnther Wagner Company, Kaffee Hag, and the FagusPage 63 → Company.16 Die Welt ist schГ¶n also includes photographs that had already been published in other photographic books.17 For example, plate 66, a view of LГјbeck from a church tower, appeared in a photographic book devoted to the German city, published several months before Die Welt ist schГ¶n.18 Other photographs in Die Welt ist schГ¶n were most likely taken for earlier book projects but left out of the final product.19 While a brief note at the end of the Die Welt ist schГ¶n’s index states plate 66 appeared in LГјbeck im Bilde, others reference the city. Plate 94 of Die Welt ist schГ¶n, which shows the vaulting in the nave of St. Katherine’s Church in LГјbeck, is almost identical to plate 8 in the earlier book (the LГјbeck image shows St. Mary’s Church with slightly less of a worms-eye view, catching a bit of the apse below). Plate 55 in LГјbeck and plate 75 in Die Welt ist schГ¶n show industrial cranes stretching horizontally across the picture. Both photographs were taken in Herrenwyk, an industrial port in LГјbeck. Such references and overlaps suggest a particularly strong relationship between these two books. Like Die Welt ist schГ¶n, LГјbeck includes an introduction by Heise.20 As the director of LГјbeck’s Museum of Art and Cultural History, Heise built a collection of photographic reproductions of art and architecture to which Renger-Patzsch contributed.21 The relative prominence of images of LГјbeck in Die Welt ist schГ¶n suggests Heise’s influence on the selection and layout of the book’s photographs. Renger supplied photographs for many volumes in which his authorship disappeared behind a purpose to communicate with a mass audience. These books were not conceived as celebratory collections of Renger’s photographic work but as a way to expose a larger public to the world through photography. Die Welt ist schГ¶n also features a handful of images Renger produced when he worked in the photographic archive of the Folkwang-Auriga Press.22 Renger began his career as one of several photographers for this publishing house.23 However, he was not given credit for his contributions to its publications. Two photographs of plants near the beginning of Die Welt ist schГ¶n are modified versions of images produced for Die Welt der Pflanzen (The World of Plants), a series of photographic books published by the Folkwang-Auriga Press.24 Renger also took a number of photographs that appear in Kulturen der Erde (Cultures of the Earth), another book series published by Folkwang-Auriga between 1922 and 1932.25 With this book series, the Folkwang-Auriga Press sought to expose the German public to foreign cultures by publishing a comprehensive catalogue of “all the art of the earth,” according to the series editor, Ernst Fuhrmann.26 The Folkwang-Auriga Press intended these photographic books to be a thorough representation of the world’s cultures and attempted to fulfil the goal of a world thoroughly documented and catalogued, detail by detail.

Church in Lübeck) in Die Welt ist schön. Munich: Kurt Wolff, 1928, 94. © 2014 Albert Renger-Patzsch Archiv/Ann u. Jürgen Wilde, Zülpich/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. From the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University Libraries, Oxford, Ohio.

Page 65 →Albert Renger-Patzsch. “Marienkirche. GewГ¶lbe im Mittelschiff,” (St. Mary’s Church. Nave Vaulting) in Ernst Trimm, ed. LГјbeck. Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth, 1928, 8. В© 2014 Albert Renger-Patzsch Archiv/Ann u. JГјrgen Wilde, ZГјlpich /Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Page 66 →Outcries of photo-inflation were partly a response to the growing popularity of series of photographic books like the Folkwang-Auriga’s Kulturen der Erde. In the aftermath of Moholy-Nagy’s declaration of a “new visual literature,” such BildbГ¤nde or Bildreihen encouraged the compilation of photographic books like volumes in an encyclopedia. For example, an advertisement for Das Gesicht der StГ¤dte (The Face of Cities) describes the series as “an image compendium of all world-cities.”27 Publishing houses with sizable image archives produced series of photographic books to encourage the public’s photographic inclinations. Publishers also solicited image submissions from their audience. An advertisement printed on the dust jacket of a volume in the series Die Blauen BГјcher (Blue Books) states photographic submissions to the publisher, like the ones reproduced in the book, that depict industrial buildings and machinery would be “highly rewarded.”28 With little attention to the training or identity of individual photographic authors, such BildbГ¤nde exemplified the disregard for certain standards of composition that critics like Kallai and Matthies-Masuren lamented. Indeed, book series promised quantity and visual stimulation, often promoting euphoria for the very idea of a collection of photographs rather than a focused argument or narrative. The subjects of BildbГ¤nde ranged from the focused to the sprawling. In the series Orbis Urbium, each volume is dedicated to a modern metropolis, while the topics in the series SchaubГјcher include sport, religion, architecture,

astronomy, animals, and the daily work of the pope. Many BildbГ¤nde focused on anthropological or cultural subjects, attempting to broaden the public’s horizons and expose the audience to parts of the world that would be inaccessible without photography.29 Some were produced by the publishers of successful illustrated magazines. For example, the series Orbis Terrarum was produced by the publisher of Atlantis: LГ¤nder, VГ¶lker, Reisen (Atlantis: Countries, People, Travel), an illustrated monthly that cultivated a taste for travel and knowledge about exotic topics.30 Like illustrated magazines, these photographic books pledged to inform their audience quickly and accurately. A prospectus for the SchaubГјcher series states the volumes are meant “for the people of today who must be stingy with every second, who no longer have time for the study of learned textbooks and want to be quickly, but also well, informed.”31 These books assert confidence in the ability of photography to inform more efficiently and thoroughly than words. The success of these BildbГ¤nde testifies to the public’s insatiable appetite for photographs and their growing dependence on them for knowledge about an ever-expanding range of subjects. Because they were produced for other photographic books, commercial clients, or image archives, many of the images in Die Welt ist schГ¶n had never before been associated with Renger’s name. For example, in an issue of the illustrated magazine Page 68 →Der Querschnitt from 1925, the coiled snake in plate 27 of Die Welt ist schГ¶n is credited to Fuhrmann rather than Renger.32 Several years after he stopped working for the FolkwangAuriga Press, Renger described the influence these circumstances had on his approach to photography:

Page 67 →Renger-Patzsch (Photo-Fuhrmann). “Kopf einer Natter,” (Head of a Snake) Der Querschnitt 5, no. 8 (1925): n.p. В© 2014 Albert RengerPatzsch Archiv/Ann u. JГјrgen Wilde, ZГјlpich/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

I accepted a position offered to me in a publishing house that owned a photographic department, and it was here that I learned—rather late—how to work efficiently.В .В .В . I tried to connect quantity to quality, something I was never able to manage. The museums in which I worked for the publisher soon locked their doors to us since, within a few weeks, the material which had for centuries slumbered so peacefully in them had taken on the form of books which people snatched out of our hands, but which, in the opinion of the guardians of these public, state-owned treasures, were not desirable nourishment for intellectually and artistically interested people.33 Renger’s comments about the disgruntled attitude of museums toward the reproduction of their collections in books imply that Folkwang-Auriga was attempting to edify its audience through photographic images. His comment about trying to connect “quantity to quality” also suggests a rift between the expectations of quality in the realm of art and the emphasis on quantity in the context of commercial photography. Quality, in Renger’s assessment, is aligned with artistic creativity, which implies the acknowledgement of an individual artistic hand. Renger’s position in this publishing house did not allow him to assert such authorial control.34 As a retrospective between two covers, Die Welt ist schГ¶n has been wrongly isolated from Renger’s earlier work and the context of commercial jobs and publishing archives in which his photographs originally functioned.35 This is partly the result of scholarly attempts to approach the book as a deliberately constructed intervention into “nature versus culture” debates during the Weimar Republic.36 No doubt the mix of machines and rural footpaths in Die Welt ist schГ¶n speaks to this issue. Certainly, the objects depicted in the book’s photographs reflect the cultural and political context in which they were produced. However, I want to recover here how the book establishes Renger as a photographer by presenting a visual approach to making meaning. The photographs present evidence for an underlying unity between nature and culture. However, it is my argument here that the greater ambition of Die Welt ist schГ¶n was to show how the visual realm of photography is best equipped to reveal this unity. The book is primarily about Renger as a photographer and the cognitive potential of the visual experience he provides. Heise is also to blame for the isolation of Die Welt ist schГ¶n from Renger’s earlier career. As Virginia Heckert has argued, Heise was a zealous promoter of Renger’s Page 69 →work, and Die Welt ist schГ¶n was meant, in part, to secure Renger’s position as one of the most influential photographers of the era.37 In order to celebrate him as a master artist, Heise downplays Renger’s role as a commercial photographer who serves the needs of his clients. The book separates the photographs from their original, commercial context and defines Renger as a photographer-artist. This is an important part of the overall abstraction that takes place in Die Welt ist schГ¶n. Establishing Renger’s artistic oeuvre is one way in which Heise attempts to present the assembled photographs as a unified collection and to distance Die Welt ist schГ¶n from the anonymous images published in many BildbГ¤nde. But the book does not escape the principles of capitalist production and circulation so easily. Heise reinvents Renger as an artist, an identity easily marketed and fetishized for potential consumers. The notion of photographer-artist thus plays an ambivalent role. It distinguishes Die Welt ist schГ¶n’s photographs from the commercial uses for which many of them were produced. But it also unifies the images under this familiar identity to package the book as a product for a mass audience. There are other ways in which Die Welt ist schГ¶n lies both inside and outside the commercial sphere, thereby complicating its position in relation to the crisis of photo-inflation. Heise originally pitched the book to the publisher Kurt Wolff as a multi-volume BildbГ¤nde, in which each volume would be devoted to a different subject.38 But in order to distinguish Die Welt ist schГ¶n from the inflated quantity of photographs in mass culture, this ambitious plan was eventually compressed into a single volume. Heise was also weary of positioning Renger’s work within the realm of fine art. In a letter to Kurt Tucholsky, Heise mentions how Wilhelm Lotz, editor of the German Werkbund’s magazine Die Form, had proposed to publish the project as “a luxury edition with 300 copies.” Heise writes, “I find this to be one of the worst jokes of our age when the most populist ideas can only be realized in scarce publications for snobs.В .В .В . It would be a scandal if RengerPatzsch had to force his populism into publications for bibliophiles.”39 Heise distinguishes Die Welt ist schГ¶n from the lyrical tendencies of art photography and the elitist snobbery of fine-art publications. But the book also countered the indiscriminate appearance of people, places, and subjects in BildbГ¤nde. Heise marketed Die Welt

ist schГ¶n as a tool of enrichment and edification for the masses. Affordably priced at 12 marks and given a high print run, Die Welt ist schГ¶n sought to offer a form of visual enrichment that tempered the chaos of images in mass culture. In his introduction to the book, Heise noted its potential to unify its audience and serve as an agent of social harmony. “Photographs,” he writes, “assuming that they are so bold, lively, and creative as those of Albert Renger-Patzsch, enrich us and unite a larger circle of diverse people through common enthusiasm than the painting of our time is able to.”40 AccordingPage 70 → to Heise, Die Welt ist schГ¶n aimed to provide visual pleasure as a remedy for economic duress. Die Welt ist schГ¶n sought to edify its audience through a distinct visual experience that its photographic sequence could offer. Heise took advantage of photography’s potential to reach a mass audience and positioned Die Welt ist schГ¶n in the commercial sphere. An advertising blitz, orchestrated by Heise in time for the holiday season, pitched the book as an opportunity to renew and sharpen the public’s visual capabilities, even in Germany’s dire economic conditions. “The pleasure of vision is newly awakened in our impoverished Germany,” we read in Kurt Wolff’s advertisement for the book. “It is an enjoyment that the poorest can take part in as much as the rich. Only a feel for it must be awakened. The best guide for this is Die Welt ist schГ¶nВ .В .В .В . Renger’s photographic art reveals the worldview of our time. It is as if we learn to see things anew and more deeply. The value of this publication, which exposes the eye to undiscovered places, lies in its intelligibility to all.”41 Heise prearranged laudatory reviews of Die Welt ist schГ¶n by two of Germany’s most well-known writers. In a two-page, heavily illustrated essay in the Berliner Illustrirte [sic] Zeitung, Germany’s most popular illustrated weekly, Thomas Mann played up the magical effects of Die Welt ist schГ¶n. “The singular and objective surges up from the world of appearances, beheld, isolated, raised up, sharpened, made meaningful and given a soul.”42 In his review, Kurt Tucholsky wrote, “This fabulous photography volume shows us our time. How rarely polytheistic, how god-less and full of God these images are! How they lay next to each other—seemingly sitting next to one another without judgment! Good and bad are not applicable here—this is how a God views the world. And it is thus beautiful.”43 Tucholsky manages to describe the photographs as free from the interceding hand of the artist while also associating Renger with the awe-inspiring realm of spiritual forces. The reviews by Mann and Tucholsky reinforce Renger’s status as artist, a privileged seer and guide to a world invisible to modern mortals. While Heise took advantage of the mass circulation and popularity of photography, critics noticed that Die Welt ist schГ¶n was exceptional, different from BildbГ¤nde and other photographic books that featured Renger’s work. In a review of LГјbeck, the Viennese art historian Heinrich Schwarz remarked, “While the anthology [Sammelband] Die Welt ist schГ¶n is universally oriented, the book on LГјbeck shows us Renger-Patzsch placed before a uniform, limited project.”44 Schwartz confuses breadth with universal orientation here. While the subject of the book is broadly defined as “the world,” its orientation is undoubtedly Western. Most of the photographs in Die Welt ist schГ¶n feature German subjects. Therefore, the book conflates an omniscient perspective with the particular circumstances of a modern, industrial nation. Nonetheless, diversity, rather than the value of the subjects themselves, Page 71 →was what drove the project. In a letter to the writer Kurt Tucholsky, Heise describes the concept of the book as “100 photographs from the man’s various spheres of work,” indicating he envisioned Die Welt ist schГ¶n as an anthology of Renger’s career rather than a publication of new photographs. Heise also suggests the breadth of subjects captured in Renger’s work was key: “He photographs incisively not only hands, machines, flowers, and animals, as it appears from his most reproduced work, but absolutely everythingВ .В .В . from old cobblestone pavements and fishing nets to gutters and church spires and everything in between.”45 Heise’s description indicates he was particularly interested in how a collection of Renger’s photographs could cover an impressive range of subjects. Heise asserted a great deal of authorial command over the project. A flurry of correspondence between Heise and potential publishers of the book—including Ullstein, Ernst Wasmuth, and Kurt Wolff—indicates that he, rather than Renger, was in charge of the book’s production.46 Heise searched for a publisher and wrote the introduction, the only textual accompaniment to the photographs. Because so many of the photographs in Die Welt ist schГ¶n had been published in other books or associated with earlier projects, the selection and organization of its images stands as the book’s most distinctive aspect. Heise approached this project as a curator, selecting,

organizing, and arranging an exhibition in the form of a photographic book. Given his experience as a curator, it is no surprise that Heise aligned Die Welt ist schön with the aspiration of museums to edify the public. Yet Heise is also willing to expand his curatorial projects beyond the museum’s walls, unlike the “guardians” of cultural treasures Renger encountered while working for the Folkwang-Auriga Press. As the book’s curator, Heise sought to balance the educational value and cultural significance he saw in Renger’s work with the commercial potential of the photographic medium. The book manages to suggest it has a unique value to society that distinguishes it from other photographic publications while also taking advantage of the growing prevalence of photography in mass culture. As a result, Die Welt ist schön’s position within the photo-inflation debate is more complex than most photography critics of the time acknowledged. Given his significant role in the book’s publication, it is worth taking a closer look at Heise and how his introduction shapes the book’s visual experience.

Heise and the Search for Modern Kunstwollen Heise’s introduction to Die Welt ist schГ¶n can be summarized as follows: the clear, photographic recording of things reveals underlying formal characteristics that Page 72 →unite all objects in the world. Die Welt ist schГ¶n curbs the presence of individual traits and highlights what is common to all. “The photographer,” Heise explains, “separates the characteristic feature from the multiplicity of appearances, emphasizes the essential elements, and prevents us from wandering in a multiplicity of forms.”47 This “characteristic feature” is typical of the object photographed, but is also common to the category (plants, animals and people, landscapes, etc.) to which the object belongs. Moreover, these formal features arise across categories, uniting plants with technology and landscapes with architecture, to produce a depiction of the world as unified beneath its endless variety. Therefore, the coiled snake photographed on page 27 resonates “beyond its unique case and outside of the species,” and recalls the “Sempervivium tabulaeforme” presented on page 6, in which the flower’s spiraling petals resemble the endless repetition of the snake’s modular scales.48 In both these images, the close-up view of the camera abstracts these objects into geometric spirals. The spiral arises frequently in the book—the curve of a spiral staircase in plate 65, the belt and wheel of a Siemens electric heater in plate 68, the close-up of a steam engine’s crank and radiating spokes on the following page—and demonstrates the consistency of this motif across the nature/culture divide. These spirals can also be compared to other circular forms in the book, such as the rims and reflections of glassware, the cups in a box of paints, a coffee mug photographed from above (plate 53), and a pool of mud at a blast-furnace factory (plate 54). Die Welt ist schГ¶n strives to reveal the conformity of physical form to universal laws that lie beneath individual characteristics. Associative threads bind together the pictures of the book, creating a sense of common structure among diverse objects. The photographs direct us toward these shared elements and away from details that might distract the viewer from unifying common forms. The result is a photographic book that claims to reveal an abstract structure shared by objects as different as a bunch of grapes and bundles of socks, railroad tracks and a church tower. Die Welt ist schГ¶n’s system of universal connection is supported by the book’s uniform pages. They provide a homogenous space in which the photographed objects can be systematically compared. The book collects images representing a broad range of time (from medieval architecture to industrial smokestacks) and space (from a Somali child to a German woman) and presents them as interlocking parts of a monolithic world. Die Welt ist schГ¶n’s vast network of formal analogies establishes a new system of equivalency among objects based on photographic representation. One object with a circular structure equals another with a similar structure, for example. The book positions the photographs in a network of exchange that determines their value.

u. JГјrgen Wilde, ZГјlpich/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. From the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University Libraries, Oxford, Ohio. Page 73 →Heise organized the book’s photographs into eight categories: plants, animals and people, landscapes, material goods, architecture, technology, the varied world, and symbols. Despite the emphasis on abstract form in Heise’s text, the photographs are organized roughly according to subject matter. These categories help emphasize the type over the individual and encourage connections among photographs in the group. He discusses each section separately in his introduction, but there are no breaks to mark the end of one category and the beginning of another in the photographic sequence. The transition from plants to animals and people at the beginning of the book is apparent enough, yet the criteria of these categorical divisions become increasingly more fluid. Photographs 81 through 90 belong to the bunte Welt or “varied world” according to Heise’s text. The last section, entitled “Symbols,” includes smokestacks, shoehorns, a boat with a fishing net, and an agave plant. Heise intended to use these categories to emphasize general form over individual idiosyncrasies, but sections such as the “varied world” and “symbols” are Page 75 →unable to communicate specific criteria. The book’s introduction attempts to hold these categories together, yet why objects belong to these particular sections is not visually apparent. Why, for example, is an agave plant particularly symbolic?

Page 74 →Renger-Patzsch. “Sempervivum tabulaeforme,” in Die Welt ist schГ¶n, 6. В© 2014 Albert Renger-Patzsch Archiv/Ann u. JГјrgen Wilde, ZГјlpich/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. From the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University Libraries, Oxford, Ohio. The first twenty photographs in Die Welt ist schГ¶n depict various botanical species. Renger has photographed

these plants from a close range, isolating them from any context and emphasizing their status as abstract forms. “The plant is represented through its typical features,” Heise writes, “and then simultaneously, without doing any violence to its natural appearance, extended into a linear ornament rich with tension.”49 The first photograph is a close-up of a foxglove. Set against a black background, a cluster of repeated, conical forms falls down the center of the page. Like the first photograph, the second, “Heterotrichum macrodum,” is set against a black background. This photograph also displays a simple, geometrical form repeated multiple times. Four petals of a similar size are flattened out into an abstract pattern. The next image, which focuses on the fluffy poof of a georgina, switches back to the tangible sense of depth and volume seen in the first. The first three images focus on centralized or circular patterns. The fourth image presents a cluster of grapes against a blank, grey background, which recalls the bunched circles of the foxglove in the book’s first image. This first section exposes its audience to a variety of textures and surfaces, yet several motifs unite the group. Many photographs show some sort of serial pattern of growth, in which petals, leaves, sprouts, or needles are repeated. To accent these patterns, Renger often photographed the plants from uncommon angles. Plate 13 shows the flower of a “Cyperus alternifolius,” more commonly known as an umbrella plant, close up. The bloom is positioned in the center of the photograph while the plant’s long, thin leaves extend radially outward. The composition of the photograph brings out an underlying symmetry in the plant. On the next page, we see a Brazilian melon tree from below. The trunk of the tree begins in the lower right of the photograph and its branches spread across the page. These two images are paired as radial forms. In both, leaves or branches extend from a centralized point. Yet, they also refer to other photographs in the group. The flattened, frontal depiction of the umbrella plant recalls earlier photographs in the sequence in which flowers and plants radiate out from the center and evenly across the picture plane. The fanning branches of the melon tree in plate 14 rhyme with the “cactus plant” in plate 11 in which the spiny stalks reach across the page from the lower right corner, and again with the grasses in plate 12. These photographic techniques emphasize rational organizational principles that transform the plants into abstract patterns. In the first section of text, Heise compares Renger’s photographs of plants to the work of a scientist. “He makes visible what the scientist can only approximate with Page 78 →words.”50 The analogy establishes Renger as a credible discoverer of empirical facts and defines the visual as a more efficient and precise realm of communication than text. Heise goes on to define a kind of occupational ethics for photographers, which is based on fidelity to the world around them. “It is worth pointing out that only in the most seldom of cases are plants or parts of plants magnified beyond nature, and never is a new artistic form sought that is not offered by the object itself.В .В .В . Plants are characterized and never abused as complacent playthings.”51 Heise emphasizes photography’s claim to record the world objectively and indiscriminately rather than interpret it. The clarity of each photograph, the presentation of a wealth of detail and texture, establishes the unbiased nature of Renger’s camera. The arbitrary detail—the texture of leaves, the fuzz of dandelions, the play between matte and shine on the skin of grapes—naturalizes the appearance of common, formal structures before the camera’s lens.

/Ann u. JГјrgen Wilde, ZГјlpich/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. From the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University Libraries, Oxford, Ohio.

Page 77 →Renger-Patzsch. “Brasilianischer Melonenbaum,” (Brasilian Melon Tree) in Die Welt ist schГ¶n, 14. В© 2014 Albert Renger-Patzsch Archiv/Ann u. JГјrgen Wilde, ZГјlpich/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. From the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University Libraries, Oxford, Ohio. Heise had been a fervent supporter of Expressionism in the 1920s, but he had grown frustrated with the increasing rift between art and the public sphere. In an essay published in the Expressionist art journal Genius in 1921, Heise lamented the “increasing discrepancy between popular feeling and artistic culture in our time.”52 Heise does not blame this discord on the ignorance of the masses but on the failure of art to adequately express the spirit of the age. He suggests the artist’s role in society is to “make visible the best and deepest aspects of the dominating spirit.”53 With his discovery of Renger’s work in 1927, Heise apparently determined photography could connect to the public and express society’s “dominating spirit” to an extent that no longer seemed possible in other media.54 Heise was not alone in his search for a way to visualize underlying unity and order in the modern world. Circles of art historians, architects, and applied artists turned to the writings of Viennese art historian Alois Riegl and his concept of Kunstwollen in the mid- to late-1920s to address this challenge.55 A second edition of Riegl’s SpГ¤trГ¶mische Kunstindustrie (The Late Roman Art Industry) appeared in 1927, about the time when Heise was first coming into contact with Renger’s photographs. It is likely that an art historian such as Heise would have been aware of Riegl’s influential ideas.56 Riegl’s notion of Kunstwollen announced that culture at any given moment in time was spiritually unified—there was a direct connection between physical forms and the spirit of the age to which they belonged. In opposition to earlier theories that saw “the work of art as nothing

else than a mechanical product based on function, raw material and technique,” Riegl argued ideal factors rather than material ones determine the essential structure of objects.57 He proposed common desires (Wollen) drive human activity and visual culture expresses this volition at particular points in history.58 He argued that the work of art was a Page 79 →result of a purposeful Kunstwollen, which struggles to manifest itself visually within the confines of physical form. “The character of this Wollen,” writes Riegl, “is always determined by what may be termed the conception of the world at a given time [Weltanschauung] (again in the widest sense of the term), not only in religion, philosophy, science, but also in government and lawВ .В .В .”59 Kunstwollen refers to the desires that art strives to fulfill at a particular historical moment. With this notion, Heise found a way to give an intrinsic purpose to Renger’s photographs by ascribing a deeper, spiritual meaning to their abstracted forms. In light of Riegl’s Kunstwollen, Die Welt ist schГ¶n does not abstract objects to separate them from their cultural significance. Rather, the book’s photographic economy attempts to resuscitate a spiritual significance of objects that had been lost. Heise’s introduction to Die Welt ist schГ¶n conflates the expression of a spiritually unified form with the objectivity of Renger’s photographic lens. Heise concludes his introduction by announcing a great need for the revelation of unifying forms, claiming a spiritual unification among objects was being threatened by the distractions and fragmentation of modern life. We must not forget that the laws of nature and life themselves carry certain symbolic power for each appearance. The work of the photographer does not create the symbol, but only makes it visible! But guidance towards independent seeing, towards strengthening our sense of the reflection of the universe in single objects of creation, these alone are valuable services that today can hardly be overestimated. As the powerful symbols of our forefathers begin to fade away from us, it is of the greatest importance that we slowly learn to recognize inexhaustible life in all its parts as new symbols.60 Heise does not argue that photography is able to revive “the powerful symbols of our forefathers.” He admits these are confined to the past. But what photography can do is locate the symbolic forms appropriate for the current age and restore an ability to identify these forms visually. For Heise, the unity that results symbolizes an integrated, stable culture, and the aesthetic evidence of a world free of alienation. An awareness of this unity and the ability to see “the universe in single objects of creation” stands for cultural harmony, a transparent relationship between a culture and those who witness it. Such a unity, according to Heise, is threatened in modern times. Modern viewers have lost the ability to recognize the formal bonds between objects. It is not that these bonds no longer exist, but that the opportunities for recognizing the signs of these integral laws of form are waning. “Our highest inherited concepts are beginning to become obscure,” Heise writes.61 He suggests in the modern world, the visual correlations between objects and their Page 80 →culture are not immediately recognizable. And most important, it is the role of the photographer to revive this connection. Rather than holding photography and its predominance in modern visual culture responsible for the neglect of cultural unity, Heise argues photography could potentially revive the ability to identify the spiritual signs of the age. Heise was one of several art historians trained in the Hegelianism of the nineteenth century who turned to photography as a way of preserving this tradition of cultural understanding. In a review of Die Welt ist schГ¶n, art historian Heinrich Schwarz expresses a similar perspective: “If the photographs of Renger-Patzsch appear to us today to create more pure pleasure than most works of painting it is no coincidence, but an indication that the age has found in photography a more sensitive and significant artistic urge [Kunstwollen] than in painting.”62 In addition to providing some of the first analyses of photography that employ art historical methodologies, these scholars described photography as the most appropriate medium with which to engage questions articulated by Riegl and others in the nineteenth century.63 Riegl’s discussion of Kunstwollen is filled with descriptions of the “spiritual condition of the time” and mentions of a hazily defined “hallmark of inner determination” that is carried by all cultural products of an age.64 Such indefinite references to an internally generated Kunstwollen foreshadow Heise’s description of Renger’s photographs as “reflections of the universe.” Like many of his peers in the late Weimar Republic, Heise believed the modern world threatened the perceptibility of unity. In other words, the central question for followers of Riegl’s work in the 1920s was

how such a “will to form” could manifest itself in the modern world, filled with an overflow of visual information.65 This adaptation of Riegl’s Kunstwollen was in line with a contingent of writers on photography in the Weimar Republic who saw the medium as restoring order and reviving visual experiences that were lost in the incoherent abundance of visual information in the modern world. “One learns to see the world anew”—this sentiment, expressed by Hildebrand Gurlitt in his review in Das Kunstblatt, was repeated by many.66 Consider Walther Petry’s 1929 essay, “Attachment to Things,” in which the author sees photography’s ability to show the “true” characteristics of objects as an advantage over the interpretative perspective of painting: Instead of this [artistic interpretation] we believe that each thing contains a true and spiritual expression of form. Structure, material, the surface of an object are, if seen correctly, a single and full reality. Each true photograph ties itself to this idea of reality, to this austere demand to be realistic. Photography becomes in this way an invaluable Page 81 →means of natural recognition in a scientific and clear sense. It demands the active attention of the observer, stimulates an awareness of valid forms of nature and opens, in its mirror, an essential but almost lost access to a true, persistent world.67 Petry suggests photography is not only capable of demonstrating the presence of a “persistent world” latent in objects, but also the medium can reawaken the ability to see such forms by cultivating the visual skills of modern observers. Hugo Sieker, a frequent writer on photography in the art journal Der Kreis, describes Renger’s photographs as “absolute realism, the most precise and objective record of thoroughly familiar things.”68 But for Sieker, it is Renger’s ability to defamiliarize objects of the everyday world that makes his photographs so realistic. “That we admire them (to the point of awe) proves that this photography reveals nature more intensely than nature reveals herself—precisely because it offers a concentrated selection of what nature withholds by her very abundance.”69 Both Sieker and Heise position the focused, selective gaze of the camera in opposition to the chaotic abundance of nature. Heise ultimately pronounces the spiritual power of Renger’s photographs incommunicable and limited to the untranslatable realm of vision. “It remains indescribable what only the image in the great depths of its clarity, with an abundance of mysterious hints at the meaning of the universe, can bring to life. Those who have eyes to see, see.”70 In other words, this unity not only appears exclusively in the visual realm, but appears clearly and without ambiguity. Heise and others who were searching for this evasive Kunstwollen put a great deal of pressure on the photographic medium. Not only would photography have to reveal universal connections, but also such connections were expected to be self-evident and immediately clear. Heise’s understanding of photography was therefore based on the assumption that the visual information the medium presented would be interpreted and experienced in a single way. Although Heise’s introduction attempts to limit the visual experience of the book’s photographs, a thorough consideration of the book must acknowledge distractions and inconsistencies that arise. After all, if Heise believes Renger’s photographs can convey information clearly, independent from textual guidance, then we should analyze all of what the photographs have to tell us. However, the fetishized forms and commodity fantasies Benjamin identified as central to Die Welt ist schГ¶n’s troubling abstraction can be seen as products of the limitations that Heise attempts to impose on what viewers see in the book’s photographs. The repetition and simplification of form unifies the objects but also drives the commodity fetish and the production of commercial and cultural fantasies. Heise Page 82 →is as unwilling to acknowledge the possibility of these alternate visual encounters as Benjamin is unable to find value in the book’s formal connections. Die Welt ist schГ¶n is thus haunted by realities it attempts to transcend. In many photographs throughout the book, orthogonals and gridded networks attempt to stabilize vision, imposing a sense of formal order. Plate 36, for example, depicts a clearly marked path through the Weinbergweg. Like a perspective drawing, the edges of the path extend from two bottom corners to slightly above the center of the photograph, where the path trails off to the right. This composition arises in a starker form in plate 48 in which railroad tracks sharply delineate a mountain path. Here the orthogonal lines of the track swerve in the distance,

capturing a deviation from the underlying template of visual regularity. Other photographs in the book juxtapose lines and grids with disordered forms. Plate 58 shows bulging bundles of cotton socks spilling over the linear edges of the table and beams from which they are piled and hung. In the next plate, a disorderly heap breaks up the otherwise regular repetition of stacks of wooden planks. Later in the book, steel industrial planks crisscross picture planes, dividing the images into serial patterns and grids. Plate 75 depicts a series of traveling cranes at an industrial plant. A complex system of beams and cables extends laterally across the photograph while tower masts and smokestacks traverse the horizontal runways. Like the photographs with orthogonals, the gridded space created by the intersecting parts of the crane asserts the order and regularity of the visual field of Renger’s photographs. Yet, this gridded pattern contrasts with the heaps of coal in the lower right corner, creating a tension between gridded space and these informal mounds. Neither appears more natural nor industrial than the other. In plate 80, iron beams stand in front of massive, amorphous piles of coal. The disorderly stacks of wood in the foreground, which recall the close-up of logs stacked on end in plate 52 and the wooden planks in plate 59, exemplify the sustained presence of both order and chaos that distract from the attempt to show unifying forms. Despite Heise’s claim that objects are not “magnified beyond nature,” the book both reduces and enlarges the photographed objects for the sake of formal unity. The visual field in Die Welt ist schГ¶n constantly shifts from vertical to horizontal and oscillates between close-up, mid-range, and distant views. Through the variety of perspectives and distances, Renger allows objects of disparate size to be formally compared. Towering industrial smokestacks in plate 91, for example, are reduced to the size of the pyramidal arrangement of shoe irons in plate 93. And inversely, the shoe irons are transformed into monumental smokestacks. The rhythmic play of lightly colored gables and dark, pitched roofs in the townscape in plate 66 recalls the all-over vacillation between leaves and darkness in plate 17. “The sweeping Page 83 →curves of the Zwinger steps in Dresden recall the waves of the sea,” is how Heise puts it, drawing affinity between the gentle curves in plates 40 and 95.71 The uniform size of the photographs, which are surrounded by an inch-wide border, creates a standardized, controlled format in which these objects can be observed in the same scale to facilitate the recognition of common structures. The sequencing of the images reinforces Renger’s photographic abstraction. It compels the viewer to see shape and pattern rather than a familiar object or motif. Photography’s ability to bring things closer, to transform objects of disparate size and stature into an accessible format, empowers the viewer to discover similarities once masked by presumably irrelevant differences. Consistent with its stated purpose to teach people to see differently, the images and their sequencing compel the viewer to see the subjects of the photographs abstractly as shape and pattern.

u. JГјrgen Wilde, ZГјlpich/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. From the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University Libraries, Oxford, Ohio. Heise highlights the homogenizing ability of the camera in the section labeled Bunte Welt. This title has a double meaning. “Bunte” means “motley,” “mixed,” or Page 84 →“varied,” but also “brightly colored.” The title highlights inadvertently the ambivalence of language, as opposed to the presumed clarity and univocality of the photographic sequence. Offering a mixed bag of objects, the group includes the stern of a sailing ship, a provincial cornmill, and a frozen waterfall. Heise seems to have wanted to show that formal unity can be found even among the most diverse collection of things. Certainly, variety is critical for establishing a convincing cross-section of “the world,” but Heise also addresses Die Welt ist schГ¶n’s lack of color. After reinforcing his main point that “from the essence of things a heightened form can be found,” he explains these forms can best be identified in black-and-white photography.72 “The world is varied in the highest, most figurative sense. But the sense is easier to discover and is more effectively emphasized when it is captured in the realm of black and white surfaces, half dematerialized through the absence of color, and simultaneously removed to a spiritual sphere.”73 By eliminating the distractive, uncontrollable variable of color, the objecthood of these collected things disappears Page 87 →and a “spiritual” form prevails. By homogenizing the objects of the world, draining them of color and distorting their size, photography can reveal connections that we normally do not see.

Renger-Patzsch. “Laufkran im Hochofenwerk, Herrenwyk,” (Traveling Crane in a Blast Furnace Plant, Herrenwyk) in Die Welt ist schön, 75. © 2014 Albert Renger-Patzsch Archiv/Ann u. Jürgen Wilde, Zülpich/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. From the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University Libraries, Oxford,

Plant, Herrenwyk) in Die Welt ist schön, 91. © 2014 Albert Renger-Patzsch Archiv/Ann u. Jürgen Wilde, Zülpich/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. From the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami

University Libraries, Oxford, Ohio. Page 86 →Renger-Patzsch. “BГјgeleisen fГјr Schuhfabrikation. Fagus-Werk Benscheidt in Alfeld,” (Shoe Irons for Industrial Production, Fagus-Factory Benscheidt in Alfeld) in Die Welt ist schГ¶n, 93. В© 2014 Albert RengerPatzsch Archiv/Ann u. JГјrgen Wilde, ZГјlpich/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. From the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University Libraries, Oxford, Ohio.

“Aluminum TГ¶pfe. Warenhaus Schocken, Zwickau,” (Aluminum Pots, Schocken Department Store, Zwickau) in Die Welt ist schГ¶n, 55. В© 2014 Albert Renger-Patzsch Archiv/Ann u. JГјrgen Wilde, ZГјlpich /Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. From the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University Libraries, Oxford, Ohio. But such abstraction also invites commodity fantasies. More than abstract forms, Renger’s photographs function as objects of vicarious consumption. Viewers living in “impoverished Germany” could find pleasure in the abundance of material goods depicted in Renger’s photographs. The leaning stacks of massproduced pots in plate 55 may recall the curved stem of plants from the book’s first section. But the metallic sheen of their circular form emphasizes their status as mass-produced goods. The store label attached to one of the bottom pots further stimulates a desire for such commodities. This label announces the price of the pots, relocating the value of these objects in the world of capitalist exchange rather than abstract form. Heise means to restrict the viewer’s pleasure to the experience of formal unity as evidencePage 88 → of cultural stability. Yet, the photographs also invite forms of pleasure easily associated with capitalist consumption.74 Die Welt ist schГ¶n privileges the systemic over the individual, and the repressive nature of this approach comes across most powerfully in the book’s images of people. Human forms appear in only seven of the book’s one hundred photographs. In plate 32, a fisherwoman looks away from us toward the distant horizon. The fishing net, which again evokes a grid, waves in front of her, obscuring her body and enveloping her in a geometrical pattern. The flattened plane of the net she holds rhymes with the checkered print of her skirt. In plate 97, a fisherman stands at the boat’s mast and looks out onto the sea. Dwarfed by the imposing network of nets and masts, the fisherman is barely visible. In his introduction to Die Welt ist schГ¶n, Heise begins the section on “Animals and People” by stating, “It is characteristic of Renger-Patzsch that he is not a portrait photographer, or at least that he could never make a living from this most popular specialization. Is it not true that animals are more interesting than people anyway? His photographs could make us believe it. As with flowers, he enhances the appearance of the type.”75 In addition to distinguishing Renger from this commercial realm, his comments trivialize portraiture’s focus on the individual. Renger excels at showing the general and the systemic. Three photographs of human faces—a woman from the German village of Halligen, a Somali child, and a mummified Maori face—conclude this section. The woman’s face represents the physiognomic features of the German race and stands in contrast to the non-Western faces in the next two images. Heise highlights these photographs: “To him [Renger] human beings are like animals. He looks for what represents the type. A little Somali girl with a head polished like a billiard ball shows the face of a child more strongly formed by the influences of nature than by the human mind. The Maori mummy eerily awakens an extinct race.”76 These photographs serve as racialized types and evoke Western fantasies of the persistence of primitive nature in non-Western societies. The mummified head that ends the sequence is a poignant symbol of the camera’s dehumanizing power. This photograph in particular exemplifies the Marxist assertion that capitalism transforms subjects into objects, and objects into subjects. Lacking the individualizing conventions and accoutrements of portraiture, this decapitated head floats before a blank background and is meant to visualize the general features of an entire “extinct race.” It is one of several uncanny moments in the book in which the photographic sequence places an object in an unsettling position between life and death. According to Heise, photography both revives the spiritual power of objects and destroys it.

schГ¶n, 35. В© 2014 Albert Renger-Patzsch Archiv/Ann u. JГјrgen Wilde, ZГјlpich/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. From the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University Libraries, Oxford, Ohio. Page 89 →It has become common to bring out beautiful details of works of art in photographs. There is hardly a book about medieval sculpture that does not contain photographs of single heads. The aesthetic effect might be strengthened, but the power of the holy image is diminished, like when the head and body of Christ on the lap of the holy mother appear without her anguished face. The only justification lies in the fact that old symbols have become empty to us and subsequently only an artistic way of seeing stands in the place of worshipping. The camera opens up new fields of reverence [Verehrung] and destroys others.77 Heise comes close to addressing the criticism most often aimed at Renger’s work: photography empties out old symbols of their meaning and reconfigures their form in a purely aesthetic realm. He refers to the last photograph in the section “Bunte Welt,” one that makes a provocative segue to the next and last section of the book. Page 90 →Placed among photographs of bridges, boats, and factory smokestacks, the image of a bloody Christ is more commanding than the subject matter before and after it. The pained expression and streams of painted blood on the sculpted Christ seem disturbingly perverse among the things Renger represents with cool disconnect. The coupling of the camera’s objective stare with a sculpture of such pathos breaks up the steady sequence of images. But according to Heise, the objectivity of the camera does not obscure the emotional effect of the sculpture. He states the camera’s “artistic way of seeing” can select part of the medieval sculpture to make it meaningful, creating a new field of reverence apart from the “anguished face” of the Madonna. The photograph announces an age of visual comprehension and experience dictated by the camera’s lens. In this way, Heise’s text anticipates Benjamin’s articulation of this shift in his essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of its Mechanical Reproducibility.” Heise acknowledges photography diminishes the religious experience once associated with such medieval sculpture and redefines the object under the conditions of formal appreciation. Yet he does not seem to realize the full significance of his claim. A photographic system of perception involves more than a shift in visual experience. It forsakes earlier visual experiences and severs ties with other forms of knowledge. This “new field of reverence” Heise associates with Renger’s photographs is a new form of aesthetic pleasure and a realm in which objects have been separated from traditional experiences. A deep sense of melancholy, evoked by the homelessness of the object isolated from its context and history, replaces the religious pathos once experienced in the presence of the entire sculpture. As Siegfried Kracauer put it, “photography is the go-for-broke game of history.”78 In the last section, entitled “Symbols,” formal continuities created in Renger’s photographs hold together a bizarrely discontinuous sequence of objects. The group consists of images that recall the previous seven sections: industrial smokestacks, the steel support of a crane, shoe irons, views of architecture, ceiling lights, a fishing net, plants, and praying hands. Strangely, even Heise admits their randomness. “Naturally the selected examples are arbitrary, as all examples are. Other images could stand in the places of the plates displayed. In the end only an introduction to the various possibilities is attempted through a packed sequence in which observed objects ascend to a symbolic imprint.”79 The arbitrary selection of examples proves the universality of formal laws and shows the structure of the age can be found in objects as different as the groin vaulting of a cathedral and the chimneys of a factory, the peak of praying hands and the triangular shape of shoe irons. The photograph of praying hands concludes the book, and, as Heise states, even the body of man is “bound to interweave in pursuit of a higher cause—like the possibility of a simple joining together of ten fingers of two hands to make a large, self-contained Page 91 →form that serves as proof of a highly unschematic and entirely clear, emerging structure.”80 Heise argues Renger’s work is both objective and spiritually connected, deeply sensitive to the object and devoted to a “higher cause.” For Heise, photography’s value to the modern world lies in its ability to reveal universal forms—a unity of all things—that was becoming more and more difficult to see. But this desire also distorts the value of objects by separating them from earlier systems of meaning. The compositions, close-ups, and connections between images in Die Welt ist schГ¶n are difficult to control. Heise’s text is ultimately unable to limit the visual outcomes of the abstraction and connections produced in Renger’s photographic sequence.

PietГ , St. Mary’s Church in Zwickau) in Die Welt ist schГ¶n, 90. В© 2014 Albert Renger-Patzsch Archiv /Ann u. JГјrgen Wilde, ZГјlpich/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. From the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University Libraries, Oxford, Ohio. Not all critics were convinced of Die Welt ist schГ¶n’s presentation of a coherent, visible world. Despite Heise’s efforts to the contrary, some critics associated Die Welt ist schГ¶n with the overwhelming quantity of images that appeared in BildbГ¤nde. Hermann von Wedderkop, editor of the cultural magazine Der Querschnitt, Page 92 →accused the book’s title of fostering a gluttonous approach to photographic consumption. “Incidentally, such a kitschy title as вЂDie Welt ist schГ¶n’ should be dismissed as calculated merely for the taste for mass quantity. One should try to attract the public to buy in another, more sober and thereby honorable way. Especially in the case of books with such valuable contents.”81 Before the book was published, its title was a point of contention between Heise and the publisher. Several other titles were considered, including Die Freude am Gegenstand (Joy Before the Object), Die Dinge (The Things), Die kleine und die grosse Welt (The World Great and Small), and Hundert Wunder (One Hundred Wonders).82 To Wedderkop and others, the assertiveness of the chosen phrase did not tolerate ambiguities that arise in the book’s photographic sequence. “The world is beautiful,” it claims, discounting any indication that the modern world is irrational, uncanny, or deeply melancholic. Ultimately, the underlying structure and regularity that Die Welt ist schГ¶n presents appears too rigid. Rather than arising before the camera on its own volition, unity and order appear forced and artificial. Karl With alluded to anxieties over the relationship between seeing and knowing in his review of Die Welt ist schГ¶n: “A strange book! Exciting in its bustling abundance as well as its silence.”83 Perhaps unintentionally, With’s juxtaposition of abundance with silence alludes to doubts about what knowledge Die Welt ist schГ¶n’s collection of visual forms could provide.

Sachlichkeit and the Photographic Book Heise and Benjamin provide us with two different perspectives on the value of photography as staged by Die Welt ist schГ¶n that are, in my view, equally relevant but unsatisfying. Through their theorization of Sachlichkeit, the German Werkbund defined a middle ground between Heise’s search for spiritual form and Benjamin’s dismissal of Renger’s photographs as the frivolous worship of industrial commodities. The Werkbund was an alliance of applied artists, art historians, architects, critics, and businessmen who debated the role of commodified objects in the modern world. Renger’s photographs were consistently mentioned and often used as illustrations of modern architecture and mass-produced objects in Die Form. And given the importance of Sachlichkeit to the goals of the Werkbund, its members would not have applied the term to Renger’s photographs casually. Yet the Werkbund’s definition of Sachlichkeit is different than the one we have come to expect. Revived in 1925 to describe new trends in painting, the term Neue Sachlichkeit was used in discussions of Die Welt ist schГ¶n soon after its publication.84 Most often translated as “New Objectivity,” “New Sobriety,” or “New Matter-of-Factness,”Page 93 → Neue Sachlichkeit promised a turn away from the soft focus of pictorialism and an alternative to experiments in visual distortion. In the introduction to Die Welt ist schГ¶n, Heise writes, “It is no coincidence that these images recall a famous painting from the circle of вЂNeue Sachlichkeit’ painters. The aesthetic approach is here and there the same.”85 In an essay from 1929, the art historian Kurt Wilhelm-KГ¤stner wrote, “One can speak of a вЂNeue Sachlichkeit’ here that is analogous to painting.В .В .В . In photography Sachlichkeit expresses itself as a sharp reproduction of the object through clear articulation and near isolation from surroundings and background.”86 This is how scholars describe the Neue Sachlichkeit “style” today. One of the first to summarize the features of Neue Sachlichkeit in its photographic form, Wilhelm-KГ¤stner was familiar with Renger’s work. In 1929, he published Das MГјnster in Essen (The Cathedral of Essen), which consists of a 67-page scholarly essay by Wilhelm-KГ¤stner followed by 82 photographs by Renger of the cathedral and its reliquaries.87 As art historians, both Heise and WilhelmKГ¤stner were eager to establish Neue Sachlichkeit photography as an artistic style by comparing it to the movement in painting. Rather than describing Neue Sachlichkeit as a recent trend in photography and legitimizing modern photography as an artistic movement, discussions of the term in the Werkbund context emphasized the relationship between

objects and its circumstances of production. Sachlichkeit was originally developed in the pre-war period and became an important concept in the Werkbund’s debates on architecture and design. Hermann Muthesius, a vocal and prolific member of the Werkbund, promoted Sachlichkeit in 1902 as the elimination of affixed decorative ornament that had no intrinsic attachment to the technical circumstances of the object’s production. Sachlichkeit was a natural outcome of the methods in which objects are produced. To Muthesius, the term signified “the avoidance of external decoration” and the “elimination of merely affixed decorative forms.”88 But as Frederic Schwartz has compellingly argued, Muthesius and the Werkbund defined Sachlichkeit not only to promote the formal manifestations of an object’s production but also to oppose the concept of fashion.89 In the context of the Werkbund, fashion signaled the unrooted, arbitrary, and ever-changing character of consumer commodities—a parade of formal features devoid of any anchored, authentic relationship to their conditions of production. In contrast, sachliche objects showcased visual traces of the ways in which they were produced. An object’s visual features were determined by how it was brought to form, rather than by fickle and extraneous trends. Instead of dismissing all commodity forms as results of whimsical fashion, Sachlichkeit upheld the essence of mass production as the formal expression of the age.90 Muthesius aligned Sachlichkeit with machines, vehicles, industrial tools, Page 94 →and steel buildings. He defined it as a machine aesthetic exemplified by the regular shapes and sleek textures of commodities. Their forms were shaped by the assembly line, the simulacra of mass production, and the multiplication of copies with no origin or definitive endpoint. Sachlichkeit was aligned with modern mass production, which necessarily privileges the copy, the endlessly repeated form of the commodity, over the idiosyncrasies or “flaws” of handcrafted objects. The Werkbund thus located the contemporary Kunstwollen in the logic of mass production and the serialilty of identical forms. When the term Neue Sachlichkeit emerged later in the Weimar Republic, the potential spiritual unity of industrial forms was discussed with less certainty. As photography experienced a surge in use, popularity, and cultural influence in the late 1920s, the search for the spiritual unity of objects was resuscitated and transferred to this media. In the essay “Einheit der Welt” (World Unity), Walter Riezler, editor of Die Form, addressed photography’s potential to reveal Sachlichkeit, the traces of production, in natural and man-made objects. Staged as a conversation, Riezler explains photography’s ability to reveal the “inner efforts, the soulful vitality, the mutual power and will” of objects.91 The reader in Riezler’s conversation expresses doubt that man-made products could carry the same inner “perfection of type” as nature. “I see that in these photographs we find technical forms, parts of machines and steel constructions.В .В .В . Where technology begins, that is where the unity of all living things ends.В .В .В . How is it possible,” the reader asks, “that photographic вЂArt’ could also grant these dead, calculatedly sober objects a deceptive appearance of life? ”92 Riezler responds that the photographs accompanying the essay are meant to do nothing of the sort. Rather, they aim to teach the reader to “see better and differently. In the meantime, we want to leave the вЂsoul’ out of it and speak instead of вЂliving power,’ of which the вЂsoul’ is really only a part.”93 Riezler’s response indicates that for cultural unity to be salvaged in the age of mass production, the spiritual aspects of this unity had to be sacrificed. Photography can express the “living power” of machines, but a spiritual will to form is no longer part of the discussion. The medium is thus aligned with the “mathematical, ” “deliberate” nature of mechanical objects. Lotz addresses the relationship between photography and mass production in a 1929 essay in Die Form. A photograph by Renger of mass-produced bathtubs, standing on end and stacked in infinite rows, serves as one of two frontispieces to the essay. The serial rows of shiny, aluminum forms fill the picture plane, conveying the hallmark of mass production, the endless repetition of form. The essay discusses mass production as “a characteristic of our time, as hand-crafted one-of-a-kind products were for the Middle Ages and antiquity.”94 Lotz argues mass production is most commonly characterized by seriality. “The true characteristic of mass production,”Page 95 → he writes, “is constant manufacturing accompanied by a permanent mass market.”95 Lotz’s essay exemplifies the attempts of Werkbund members in the late 1920s to reevaluate Sachlichkeit of the prewar moment. Renger’s photograph reinforces the guiding principles of mass production that, as Lotz argues, need to be modified. “Mass production is not something dictated to us by machines, but a

result of the establishment of the common needs of humans today,” Lotz writes.96 The rows of aluminum bathtubs convey the repetition and overwhelming quantity of mass production. But they also capture the coldness and sterility of these mechanically produced objects. After all, these products are intimate vessels of the human form, yet no traces or accommodations for this function can be seen. The infinite rows, in which each austere form is cradled by the next, emphasize the seriality of mass production. Renger’s photograph abstracts these forms from the human needs they fulfill. Alternatively, the serial forms capture the modern and mechanical way in which the bathtubs were produced. The rows of forms also evoke photography’sPage 96 → mechanical production of images. The stacked serial objects, one beside the other ad infinitum, even conjure up the pages amassed and bound within the photographic book.

Wilhelm Lotz, “Das Massenerzeugnis,” Die Form 4, no. 18 (1929), 500. © 2014 Albert Renger-Patzsch Archiv/Ann u. Jürgen Wilde, Zülpich/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo Credit: bpk, Berlin/Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin Germany/Art Resource, New York. Die Welt ist schön features the sleek, sachliche forms of machines and mechanically produced goods. The upward thrust of factory smokestacks and their comparison with the groin vaulting of a cathedral celebrate the architecture of industrial production. The precise and dignified depictions of cranes, engines, and electrical wiring exalt the objects of modern industry. But rather than revealing the function of commodity objects, Die Welt ist schön emphasizes their status as products of the assembly line. In plate 70, the pulleys of a cable railway march across the photograph. The bottom and top edges of the image cut off the progression of these circular forms, implying they would appear one after another far beyond the photograph’s boundaries. Several photographs to follow have a similar composition. Plate 73 shows a series of rectangular floating docks that diagonally align

across the photograph. The flat surfaces and sharp contrasts between shadow and light transform these docks into unidentifiable, geometric forms. Plate 77 captures a series of protective grilles and exhaust pipes that begin on the left and advance toward the right. The photograph transforms the machinery into an abstract grid. While the aligned grilles and pipes create vertical groups, the bands on the pipes above, the exhaust cylinders in the center, and the two protective grilles below create a series of horizontal lines. The repetition of circles in the steel grilles appears incidental but connects the photograph to other circular forms in the book. We turn the page to find a series of curved, steel parts of the overhead track of a cable railway. Extending from the top left to bottom right corner, the tracks emphasize the logic of industrial production—composition and form, based on seriality. Such an emphasis on repetition is not limited to the section of Die Welt ist schГ¶n devoted to industrial subjects. In plate 50, three rows of identical wooden shoe molds begin in the upper left corner of the photograph and extend beyond the lower right edge. The steel cooking pots in plate 55 are piled into seemingly endless columns. The abrupt cropping of the photograph limits our inspection of these precarious stacks and suggests they continue without limit beyond our view. Plate 41 shows this serial motif transposed into a scene of nature. A linear series of wooden stumps arises from the foamy surface of a pool of water and crosses the photograph from the bottom right to the upper left corner. The application of this serial composition to both natural and cultural subjects asserts photography’s ability to find a common structure among diverse objects. Serial repetition is unearthed as the unifying principle of the age. The repetition and abstraction that occurs in Die Welt ist schГ¶n were crucial to Page 97 →the theorization of Neue Sachlichkeit in the context of the Werkbund. According to Lotz, Renger is one of many who “want only primarily to capture the object well and objectively [sachlich].”97 Lotz described Die Welt ist schГ¶n as conveying visual information to its audience in a way appropriate to modern times:

Renger-Patzsch. “Führungsrollen einer Seilbahnkurve. Mathilden-Höhe bei Bad Harzburg,” (Overhead Pulleys of a Cable Railway, Mathildenhohe near Bad Harzburg) in Die Welt ist schön, 70. © 2014 Albert Renger-Patzsch Archiv /Ann u. Jürgen Wilde, Zülpich/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. From the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University Libraries, Oxford, Ohio. Certainly an important and noble purpose of photography is to show its viewers the object. It has become for us today an indispensable aid for the introduction and arrangement of visible facts. It

shows us distant lands, other types of people, new buildings, and satisfies our search for knowledge. Through the photos of the illustrated magazines and newspapers we encounter many of today’s leading advances, and they often make a stronger impression on us than the text. The photograph also gives the scholar the option to build comparisons and often shows him the objective thing that he cannot see with his own eyes.98

Renger-Patzsch. “Schwimmdock. Flender-Werke A.G. LГјbeck,” (Floating Docks, Flender Factories A. G. LГјbeck) in Die Welt ist schГ¶n, 73. В© 2014 Albert Renger-Patzsch Archiv/Ann u. JГјrgen Wilde, ZГјlpich/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. From the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University Libraries, Oxford, Ohio. Page 98 →In equating photography with “visible facts,” Lotz attributes a pervasive objectivity to Renger’s photographs, which can be used to inform people about the world around them. Lotz describes two ways in which photographs convey knowledge about an object: through content, which is presented clearly, like “visible facts,” and by bringing things that are distant in the world close together in order to “build comparisons.” Through a series of photographs, one is most likely to find the hallmark forms of the age. “Renger’s photographs teach us an entirely new way to see,” Lotz writes. “We learn to see the thing, so to speak, as it corresponds to our times.”99 Lotz suggests Renger’s photographs exemplify a modern system of seeing, which involves drawing connections between a series or sequence of photographs. As Renger explained some years later, “The eye orients itself in the outside world not in a glance, but through a large number of single images.”100 Die Welt ist schГ¶n’s sequential arrangement of photographs compelled Lotz to see the “coincidental appearances” of the world. The objectives of Neue Sachlichkeit photography depended on viewing images in sequence, and the photographic book was the principle format that facilitated this visual experience.

Welt ist schön, 77. © 2014 Albert Renger-Patzsch Archiv/Ann u. Jürgen Wilde, Zülpich/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. From the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University Libraries, Oxford,

Ohio. RengerPatzsch. “Musterzimmer im Fagus-Werk Benscheidt in Alfeld,” (Show Room in Fagus Factory Benscheidt in Alfeld) in Die Welt ist schГ¶n, 50. В© 2014 Albert Renger-Patzsch Archiv/Ann u. JГјrgen Wilde, ZГјlpich /Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. From the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University Libraries, Oxford, Ohio. Page 100 →As the essays by Riezler and Lotz make clear, the transformation of the concept of Sachlichkeit to Neue Sachlichkeit involved a subtle yet crucial abstraction—from the aesthetics of mass production to the aesthetics of photographic reproduction. It was in photography that the unity of form, now dictated by the conditions of mass production, could still be legitimately discovered and claimed. It is left up to the camera to reproduce the object in a way that lays bare universal forms, the Sachlichkeit. However, in the context of the Werkbund, Neue Sachlichkeit lacked the redemptive potential of spiritual unity. In a disenchanted world devoid of communal spirit, Neue Sachlichkeit photography accepts the mechanical condition of the modern world and attempts to reveal a unifying principle of the age just the same.101 Although unwilling to align Neue Sachlichkeit with spiritual unity, the Werkbund provided no Marxist critique as an alternative. Unlike Benjamin, the Werkbund was, by the late 1920s, committed to the production of objects within capitalism and was willing to negotiate with the abstraction and fetishization of objects as part of a capitalist system of meaning. For Lotz, Riezler, and other members of the Page 101 →Werkbund, Die Welt ist schГ¶n revealed an underlying principle of the age, but they defined this principle in capitalist terms. The repetition of formal structures such as grids and spirals often appear in twentieth-century art and have been discussed as attempts to suspend the resolution of contradictions.102 This is how the grid functions in Die Welt ist schГ¶n. It serves as a matrix in which structures can be compared to each other to prove the presence of an underlying universal principle. As a structure, the book itself is a grid, imparting order, regularity, and homogeneity to reveal the presence of a sacred world. Heise would have welcomed the association of Die Welt ist schГ¶n with the divine realm of the Book. The last photograph in the book of praying hands suggests this without subtlety. But the endless recurrence of repeated forms in Die Welt ist schГ¶n also reflects the defining characteristics of mass production. The repetition of serial forms reinforces the uniformity of photo-mechanical reproduction and multiplication. The serial composition of objects in Die Welt ist schГ¶n also reiterates the status of the photographs as parts of a series themselves. The book presents its photographed objects like products on an

assembly line, and the repetitive action of turning its pages evokes the repetitive action of machines. In this sense, the photographic book becomes a sachlich object, its form dictated by the means of industrial production. Die Welt ist schön thus exemplifies a book’s structural capacity to embody two things at once: the artist and the anonymous image producer, nature and modern industry, the spiritual and the commercial realms. In many ways, Die Welt ist schön has more in common with prewar discussions of Sachlichkeit than the disillusioned discourse of the Weimar Republic. In his introduction, Heise holds out for the spiritualization of form through photography. The opposition Heise makes in Die Welt ist schön between underlying, unifying structures and frivolous, superficial details is analogous to Muthesius’s contrasting of fundamental forms with extraneous decoration. Heise’s statement that the photographer “separates the characteristic feature from the multiplicity of appearances, emphasizes the essential elements, and prevents us from wandering in a multiplicity of forms” echoes Muthesius’s distinction between Sachlichkeit and fashion. 103 But in the context of discussions of photo-inflation in the Weimar Republic, the world defined through the photographs of Die Welt ist schön appears much more unstable. Rather than revealing a world united by common forms, Die Welt ist schön presents a world defined by repetition and mass production. Its photographs capture the cold, repetitive features of mass production, and the compositional rhetoric of unity is often tenuous, summoning anxieties about knowledge and vision in the age of mechanical reproduction. Die Welt ist schön thus harbors doubts about the value of the underlying unity of the modern world that it distributed to a mass audience.

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Three Natural History Karl Blossfeldt’s Urformen der Kunst In an age obsessed with radically new forms of vision—Moholy’s New Vision, Neue Sachlichkeit, and a fascination with new media in general—Karl Blossfeldt’s Urformen der Kunst (Originary Forms of Art) (1928) complicates the association of Weimar photographic books exclusively with technological progress. Already 63 years old when Urformen der Kunst was published, Blossfeldt produced its photographs in the 1890s when he was an instructor at the Museum of Decorative Art in Berlin. In addition to its anachronistic publication, the book’s elite presentation distinguishes it from other Weimar photographic books. It consists of 120 photographs of plants bound in a blue-green cloth cover with the title and a plant motif stamped in gilt on the front. Its matching protective case makes it suitable for inclusion in a private library or rare book collection. Priced at 36 Marks, three times the cost of Die Welt ist schГ¶n, it was not marketed to a mass audience. The paper in the volume has a thicker texture than the waxy pages of cheaper books. The photographs of Urformen der Kunst were printed by copper engraving, a technique that imparts a rich, soft look with subtle variations in tone. By relying on this older method of printing, the book’s publisher, Ernst Wasmuth, chose not to take advantage of technological innovations that allowed photographs to be printed directly onto pages.1 The texture of Blossfeldt’s images likens them more to nineteenth-century engravings than the flatter appearance of photographs in mass-produced books. Like the earliest attempts to construct photographic catalogues of plants, Urformen der Kunst removes each specimen from its natural context and places it in front of a blank background, a space of objective and focused observation.2 In addition to a pedigree of luxury editions and fine printing, Urformen der Kunst also invokes the tradition of medicinal books, herbal dictionaries, florilegia, abecedaries, and other illustrated reference books that intertwine nature with fantasy.3 Plants and flowers were common subjects of photographic books in the late Weimar Republic. While Urformen der Kunst appears like a throwback to more elite forms of book production, volumes such as Wilde Blumen der deutschen Flora (German Wildflowers) (1929), BlГјte und Frucht im Leben der BГ¤ume (Flower and Page 103 →Fruit in the Life of Trees) (1930), BlГјhende Welt (The Blooming World) (1929), Formen des Lebens: Botanische Lichtbildstudien (Forms of Life: Botanical Photographs) (1931), and the book series Die Welt der Pflanzen (The World of Plants) (1924), which includes a number of photographs by Renger, were modestly priced and offered a mass audience a close look at botanical forms.4 These books were short (less than 80 pages), small in size, and printed on a cheap, waxy paper. An advertisement for BlГјhende Welt on its back cover states, “For everyone. That means for the learned and the unlearned, for the poor and the rich, for the manual laborer and the intellectual.В .В .В . The price is also affordable with very modest resources.”5 As this statement suggests, these photographic books attempted to appeal to a diverse audience and unify the German population through photographic consumption. Photographic books of plants participated in efforts to stabilize modern life by reminding Germans of their culture’s most traditional symbols. For example, BlГјhende Welt was part of a series of photographic books entitled Der eiserne Hammer: Das Gute fГјr Alle (The Iron Hammer: The Good for All), which also included books devoted to such archetypes of German culture as Deutscher Wald in schГ¶nen Bildern (The German Forest in Beautiful Pictures), Der kГ¶lner Dom in 32 Bildern (The Cologne Cathedral in 32 Pictures), and Deutsche Alpen in schГ¶nen Bildern (The German Alps in Beautiful Pictures).6 As these books sought to define German identity by presenting symbols of national history, photographic books of plants attempted to root German identity in the soil. “A warmth and empathy for German character is expressed in each book,” a review quoted inside the cover of BlГјhende Welt states.7 With accompanying text and captions often printed in Fraktur script, photographic books of plants modernized the rich tradition of botanical catalogues and herbarium that were part of Germany’s Romantic connection to nature. Plants paired with the accessibility of photographic books to provide the public with a connection to nature that was presumably threatened by modern industry and urban life.

A worldview based on the visual study of nature was argued for in the introductions to many of these botanical books. Martin MГ¶bius explains in the introduction to Paul Wolff’s Formen des Lebens that the book “aims to be a contribution to and aid for the recognition of the character of plants. Here modern photography helps us recognize things within the plant kingdom, perhaps allowing us to sense the power of life to shape form.”8 A quick look through the photographs of Formen des Lebens reveals that MГ¶bius equates “modern photography” with the stylistic conventions of Neue Sachlichkeit. Wolff’s photographs display close-ups of plants against a blank background. The unconventional angles from which the photographs are taken transform the blossoms and stems of flowers into monumental Page 105 →forms. For example, the caption underneath the photograph on page 13 compares the stamens and anthers of the blossom to a waterfall.9

Page 104 →Paul Wolff. Formen des Leben. KГ¶nigstein im Taunus and Leipzig: Karl Robert Langewiesche, 1931, 13. Photo Credit: pbk, Berlin /Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Stiftung Preussische Kulturebesitz, Berlin, Germany/Art Resource, New York. Neue Sachlichkeit photography undergoes a shift in cultural meaning in photographic books like Formen des Lebens. No longer expressive of modern industry and mechanical reproduction, it now reveals the antithesis of modern progress, a conservative anchoring of culture to dreams of a natural past. Photographic books of plants were part of a larger impetus to return the modern world to nature in the early twentieth century. As scholars have shown, these efforts derived from a variety of ideologies and political viewpoints and did not occur in Germany alone.10 Few Weimar photographic books of plants are as explicitly framed by nationalist interests as Paul Dobe’s Wilde Blumen der deutschen Flora. In “The Place of Man in the World of Flowers,” the book’s introduction, Dobe creates an analogy between German plants and

the German race. To do this, he employs the rhetoric of racial purity being cultivated by the National Socialist party. Dobe states that “all the images in this book show German plants. Since the beginning, they have grown wild in our Fatherland or in German-speaking regions. Certain plants that arrived in Germany from degenerate cultures, or that came in from foreign lands on the streets of our transportation system, are not found in this collection.”11 Nature and endurance thus characterize the German spirit, while modernity and change are associated with “degenerate” intruders. Although Dobe’s xenophobia guided his text and his selections for the book, the photographs in Wilde Blumen exemplify the stark clarity of Neue Sachlichkeit. The majority of photographs were taken by Dobe, but the book includes images by Renger-Patzsch and Anne Biermann that were produced for different purposes than Dobe’s conservative, nationalistic context.12 According to Dobe’s text, the sobriety and clarity of Neue Sachlichkeit photography uncovers “the good, the pure” that Dobe associates with German soil.13 “The knowledge of the thing,” the depiction of an object beyond what can be seen with the naked eye, exposes the purity and superiority of the German race.14 Sales of Wilde Blumen der deutschen Flora increased alongside the influence of the Nazi Party. Fifteen thousand copies were published in 1929. By 1941, 62,000 copies of the book were printed and twelve photographs were added to further editions.15 The popularity of the book testifies to Germany’s growing comfort with the ability of right-wing politics to usurp notions of nature and history for its political interests. Neue Sachlichkeit photography thus operates as cultural currency, a style available to be circulated and politicized through accompanying text. Urformen der Kunst is not really a book about flowers, but a book about form. Despite their shared associations with Neue Sachlichkeit, Urformen der Kunst was not entirely at ease among the photographic books of plants discussed above. Its Page 106 →photographs do not easily conform to nationalistic arguments about the purity of the German race, as in Wilde Blumen der deutschen Flora. Urformen der Kunst’s distinction from other photographic books of plants was signaled strongly when Germany’s new Nazi government, under the direction of the Minister of Culture Joseph Goebbels, organized its first major photography exhibition in 1933. Its large section,“Photography and Botany,” did not contain a single photograph by Blossfeldt.16 Although Blossfeldt is widely acknowledged as a leading figure of Neue Sachlichkeit photography, scholars have been reluctant to provide a sustained analysis of Urformen der Kunst’s photographic sequence. In her study of Weimar photographic books, Leesa Rittelman concludes that Blossfeldt’s photographs “have very little to say for themselves,” alluding to Urformen der Kunst’s resistance to textual mediation or commentary.17 Rather than addressing Urformen der Kunst directly, scholars have attempted to make the book appear to belong to a specific time and place. Blossfeldt’s reputation as a significant photographer of the Weimar era has long been established, and Gert Mattenklott, Anne GantefГјhrer-Trier, and Andreas Haus have more recently situated Blossfeldt’s photographs in relation to his career as a decorative arts instructor at the turn of the century.18 These approaches have provided a rich context for the book’s production, but they stop short of bringing this context to bear on an analysis of Urformen der Kunst’s photographic sequence. In order to focus on the structure and visual experience of the book, I want to emphasize Urformen der Kunst’s atemporality rather than resolve it. I propose the book’s resistance to interpretation is the result of its particularly visual conception of history. Referencing both its nineteenth-century roots and the Weimar present, it refuses to be a product of any single set of temporal circumstances. The book’s lengthy series of plants and Blossfeldt’s efforts to decontextualize their forms confound narrative development or textual elaboration. Urformen der Kunst attempts to bring past and present, history and modernity, into new and often unexpected relationships. Yet Urformen der Kunst was considered aktuell from a range of positions, from those seeking continuity in the face of modernity’s instability, to those who believed modernity called for a new, radical conception of history.

The Return of the Urform Interest in classes on modeling from plants at Berlin’s Museum of Decorative Art declined steadily after the turn of the century. By the late 1920s, architects and decorative artists considered Blossfeldt’s methods a relic of the vegetal and botanical Page 107 →ornament of Jugendstil. Doubting the usefulness of Blossfeldt’s courses to artistic training in the twentieth century, Bruno Paul, the director of the Museum of Decorative Art, tried unsuccessfully to have him transferred to a museum of natural history in 1912.19 Paul Wedephol, a former student of Blossfeldt’s at the Museum of Decorative Art in Berlin, reported that in 1927 “no one wanted

to concern oneself with modeling from plants.”20 This may have been true. But Blossfeldt’s photographs are clearly relevant to the Weimar moment for other reasons. Despite its expensive price and its apparently retrograde content, the first edition of Urformen der Kunst, consisting of 6,000 copies, sold out after only eight months.21 The Berlin gallerist Karl Nierendorf discovered Blossfeldt’s work in 1926 and became the professor’s most important advocate. He organized Wasmuth’s publication of Urformen der Kunst two years later and wrote the book’s introduction.22 Nierendorf’s interest in Blossfeldt’s photographs thrust the apparently outmoded decorative arts professor into the middle of a much more avant-garde scene. Nierendorf had been a prominent supporter of progressive artists and artistic movements since the 1910s. In galleries and other venues in Cologne, DГјsseldorf, and Berlin, Nierendorf exhibited and promoted the work of artists such as Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Otto Dix, and Marcel Breuer.23 In 1926, he exhibited Blossfeldt’s work alongside sculpture from Africa and New Guinea in his Berlin gallery. Entitled Exoten, Kakteen und Janthur, the exhibition compared Blossfeldt’s photographic enlargements of plants to the sculpture of non-Western cultures. “The fantastical world of cactuses and the foreign world of forms of Africa and New Guinea appear remarkably related,” states a review of the exhibition in the Berliner-BГ¶rsen-Courier.24 Urformen der Kunst is the legacy of this comparison and the modernist primitivism that it implies. In the exhibition, Nierendorf compared Blossfeldt’s photographs to exotic sculpture of non-Western cultures. But in Urformen der Kunst, this exoticism is tempered in favor of a transcendental purity of form. In the introduction to Urformen der Kunst, Nierendorf argues Blossfeldt’s photographs reveal the originary forms (Urformen) from which all artistic production in history has derived. As endlessly various as the kingdom of developing and declining mineral, animal, and vegetable forms is, it is determined from an otherworldly, fixed, and eternal law and obeys the unfathomably secretive command of creation that calls it into being. All forms of nature are the permanent repetition for centuries of the same sequence and only yield to change from climatic dislocation or changing topographical conditions, which does not disturb the basic forms.25 Page 108 →These forms can be discovered in the most basic structural patterns of plants. The book “comprises all forms of style of the past, from dramatic tension to severe calm and the lyrical expression of more internal inspiration.”26 In this way, Urformen der Kunst claims to be a comprehensive book of source material, a history of visual form told through photographs. The omniscient history that Urformen der Kunst presents relies on the accumulation of a wide variety of Urformen and the abstraction of plants from their everyday appearance. Like Heise’s introduction to Die Welt ist schГ¶n, Nierendorf’s remarks in Urformen der Kunst explain the basic forms that diverse objects share. These forms are the visual evidence of connections between cultural production and the corresponding age. “Art arises directly from the most contemporary forces of the time,” Nierendorf writes, “of which it is the most visible expression.”27 But while Die Welt ist schГ¶n sought to establish a synchronic, cross-categorical unity among objects at a moment in time, Urformen der Kunst attempts to establish formal continuities diachronically, between past and present. By employing the concept of the Urform, Blossfeldt’s book revived an earlier theme in German philosophy.28 In the late-eighteenth century, the pioneers of Naturphilosophie considered nature to be the visible manifestation of man’s spirit, reconnecting him to a lost past. “The outer world lies open for us,” the philosopher F.W.J. Schelling wrote in the late eighteenth century, “in order to find within it the history of our spirit.”29 From Schelling and others, Urformen der Kunst recuperated the idea that the visual forms fundamental to human history could be traced through the study of nature. Goethe’s notion of the Urpflanze, the archetypal plant upon which all of nature varies, exemplified this approach to perception. Goethe argued Urformen visualized the spiritual building blocks of human life and these forms could be observed in plants, as materializations of the Platonic ideal. “With this model [the Urform] and the key to it, it will be possible to go on forever inventing plants and know that their existence is logical; that is to say, if they do not actually exist, they could, for they are not the shadowy phantoms of a vain imagination, but possess an inner necessity and truth. The same law will be applicable to all other living organisms.”30 By revisiting it through the technologically advanced medium of

photography, Urformen der Kunst manages to make this idea appear remarkably modern. Blossfeldt’s photographic sequence mediates between the past and present, reviving the Romantic notion of the Urform through the modern media of photography. Urformen der Kunst consists of photographic enlargements of various species of plants that range from three to thirty times their natural size. Each image, or arrangement of images, takes up the same amount of space on the page, leaving a standard one-inch border that unites the book’s collection. Plants and plant segmentsPage 112 → appear in austere symmetrical arrangements and orderly patterns. On pages 22 through 25, thick stems of plants bisect the photographs into mirrored halves. Flowers and leaves, such as those on pages 30 and 31, exhibit radial or axial symmetry. Repetitive formal arrangements encourage comparison among the pages and ensure their coherence as a comprehensive collection. The symmetry of the Saxifrage aizoon’s petals in plate 30 can be easily compared to the radial Trollius europaeus flower in plate 42, the four-petaled Epimedium Muschianum in plate 72, or many other centrally organized plants scattered throughout the book.

Page 109 →Karl Blossfeldt. “Saxifrage aizoon,” in Urformen der Kunst. Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth, 1928, 30. В© Karl Blossfeldt Archiv/Ann u. JГјrgen Wilde, KГ¶ln/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

europaeus,” in Urformen der Kunst, 42. © Karl Blossfeldt Archiv/Ann u. Jürgen Wilde, Köln/Artists

Rights Society (ARS), New York. Page 111 →Blossfeldt. “Epimedium Muschianum,” in Urformen der Kunst, 72. В© Karl Blossfeldt Archiv/Ann u. JГјrgen Wilde, KГ¶ln/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. A number of pages include two or three images arranged in symmetrical compositions that complement the measured regularity of the individual plants. On page 28, two tightly braided stalks of Cassiope tetragona frame a bloom of Chrysanthemum Leucanthemum photographed slightly from below. The arrangement creates a balanced formal rhythm that is repeated throughout the book. By isolating the plants from any particular time and place, these photographs serve as a symbolic language of forms that can be associated with a variety of cultural monuments. On one hand, Nierendorf asserts the indexicality of Blossfeldt’s photographs by claiming they are “natural” signifiers. But on the other hand, the photographs must avoid any specific indexical referent in order to serve as Urformen and to encourage imaginative associations by its audience. The photographic enlargement of plants distances them from a specific referent and encourages the identification of general formal patterns that can be associated with a variety of objects. Photography’s ability to point to a specific time and place as its origin must be sacrificed so the plant can reference multiple forms in history. Nierendorf asks his audience to page through Urformen der Kunst and see “the fluttering delicacy of Rococo ornament as well as the heroic strength of a Renaissance candlestick, the wild, mythical tendrils of the flamboyant Gothic, the fine shafts of columns, cupolas and towers of exotic architecture, golden sprouts of a bishop’s staff, wrought iron lattice, priceless sceptersВ .В .В . all of these forms have their origin [Urbild] in the world of plants.”31 In plate 96, the only photograph to which he specifically refers in the introduction, Nierendorf sees

not a young shoot of Aconitum, but acknowledges its anthropomorphic sprouts and imagines “dance, bound to the timeless course of natural events.”32 The sparse plants are meant to conjure up a variety of historical forms, thus confirming connections among them. For example, the arrangement of three vertical branches in plate 15 shows specimens of Cornus Nuttallii and Cornus florida, as well as potentially evoking Native American totem poles, wrought iron fencing, and the scepters of a royal court. According to Nierendorf, Blossfeldt’s plant forms confirm photographic technologyPage 115 → was not perpetuating alienation in modern life but reconnecting man with nature. “In film we experience, through quick and slow motion, the swelling and sinking of the breath and growth of plants. The microscope reveals macro-systems in a drop of water and the instruments of the observatory open up the infinity of the universe. Today technology forms our connection to nature stronger than ever before and creates for us through apparatus insights into the world that were earlier closed off to our senses.”33 Photography’s new ways of depicting the world represented a solution to modern materialism and revived a spiritual connection between man and nature. “Photography rescues a high aesthetic range of fantastical possibilities, and gives a thousand indications that the often lamented triumph of technology is no triumph of material, but of the creative spirit simply manifesting itself in a new form.”34 Nierendorf blends enthusiasm for photographic technology (film and micro-photography) with a Romantic desire for a transcendent expression of human life. Urformen der Kunst is thus framed as rediscovering the laws of continuity, rebinding the modern world to creative spirit.

Page 113 →Blossfeldt. “Aconitum,” in Urformen der Kunst, 96. В© Karl Blossfeldt Archiv/Ann u. JГјrgen Wilde, KГ¶ln/Artists Rights Society (ARS),

JГјrgen Wilde, KГ¶ln/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. For Nierendorf, history is defined by permanence rather than change, and when an object properly conveys the spirit of its age, it situates itself in this history of enduring forms. Urformen der Kunst “reveals the unity of the creative will in nature and art, documented through the objective medium of photographic technology and for that all the more convincing.”35 Nierendorf’s argument about the objective nature of photography and its unsurpassed ability to reveal an underlying truth is akin to the theories of Moholy and Heise explored in previous chapters. But there is another way to approach his statement about photography’s objectivity that speaks to the particularly visual nature of Blossfeldt’s photographic sequence. His introduction places great trust in the ability of this history to reveal itself in Blossfeldt’s photographs alone. That is, the unity between nature and art, past and present, appears all the more convincing because it requires no textual guidance or accompaniment. Nierendorf’s introductory text serves as a kind of roadmap to the photographic sequence that follows, but it does not participate in it. While he suggests various historical forms Blossfeldt’s photographs might evoke, “from the Asyrian temple to the stadium of the present, from the Buddha absorbed in meditation to Rodin’s Thinker,” his text never describes such evocations as related to a specific photograph.36 Nierendorf associates objectivity with the autonomous realm of the visual. If forms that endure through history appear in Blossfeldt’s photographs, they do so without being explicitly pointed to in the text. In this way, Urformen der Kunst generates its formal associations differently than Renger-Patzsch’s Die Welt ist schГ¶n. While both books attempt to educate the eye to see correspondences between natural and man-made forms, the formal Page 116 →associations in Die Welt ist schГ¶n are generated by comparing the images in the book. The petals of a flower can be compared to a coiled snake, which can then be compared to a spiral staircase or wheel of a machine. In contrast, the formal connections in Urformen der Kunst rely on imagination and free association. This happens through associations occurring in the mind of the viewer rather than the sequencing or comparison of images.

Robert Breuer, “Grüne Architektur,” Uhu 2, no. 9 (1926): 30–31. © Karl Blossfeldt Archiv/Ann u. Jürgen Wilde, Köln/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo Credit: bpk Berlin/ Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, Germany/ Art Resource, New York. The visual experience Urformen der Kunst offers can be clarified further by comparing it to a photo-essay that

appeared in the popular magazine Uhu in 1926. Robert Breuer’s essay entitled “GrГјne Architektur” (Green Architecture) presents Blossfeldt’s natural Urformen next to their cultural counterparts.37 The essay displays a single stalk of horsetail, almost identical to the first plate of Urformen der Kunst, with a photograph of a fourteenth-century grave of a Mameluke in Cairo.Page 117 → The rounded cupolas of the buildings’ towers are unmistakably similar to the rounded tip of the plant photographed by Blossfeldt, which is accompanied by the caption, “a million year-old architectural form.” On the next several pages, we see a similar stalk of horsetail next to a minaret in Delhi, a tree branch (“the totem pole of nature”) paired with a Native American totem pole, a branch of Indian balsam placed underneath a twelfth-century Milanese candelabra.38 Through text and visual comparisons, the essay explicates these associations and makes them appear clear and logical. I compare Urformen der Kunst and Breuer’s essay to emphasize the difference between the practices in which they ask their audiences to participate. In other words, Urformen der Kunst stands apart from the combinations between photographs and text in the Weimar illustrated press, like Breuer’s essay, that produced meaning in more overt ways. Viewers are expected to bring associations—historical and imaginative—to bear on Urformen der Kunst’s photographs. These associations are not provided through captions or comparisons. The difference suggests photographic books and photo-essays in the illustrated press were in dialog but were not one and the same. Instead, I believe Urformen der Kunst preserves a kind of experience often associated with the realm of the book. It asks us to take in visual material and construct imaginary worlds extending beyond the book’s material limitations. Its photographic material conjures up an imagined space in the mind of its viewers. The stillness and isolation of the photographs—indeed, the aspects of the photographs that seem to confound textual accompaniment—provides space for interaction between Blossfeldt’s forms and the viewer’s imagination. In several photographs in Urformen der Kunst, such as the Aconitum anthora in plate 31 and the Verbena canadensis in plate 39, shadows of leaves on the blank ground establish some sense of depth. However, it is more common for the botanical forms to appear without shadows, suspended in a space without the slightest trace of context. Branches and blooms extend across the photographs, taking up as much space as possible. Circular blooms expand radially from the center of photographs, bursting forth with no stem or roots in sight. The blank space in which the plants are suspended contrasts with the meticulously detailed texture of the plants. Although the photographs provide no sense of scale, they give the ribbing of stalks, the vesicular patterns of leaves, microscopic tendrils, and pointed thorns a monumental presence. The precision of these magnified details suggests something other than the particularities of individual plants. The book presents none of the tears, creases, folds, and holes that often accompany botanical specimens. These photographic enlargements transform delicate limbs and branches into structures that convey the endurance of traditional sculpture rather than the fleeting changes Page 118 →of nature. The thin, dry leafs of Silphium laciniatum in plates 40 and 41 have the texture and thickness of bronze. The tendrils of pumpkin gourd in plate 53 appear like iron spirals. The sculptural weight created through the photographic enlargement of the plants suggests the endurance of form. The fixed stillness of each form implies timelessness and formal purity.

Rights Society (ARS), New York. Urformen der Kunst’s photographic sequence does not control the imaginative associations viewers are asked to make. Although Nierendorf claims connections between art and nature are inherently present, these associations remain unfixed without external guidance. Nierendorf’s introduction assumes all viewers will bring the same formal and historical associations to bear on Blossfeldt’s photographs. Many critics took Nierendorf’s lead and marveled at Urformen der Kunst’s ability to foster a magical form of vision. According to Walther Petry, Blossfeldt had “worked out systematically a special category of the photographic document: plant forms that produce surprising evidence of the botanical nature of pictorial imagination. A spiritual undertaking, for Page 119 →which photography is employed in a magical way.”39 Blossfeldt’s photographs “grant the everyday, always seen but never understood, the size of extraordinary occurrences, the experience of a sensation, ” the critic Karl Otten wrote. “Secret connections between the spirit of man and nature are illuminated and confirmed with symbolic power. Through many years of difficult work Herr Professor Blonssfeldt [sic] achieved the production of these photographs, which shift the small into the monumental and the monument into its origin.”40 According to these critics, Urformen der Kunst collapsed distinctions between the objective and the spiritual, the real and the imaginary. Some critics were not convinced of the magical connections Nierendorf and others claimed for Urformen der Kunst. Stanislav Kubicki pointed out the superficiality of such comparisons: “Coincidental similarities between nature and art (that are here and there helped along through cropping) do not stand for an inner connection—or do the author and editor really mean that between the young shoots of a maple and an Indian tree trunk, a post of a Maori house, or similar primitive architectural work some superficial circumstances exist? I am afraid that is what they mean.”41 Unconvinced of the truth that Blossfeldt’s photographs potentially reveal, Kubicki doubts that the Urform was the underlying essence of an object rather than a fortuitous appearance at a particular angle. “Claimed similarities are only found from this perspective,” he writes. “If one sees more from the left or the right, the plant appears entirely different.”42 The critic Hugo Sieker voiced skepticism about the relevance of these botanical forms to the present: “Urformen der Kunst” reads its terribly leading title. According to this title, the images of plants were used as models for the architectonic creations of man. It is quite astonishing that all possible styles from civilization can be recognized in the development of buds and knots, and in the tendrils and structure of leaves.В .В .В . These echoes, repeatedly so close, by no means prove that the earliest creations were plagiarized from plants. But perhaps they prove that they were of a more botanical character than the creations of today.43 Rather than shoring up a connection between the present and the art forms of the past, Sieker argues Urformen der Kunst makes the separation of the modern present from the past all the more apparent. He suggests the connections between art and nature are not as inherent in the photographs as Nierendorf claims. Instead, these connections are harnessed by the accompanying text and the “leading title” of the book.

Page 120 →The Origins of the Urform Urformen der Kunst emerged from the study of ornament and decoration, a world that was anathema to the concept of Neue Sachlichkeit used to describe Blossfeldt’s photographs in the late 1920s. The book revived the pedagogy of Blossfeldt’s mentor, Moritz Meurer, a painter committed to the decorative arts movement in the late-nineteenth century. Though dedicated to improving everyday life under the conditions of modernity, Meurer’s artistic philosophy was permeated with nostalgia for pre-industrial patterns and motifs. Blossfeldt began his studies at the Museum of Decorative Art in Berlin in 1884 and served as an apprentice to Meurer from 1890 to 1896. On excursions to Rome, Greece, and North Africa, Blossfeldt made plaster casts and bronze models of plants and eventually learned to photograph.44 These visual aids were essential to Meurer’s pedagogy, developed in a number of manuals published between 1894 and 1909. In keeping with contemporary trends in the decorative arts, Meurer emphasized the basis of all artistic form could be found in the natural world. The ability to draw from nature depended on the observation and understanding of its “formal language.”45 Training as

an artist involved learning how to recognize basic artistic forms, and Meurer insisted on the careful study of nature in order to discover them. In the foreword to his 1909 Vergleichende Formenlehre des Ornamentes und der Pflanze (Comparative Instruction of the Forms of Ornament and Plants), Meurer elaborated on how this “formal language” should be observed. He writes, “The instruction of pupils must concern itself less with the forms of style [Stilformen] in particular times and places than with general circumstances and processes of artistic creation, which teach us to search for knowledge of art historical traditions.”46 For Meurer, the study of nature was not concerned with empirical recording, but with observing the development of artistic form through time. Like Nierendorf’s introduction, his statement implies connections and consistencies, which he calls “general circumstances,” hidden in all eras of artistic production. Meurer advocated the study of the “formal laws of the past” and attempted to trace their history in nature. More than a celebration of natural forms, Meurer’s pedagogy presents a history of form as a genealogical search for origins. Modernity was obscuring the visibility of Urformen, and Meurer’s pedagogical objective was to make these forms visible once again. “The continuous comparison of artistic and natural forms serves the purpose of making apparent the general laws and elements of form in both the technical arts and natural appearances,” he writes in Vergleichende Formenlehre. “Their record can be just as effective in the treatment of artistic problems today as in the creations of the past.”47 According to Page 121 →Meurer, the historical development of artistic form occurred intuitively and inevitably, thereby proving that logic and reason lie beneath the disorder and disparities of the modern visual world. Meurer’s pedagogical method attempted to make invisible laws of form visible, so they could be studied and identified. Plaster casts, bronze models, and photographs made by Blossfeldt and others apprenticed to Meurer visualized these Urformen to teach students to recognize them in nature. But this visual practice did not depend on studying nature directly. Rather than complicating the authenticity of the forms represented in each image, the use of sculptural models and drawings served to highlight the underlying Urformen. Meurer’s goal was “to create duplications and models of the forms of nature that could compensate for the deficiencies of the original but that also show the path that the study of nature has taken to find transition from a form of nature to a form of art.”48 Meurer did not use photographs and models as a means of mechanical reproduction, but as a way to enhance the visibility of Urformen in nature and as a means to train students to identify them on their own. For Meurer, photography was not obliged to record directly and indiscriminately. “With photographic enlargements one learns incidentally to pay attention to the abundant forms of nature that escape the hasty observer due to their smallness. They see in this more beautiful form what no one recognizes, and most will consider the group of sepals of a clover blossom with the leaves removed to be a pineapple, for example.”49 Meurer wanted to use photography to train artists and observers to see what was normally overlooked. His method of capturing the Urform in nature was based on a presumed discrepancy between what can be seen with the naked eye and the “true” originary structure of the plant—an approach that anticipates Neue Sachlichkeit photography’s devotion to the object. Meurer’s pedagogical method made use of the book’s ability to structure progressive development. Here is how Meurer explains the organization of his pedagogical system: The examples are applied to a framework of stages that supports the increasing interpretative and representational abilities of the student, as well as following the ascending phases of development in the history of ornamental types. The ornamental and botanical representations in the tables are ordered here so that the comprehension of a sequence of forms is facilitated through progressive examples.50 Meurer traces a history in which an originary form is embedded in all logical developments that follow. This succession of forms also fosters the improving skill and dexterity of the artist as he works his way through the book. Published in 1899, Page 122 →Pflanzenbilder (Images of Plants) was Meurer’s most widely distributed artistic manual.51 It was published as the visual supplement to Pflanzenformen (Forms of Plants), a

textual elaboration of Meurer’s pedagogy published four years earlier.52 Pflanzenbilder consists of one hundred lithographic plates and a brief introduction by Meurer, as well as textual captions and notations accompanying the images. The lithographs in Pflanzenbilder are organized into ten volumes of ten tables. They progress from the simplest forms to the most complex, beginning with “Simple, Symmetrical Structures of Plants and their Ornamental Application,” and the “Origins and Development of the Palmette and its Accompanying Spirals.” It eventually moves on to more complicated motifs, such as “Various Types of Ribbing bound with Developing Loops.” The place of each plate within Meurer’s organizational system is shown in the upper corners (“volume 1, table 1”; “volume 2, table 2”; and so forth). The genus and species of the plant appears at the bottom of each plate. Meurer’s choice to separate the textual portion of his instruction, published as Pflanzenformen, from his lithographic collection of visual aids asserts confidence in the ability of a tightly organized sequence of visual material to convey historical development and progression. By presenting a series of images as the primary carrier of meaning, it also anticipates Urformen der Kunst. Blossfeldt produced a number of the plaster casts and models reproduced in Pflanzenbilder.53 The lithographs in Pflanzenbilder reproduce photographs of drawings, bronze models, plaster casts and reliefs, and photographs “from nature” of the original plant. Circles or other geometrical forms are often superimposed on the plant forms to highlight their underlying balance. The structured, deliberate composition of Meurer’s images thus collaborates with the clear sequence and organization of his book. Captions and other forms of accompanying text convey that each image has a unique place within Meurer’s pedagogical system and the development of form in nature follows preexisting rules of order. Shortly after Urformen der Kunst was published, Blossfeldt notes Meurer’s influence on his photographic work. “During my seventeen-year residency in Rome and a similarly lengthy research trip to Greece, I learned from Professor Meurer to recognize how the oldest cultures took inspiration directly from the inexhaustible formal treasures of nature, how they adapted the forms of plants to an appropriate purpose and material, and how these forms are taken over and reorganized further by later generations.”54 In his courses on modeling from plants at the Museum of Decorative Art in Berlin, Blossfeldt passed on the ideas of his mentor and began to rely more on photography to capture the Urform in plants. And yet, Blossfeldt’s photographic sequence in Urformen der Kunst is not a simple continuation of Page 124 →Meurer’s methods. An important difference emerges if we explore how Blossfeldt selected and arranged the photographs in Urformen der Kunst.

Blossfeldt. Arbeitscollage (Tafel 13), 1905–1925. В© Karl Blossfeldt Archiv/Stiftung Ann und JГјrgen Wilde, Pinakothek der Moderne, MГјnchen/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Blossfeldt collected over a thousand photographs he had taken since the 1880s on sixty-one separate poster boards.55 He used the boards to organize his photographic material according to Meurer’s system of formal classification. As Ulrike Meyer Stump has explained, Blossfeldt often cut up photographic prints and mounted the separated parts on different boards according to the botanical forms represented.56 Plants with similar formal shapes appear on the same board. The soft, feathery fronds of common comfrey and polypody appear on the sixth board.57 The broad branches of monkshood, eryngo, and yarrow are grouped together on the twelfth. Photographs of larkspur appear on one board, while forsythia and dogwood appear on another. These boards constituted a career-long search for Urformen in botanical specimens, and he eventually used them to select the images for Urformen der Kunst. By grouping together all the photographs he had collected of a specific plant, Blossfeldt was able to select the image that Page 125 →captured the Urform by marking it with a red “x”.58 These were the photographs Blossfeldt published in Urformen der Kunst. A red “x” appears on almost every board, testifying to Blossfeldt’s intention to include a thorough selection of plant forms in his book. Revitalizing Goethe’s quest for the Urpflanze in the eighteenth century, the production of Urformen der Kunst—its transposition from a series of poster boards to a sequence of pages—involved the selection of ideal specimens of a wide variety of forms. On these poster boards, Urformen der Kunst appears like a much more eccentric project than the symmetrical, stoic images in the book or Meurer’s lithographic prints. While the photographs in Urformen der Kunst are limited to a range of gray tones, the poster boards display the vibrant colors of various printing techniques—the brown of gelatin silver bromide, gray of gelatin silver, and blue of cyanotypes. Blossfeldt’s approach to photography was, by the standards of the Weimar Republic, relatively outmoded. Unlike the instant Leica cameras popularizing photography in the 1920s, Blossfeldt used a homemade plate camera, a makeshift apparatus that required eight to twelve minutes of exposure under conditions of “subdued daylight.”59 He adhered the plant specimens to paper backgrounds with nails or modeling paste and photographed them from the side or from above. Despite Nierendorf’s claim otherwise, Blossfeldt retouched his images, often removing leaves or other details from the print that would detract from the plant’s basic form.60 The source image of plate 1 of Urformen der Kunst contains a small leaf on the right side of the plant, which was removed in order to streamline

its fundamental structure. The images in Urformen der Kunst are almost always fragments of what appear on the poster boards. The source photograph of plate 19 includes the top branches of the plant, which are less symmetrical than the branches that appear in the book. Makeshift clay stands that Blossfeldt used to stabilize the specimens are also cropped out. In the source photograph of plate 90, which shows two examples of Phacelia tanacetifolia, we can see the tacky clump of clay Blossfeldt used to adhere the plant to the board. Like his mentor, Blossfeldt seems to have conceived of photography as a process of manipulation and modification rather than the sachlich approach that he would be associated with in the 1920s. The balanced symmetry and decorative layouts in Meurer’s Pflanzenbilder served as prototypes for the images in Urformen der Kunst. For example, volume 1, plate 7 of Meurer’s book resembles Blossfeldt’s photographs of Eryngium bourgatii on page 32 of Urformen der Kunst. However, Urformen der Kunst parts ways with the rigid sequencing of Pflanzenbilder. While Meurer organized his illustrations into a series of cumulative chapters, each chapter building on the last, UrformenPage 126 → der Kunst does not follow a developmental logic or system of classification, Meurer’s or any other. Numbers Blossfeldt inscribed in the lower right corner of his poster boards suggest a logical sequence, yet they neither follow the developmental system Meurer lays out in his publications, nor do they correspond to the sequential arrangement of images in Urformen der Kunst. Plants at the end of the book, such as the Achillea clypeolata in plate 119, appear on the eleventh of Blossfeldt’s boards. The Saxifraga willkomminana displayed on the sixty-first board, the last in the numbered sequence, appears in plate 65 of Urformen der Kunst. Images that appear side by side on the poster boards are scattered throughout the book. However, other sections of the book present a cluster of images from the same board. For example, plates 40–45 appear on the fifth of Blossfeldt’s boards. The verbal paucity of Urformen der Kunst’s photographic sequence adds to its uncertain logic. While titles and labels in Meurer’s Pflanzenbilder identify and classify the plant forms, no text accompanies the images in Urformen der Kunst that would make the book’s sequential logic explicit. The sequence unfolds in no particular order, creating a kaleidoscope of changing visual form. Without text, without an explicit logic that guides the sequential arrangement of the photographs, the historical continuity and development these Urformen are meant to explicate is left undefined. The production of Urformen der Kunst was thus a process of complicating a direct connection to its own immediate origins. Although Blossfeldt’s approach to photography originated in Meurer’s pedagogy, Urformen der Kunst undoes the logic of progression and development Meurer’s books convey. The loss of such a system comes across in the last eight images of the book. This sequence dispels with the balance and symmetry of botanical structure emphasized so strongly throughout the rest of the book. Small flowers fill these photographs, resulting in chaotic, all-over patterns that contrast with the sparse compositions appearing earlier in the book. Rather than showing ideal forms, these images present clusters of botanical specimens that reference the multiple variations in appearance a single species can contain. The end of Blossfeldt’s book thus alludes to disorder and randomness rather than an underlying and natural logic. When compared to Meurer’s systematic method of display and pedagogy, Urformen der Kunst confronts us with a sequence without structure. Blossfeldt’s book is infused with Meurer’s devotion to the Urform, but also with the loss of progress and development upon which his pedagogy was based. Instead, Urformen der Kunst offers a conception of history based on the multiple references that can potentially arise in the viewer’s imagination.

Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Page 128 →Forms of History If Urformen der Kunst’s photographic sequence does not present a history based on development continuity, what kind of history does it present? To answer this, we first need to turn to another kind of response to Blossfeldt’s images. It is not surprising that Urformen der Kunst was often discussed in a Surrealist context. The tendency for Blossfeldt’s photographs to reference the general rather than the specific has much in common with the photographic manipulation of reality that delighted the Surrealists. (After all, the phallic resemblance of many of the book’s photographs is difficult to overlook.) Through framing and cropping, Blossfeldt destabilizes the referent of his photographed forms, enacting what Rosalind Krauss has discussed in Surrealist photography as “multiples burgeoning within the same.”61 Two years before the production of Foto-Auge, Franz Roh recognized the relevance of Urformen der Kunst to Surrealism. The art historian provocatively compared Urformen der Kunst to Histoire naturelle, a portfolio of drawings by the Surrealist Max Ernst published in 1927. After describing Histoire naturelle as “a mythical history of nature and creation,” Roh writes that “coincidentally, samples of Blossfeldt’s enlargements and close-ups of the plant world, that hopefully will soon be published, lie before me now. They likewise seem like a mythical history of nature and creation. They are only photographs, but now and then appear more symbolic, more uncanny than those creatures by the truly imaginative Max Ernst.”62 Roh goes on to describe surprising affinities between these two projects. Not restricted to images of plants, Histoire naturelle consists of fantastical images from the mineral, vegetable, and animal worlds. In the book, Ernst radicalizes the tradition of scientific catalogues, botanical encyclopedias, and natural history—traditions also addressed by Urformen der Kunst.63 Urformen der Kunst also appealed to the camp of Surrealists that rallied around the journal Documents. In 1929, Georges Bataille acknowledged the potential of Blossfeldt’s photographs to disrupt conventional conceptions of culture and history. Five of Blossfeldt’s photographs accompanied “Les Langage de Fleurs” (The Language of Flowers), published in Documents in 1929. Bataille’s essay focuses on the psycho-sexually symbolic aspects of flowers. Rather than conceiving of plants as the visualization of continuities uniting all forms through time, Bataille argues that continuity can be shattered by their diabolical details. Even the most beautiful flowers are spoiled in their centers by hairy sexual organs. Thus the interior of a rose does not at all correspond to its exterior beauty; if one tears off all of the corolla’s petals, all that remains is a rather sordid tuft. Other flowers, it is true, Page 129 →present very welldeveloped and undeniably elegant stamens, but appealing again to common sense, it becomes clear on close examination that this elegance is rather satanic: thus certain kinds of fat orchids, plants so shady that one is tempted to attribute to them the most troubling human perversions. But even more than by the filth of its organs, the flower is betrayed by the fragility of its corolla: thus, far from answering the demands of human ideas, it is a sign of their failure.64 Bataille takes a close look at the enlarged plant forms in Blossfeldt’s photographs and sees not the purity of eternal forms, but the filthy, repressed underside of human existence. Although he never mentions the photographs that accompany his essay, Bataille situates Blossfeldt’s images within a discourse of sexual desire and psychological symbolism. Bataille dismantles the system of resemblances and correspondences set up by Nierendorf in Urformen der Kunst. He argues for the “fragility” of the parts of plants rather than for the endurance of their forms through history. Bataille transforms Urformen der Kunst’s visions of a primitive, primordial life into a nightmare caused by the uncanny photographic enlargements that erase borders between plant, animal, and human. Rather than upholding the plant as a timeless form, the inevitable rot of the flower is symbolic of the death drive. “It is evident that one can only paraphrase this laughable duel by introducing, not as a sentence, but more precisely as an ink stain, this nauseating banality: love smells like death.”65 Bataille counters Nierendorf’s ideal associations of flowers with “a general thrust from low to high” to “the impossible and fantastic vision of roots swarming under the surface of the soil, nauseating and naked like vermin.”66 Bataille’s text shifts into the language of the uncanny, evoking what is repressed by historical

continuity. Blossfeldt’s photographs undoubtedly inspired Bataille to write “The Language of Flowers,” although he purposefully avoids describing or referencing them directly. The independence of the visual from the textual realm was also important to the art theorist Carl Einstein, who selected and arranged the five photographs by Blossfeldt that accompany the essay. Urformen der Kunst has much in common with Einstein’s curious art historical study, Negerplastik (African Sculpture). Published in 1915, Negerplastik consists of a twenty-three-page essay followed by 111 pages of photographs of African sculpture.67 Each sculpture stands before a grey background that provides no sense of spatial depth, scale, or context. Given his resistance to the discursive, Einstein’s text in Negerplastik refuses to describe the accompanying photographs and refers to the sculptures only in general terms. “We must limit ourselves to the visual domain and proceed within its specific laws,” Einstein writes in the brief essay at the beginning of Negerplastik. Page 130 →While Einstein did not share Moholy’s enthusiasm for photography and its potential to transform visual practices, his statement is remarkably similar to the Bauhaus master’s stated intention in Malerei Photographie Film: “I have placed the illustrative material separately following the text because continuity in the illustrations will make the problems raised in the text VISUALLY clear.”68 Both theorists call attention to the form of their books, their shared separation between text and image, as important to their arguments about modern vision.69 Although it has rarely been considered a photographic book, Negerplastik might be more significant as an avant-garde experiment in visual communication than as an art historical study. It provides an early example of an attempt to reconsider the relationship between images and text in the age of photographic reproduction.70

Carl Einstein. Negerplastik. Leipzig: Verlag der Weissen BГјcher, 1915, 26–27. Negerplastik was never recognized as a significant or even sound study of African art. The author’s choice not to examine or even mention any of the plates of African sculpture that follow the comparatively brief section of text would have seemed negligent. The lack of footnotes or bibliography in the text and absence of identifying labels for the plates make the book’s status as a serious study of AfricanPage 131 → sculpture questionable. However, the photographic sequence in Negerplastik attempts to demonstrate Einstein’s radical theory of the transformative potential of modern visual practices. Rather than providing an ethnographic analysis, Einstein states the photographs of African sculpture must be visually experienced, isolated from any cultural or temporal context. His theory of African sculpture extolls the ability of the visual to destroy memory, opening up a

completely original experience to the viewer that is unhindered by experience or preconceptions. For Einstein, to take away the viewer’s access to context and memory, collective or personal, meant to access a purely visual world. Given Einstein’s approach to the visual that developed in his own photographic book, Negerplastik, it is no wonder this theorist, who was otherwise deeply skeptical about the visual potential of the photographic medium, was particularly interested in Blossfeldt’s work. In both Negerplastik and Urformen der Kunst, “primitivism” constitutes a purified vision, an experience isolated from textual elucidation and discursive meaning. The backgrounds in both sets of photographs range from dark to light grey. The floral and vegetal forms in Urformen der Kunst recall the floating, isolated sculptures in the photographs of Negerplastik. Without any comparative, classifying, or developmental structure, the photographic sequence in Urformen der Kunst triggers free and imaginative associations through form. For example, the seed Callistemma brachiatum in plate 11, magnified to thirty times its natural size, appears like a hat or a thimble. This image is one of the few in the book in which the object rests on a defined ground, locating the object in the “real” world rather than abstract space. The anthropomorphic appearance of a number of images in the book causes the boundaries between human and botanical forms to dissolve. The frontal symmetry of plate 12, the Geum rivale, transforms the enfolding petals into eye sockets, while the curvy thistle at the stem hints at facial hair. Shoots of chestnut blooms on the following page appear like totem poles, but the stalks also contain notches and ridges that align in facial configurations. In plates 88, 89, 90, and 93, specimens of wild heliotrope and comfrey appear like carnival masks. Rather than confirming the eternal return of certain forms through history, these images confront the viewer with the human body in the stems, bulbs, and petals of plants. While Nierendorf’s introduction to Urformen der Kunst speaks of universality and continuity, the Surrealist discussions of Blossfeldt’s photographs associate them with rupture and the uncanny return of the repressed. Considering both of these interpretations provides us with a much deeper perspective on the potential of Urformen der Kunst’s photographic sequence. The two poles of continuity and rupture shape the photographic sequence of Urformen der Kunst and construct a Page 133 →dialectical form of history. History was an intensely discussed concept in the Weimar Republic. Two theories of history help clarify the fragmented, nonlinear history Blossfeldt’s photographic sequence creates and why this approach to history was particular important to the Weimar moment. In the Passagen-Werk, an ambitious, yet uncompleted, study of the nineteenth century, Walter Benjamin sought to uncover the origins of Weimar modernity through a montaged collection of images and essays. As Susan Buck-Morss has shown, the concept of the Urform was central to Benjamin’s thinking about whether the notion of history was reconcilable with the conditions of modernity.71 Therefore, it is not surprising that Benjamin was interested in Urformen der Kunst’s strange conflation of the past and modern present. Benjamin reviews the book in a brief essay titled “Neues von Blumen.” He praises Blossfeldt’s photographic sequence, stating it is only “poor in words.” Its verbal dearth proves history’s ability to arise in the visual realm of the photographic. “The person who created this collection of plant photos can eat more than bread. He has done more than his share of that great stock-taking of the inventory of human perception that will alter our image of the world in as yet unforeseen ways.”72 Describing the book as a “inventory of human perception,” the presentation of Blossfeldt’s images in a silent sequence is as important for Benjamin as the photographs themselves. This essay is Benjamin’s first publication directly addressing a photographic subject. Significantly, it is also the earliest example of Benjamin’s reception of Moholy’s New Vision photography. He writes, “He [Blossfeldt] has proven how right the pioneer of the new lightimage, Moholy-Nagy, was when he said: вЂThe limits of photography cannot be determined. Everything is so new here that even the search leads to creative results. Technology is, of course, the pathbreaker here. It is not the person ignorant of writing but the one ignorant of photography who will be the illiterate of the future.’”73 Moholy’s theory of photography, explained and demonstrated in Malerei Photographie Film, provides Benjamin with a method for looking at Urformen der Kunst. With Moholy as a guide, Benjamin sees beyond the form of Blossfeldt’s flowers to the perceptual experiences that these motifs can provide.

Rights Society (ARS), New York. The title of Benjamin’s review is “Neues von Blumen,” most often translated as “News about Flowers.” But this translation overlooks the essay’s astute awareness of the conflicted temporality of Blossfeldt’s book, trafficking in the “new” of Neue Sachlichkeit photography, the antiquated attention of Meurer to decorative forms in the late-nineteenth century, the Urformen of eighteenth-century Naturphilosophie, and the timeless endurance of the Urform itself. Benjamin’s title, perhaps more accurately translated as “Something New from Flowers,” alludes to the conflicted temporality of modern life by questioning whether modernity’s obsession with change and innovation is actually a series of eternal returns. The magical aspects of Page 134 →Blossfeldt’s photographs were due to their revival of the past and their conflation of older forms of vision with present technology. Although others dismissed the affinities between forms that could be imagined while looking at Urformen der Kunst as coincidental, Benjamin was convinced of the book’s legitimate attempt to anchor visual form in historical time. Referencing Riegl’s Stilfragen of 1893, Benjamin writes: And if we have to tell ourselves that new painters like Klee and even more Kandinsky have long been at work establishing friendly relations between us and the realms into which the microscope would like to seduce us—crudely and by force—we instead encounter in these enlarged plants vegetal вЂForms of Style.’ One senses a gothic parti pris in the bishop’s staff which an ostrich fern represents, in the larkspur, and in the blossom of the saxifrage which also does honor to its name in cathedrals as a rose window which breaks through the wall. The oldest forms of columns pop up in horsetails; totem poles appear in chestnut and maple shoots enlarged ten times; and the shoots of a monk’s-hood unfold like the body of a gifted dancer. Leaping toward us from every calyx and every leaf are inner image-imperatives [Bildnotwendigkeiten], which have the last word in all phases and stages of things conceived as metamorphoses.74 Both Nierendorf and Benjamin saw Urformen der Kunst as offering a critique of modernity through its presentation of history. For Nierendorf, this critique involved drawing connections between the past and the present and using photography to reveal continuity. For Benjamin, the book brings moments in history together into an instantaneous flash of alignment. Benjamin’s concept of history accepts its fragmented, discontinuous status in modern life. He returns to Urformen der Kunst in his essay “Little History of Photography,” and discusses it as an example of his conception of history: Yet at the same time, photography reveals in this material physiognomic aspects, image worlds, which dwell in the smallest things—meaningful yet covert enough to find a hiding place in waking dreams, but which, enlarged and capable of formulation, make the difference between technology and magic visible as a thoroughly historical variable. Thus, Blossfeldt with his astonishing plant photographs reveals the forms of ancient columns in horse willow, a bishop’s crosier in the ostrich fern, totem poles in tenfold enlargements of chestnut and maple shoots, and gothic tracery in the fuller’s thistle.75 Urformen der Kunst demonstrates photography’s potential to participate in the formation of the historical moment. “History,” Benjamin wrote, “is the subject of a Page 135 →structure whose site is not homogenous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now.” History is a moment that flashes up and reunites the future, the present, and the past. By looking at Urformen der Kunst, Benjamin discovered “a geyser of new image-worlds” that “hisses up at points in our existence where we would least have thought them possible.”76 For Benjamin, Blossfeldt’s book was defined by its delay and its origination in an earlier moment. The past remains stored away until it is made visible as the “optical unconscious,” revealing information about modernity that can potentially undercut its preoccupation with the new. Rather than tracing progressive and continual development through time, Benjamin conceives of history as an instantaneous flash. It is based on fragmentation and rupture but also on unique moments in which the fragments of history

realign. “These tendencies turn the image fantasy that maintains its impulse from the new back to the urpast.”77 For Benjamin, Urformen der Kunst provided a chance for obsolete forms of vision and knowledge to return and rupture modernity’s concept of novelty.78 The nonlinear history Urformen der Kunst constructs also anticipates Ernst Bloch’s notion of Ungleichzeitigkeit or “nonsimultaneity,” which was the focus of his 1935 book Erbshaft dieser Zeit (Inheritance of this Time).79 The subject of the book is the seemingly incongruous appearance of the remnants of past epochs in the present. “The New comes in a particularly complex form,” Ernst Bloch writes in its preface.80 Looking back on the ability of the National Socialists to successfully politicize history for their own ideological gains, Bloch addresses the notion of nonsynchronous time, the heterogeneous nature of the Now. Rather than searching for the unified visual signs of an age, Bloch argues for the existence of multiple conceptions of the present at a particular moment in time. “Not all people exist in the same Now,” writes Bloch. “They do so only externally, through the fact that they can be seen today. But they are thereby not yet living at the same time with the others. They rather carry an earlier element with them; this interferes.”81 Bloch challenges the notion that a particular visual sign was the unmediated spirit of the age. He argues multiple historical moments, multiple “nows” are present at a single moment in time, one no more authentic than the other. No longer homogenously experienced by everyone, the Now is constituted by the historical baggage of a particular class or identity. “History is no entity advancing along a single line, in which capitalism for instance, as the final stage, has resolved all the previous ones; but it is a polyrhythmic and multi-spatial entity, with enough unmastered and as yet by no means revealed and resolved corners.”82 According to Bloch, time is experienced through the conflict and tension of colliding histories. But Bloch argues further that the nonsynchronous features of the present are the materials of political revolution and these ideological materials were being used expertly by the right. Bloch Page 136 →analyses the inheritance of his time not only to critique and deconstruct it but also to define history as a powerful revolutionary tool the Left had foolishly overlooked. Bloch responds to the growing efforts of Germany’s National Socialist Party to synchronize the past and the present to form a new era they termed the Third Reich. Their concept of historical time brought society into line, synchronizing it according to the imperatives of a totalitarian regime. Photographic books of plants such as Paul Dobe’s Wilde BlГјmen der deutschen Flora took part in such attempts to synchronize Germany’s Romantic past with its modern present. But the historical references Urformen der Kunst evokes are never made explicit. It avoids binding visual form to an explicit historical reference and thereby resists the construction of history to serve the defined interests of the present. Urformen der Kunst never sits comfortably in any of the historical moments it might evoke. It remains out of sync, unwilling to bind a volatile present to a mythic past.

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Four Facing the Photographic Book Helmar Lerski’s KГ¶pfe des Alltags After working as a cameraman for 15 years in the German film industry, Helmar Lerski published the photographic book KГ¶pfe des Alltags (Everyday Heads) in 1931. It presents a series of eighty photographs uninterrupted by text. The recto of each page shows a close-up of an anonymous member of the working class. At the beginning of the book, the index lists the social identities of the sitters, such as “wife of a chauffeur,” “beggar from Bavaria,” or “maid.” Yet these terse, taxonomic labels conflict with the emotional intensity of the book’s proximate heads. Using mirrors, black velvet cloths, lighting and soft-focus techniques he developed as a film cameraman, Lerski creates contrasts between shadow and light that attempt to convey an inner spirit, making visible the invisible. Paging through KГ¶pfe des Alltags, Lerski’s photographs initially appear like an attempt to mimic the expressive capacity of painting, a late effort at pictorialism popular at the turn of the century.1 In fact, the year before KГ¶pfe des Alltags was published, Lerski’s work appeared in Gezeichnet oder Geknipst (Drawn or Snapped), an exhibition comparing photographic portraits to the psychological complexity of drawn or painted figures by artists such as Max Beckmann, Lovis Corinth, Otto Dix, and Oskar Kokoschka.2 Curt Glaser, the director of the Staatliche Kunstbibliothek in Berlin, wrote a review of the exhibition: “Next to them [Kokoschka and Corinth] is the interesting Helmar Lerski, who places a head in sophisticated lighting and cleverly calculated cropping, who in general creates more interesting studies than absolutely convincing portraits. Psychology is seen in them more than achieved by them.”3 For Glaser, the comparison of Lerski’s heads to painted portraits was a means by which to consider the physiognomic capacity of photography. One year later, Glaser penned the introduction to KГ¶pfe des Alltags, where he argues rather than capturing a convincing likeness, Lerski reveals an inner spirit that cannot be detected by the naked eye. Since his appointment as director in 1924, Glaser had transformed the Kunstbibliothek into a research library actively engaged with contemporary photography.4 Several months after Gezeichnet oder Genipst, Glaser organized an exhibition of Page 138 →Lerski’s photographed heads in a small gallery space in the Kunstbibliothek. Given Glaser’s experience in a museum library, the publication of a book perhaps seemed like an obvious next step. KГ¶pfe des Alltags could be considered an exhibition catalog, an opportunity to expose a wider audience to Lerski’s work. Priced at 18 Marks, it was published by Hermann Reckendorf as a quartosized art publication, unaffordable to the members of the working class it depicted. Reckendorf, well known in the Berlin art scene, also published major art periodicals such as Das Kunstblatt and the German Werkbund’s Die Form. Its ties to the exhibition might explain the dearth of scholarly interest in the display and sequencing of the book’s photographs.5 Up until now, scholars have considered KГ¶pfe des Alltags’s importance as a photographic book and physiognomic study marginal at best. Overshadowed by August Sander’s more renowned book Antlitz der Zeit (Faces of the Time), KГ¶pfe des Alltags does not exhibit the straight, objective approach we have come to expect from photographs that contribute to physiognomic pursuits. During the Weimar Republic, physiognomy—the perception of the unified whole from an isolated part, the correspondence between inner character and outer form—offered a way to expose modern viewers to lost visual skills. In contrast to many photographic books of portraits published during the Weimar Republic, KГ¶pfe des Alltags challenges rather than promotes the clarity of physiognomic looking. In what follows, I explore how KГ¶pfe des Alltags complicates the legibility of the face and how the book-format plays an important role in Lerski’s photographic project. More than an exhibition catalog, the sequential arrangement of images in KГ¶pfe des Alltags reveals the limitations of the visual language of physiognomy. In other words, the book’s structure is largely responsible for what we do (or do not) know about Lerski’s “everyday heads.”

Laying Bare the Soul As a book, KГ¶pfe des Alltags is a product of connections between its eighty portraits and between its text and photographic sequence. Due to Glaser’s substantial contribution to the display and exhibition of Lerski’s work, my analysis starts from his written introduction to KГ¶pfe des Alltags. Although I do not consider their intentions for the book to be at odds, acknowledging that both Lerski and Glaser participated in the book’s production allows for the possibility that multiple and potentially conflicting meanings are at play. In his introduction to KГ¶pfe des Alltags, Glaser attempts to distinguish Lerski’s work from contemporary trends in photography. He writes: Page 139 →These images may be called poor likenesses, as they contain more subjective statement than objective report. But we have for a long time been misled by the apparently objective likeness that photography prides itself on caring for. Painting is also reaching in a roundabout way with the anonymous model, which is not indebted to a consideration of likeness for general comprehension, a new and deeper interpretation of portraiture and a transformed employment of the term вЂlikeness.’ In the same way it appears that Lerski has shown portrait photography a path for which photographic developments in our time up until now have had astoundingly little use.6 Glaser distinguishes Lerski’s work from the more “objective” approaches by photographers such as Karl Blossfeldt and Albert Renger-Patzsch. “Traveling near and far, they have finally completed the camera’s exploratory trip of the familiar and insignificant,” Glaser writes. “But their creative work is limited to the choice and arrangement of objects and determining the point of view.”7 Glaser also criticizes the loss of creative techniques that results from the increasingly widespread use of photography. “The new apparatus have made photographing so easy that special ability or talent is no longer required to produce a tolerable or even a fine and pleasing image. The technology has come so far that it has completely eliminated the hand and also the spirit of man.”8 Through his anonymous subjects, Lerski recuperates the “spirit of man” that the contemporary photographic obsession with likeness has forgotten. According to Glaser, KГ¶pfe des Alltags challenges photography’s mechanical recording of physical appearance. Traditionally, portraits are defined as the representation of an individual or group of known individuals. Beyond a physical likeness, they convey a psychological dimension of the subject, drawing out aspects of his or her interior life.9 Glaser argues Lerski’s work returns to these concerns, redefining “likeness” in terms of psychological depth but also employing anonymous subjects. While differentiating KГ¶pfe des Alltags from attempts at “unskilled” photography, Glaser also distinguishes Lerski’s approach from pictorialism, the imitation of painterly effects popular at the turn of the century. “Nothing in these images is concealed or added,” he writes, “nothing embellished or retouched.”10 According to Glaser, Lerski works exclusively with shadow and light, properties inherent to the photographic medium. “The photographer no longer wants to paint. He wants to form with and through light. He wants to serve nothing other than the means of his technology.”11 Glaser claims each face in KГ¶pfe des Alltags is no more than “raw material” and argues that an inner spirit can be conjured up by the deliberate work of the photographer. “Helmar Lerski is of the opinion that by nature the medium of photography can be nothing else than light. With its help he shapes the features Page 140 →of human faces, allowing them to speak in a particular way.”12 By working with the authentic, natural medium of light, Lerski allows faces to speak, as if hidden visual information arises before the camera’s lens. Lerski “works with mirrors that reflect the rays of the sun, and with shade he draws sharp lines on a face, deep furrows and holes, letting light play on the gradations in form until the surfaces come alive and the expressive image develops into a human head.”13 According to Glaser, KГ¶pfe des Alltags demonstrates the ability of photography to “lay bare the soul,”14 to visualize the spiritual through photographic techniques. Light is the visual manifestation of spirit, and photography’s fundamental connection to light allows the medium to authentically access a spiritual interior. In an essay that appeared in the Berliner BГ¶rsen-Courier shortly before KГ¶pfe des Alltags was published, Lerski concurs with Glaser’s ambitions for the book and emphasizes photography’s spiritual pursuits: “It is time that we learn not to object to the machine, for it is not only a machine. Here it is also spirit that creates its importance, and spirit is served by the wonderful medium of light. Light makes the invisible visible,

shines in the depths and unveils mysteries. Believe me, photography is a great thing!”15 Throughout KГ¶pfe des Alltags, contrasts between sharp and soft focus constitute a meeting of matter and spirit. Precisely rendered details anchor the spiritual in recorded fact. The first photograph shows a porter with his head angled towards the lower right corner of the page. With his head drawn down, the porter’s eyes are barely visible. Lerski has focused the camera on an area extending from the brow bones to the mouth. The porter’s nose, mustache, and the sagging, wrinkled skin under his eyes are all rendered sharply, while the rest of his head—his right ear, his jaw and his peripheral hairline—are diffuse. The thick hairs of his mustache and lines on his forehead are defined clearly. Light glistens off the porter’s face and bald head and catches a protruding vein near his right temple. The precise articulation of his perspiration and weathered skin contrasts with the ethereal haze surrounding him. The background is too blurry to sufficiently articulate shoulders or a neck, and the porter’s head seems to materialize from nothing. The contrast between precise detail and ephemeral atmosphere not only demonstrates the encounter between matter and spirit but also emphasizes a process of generation, the camera’s ability to draw forth what was before immaterial and invisible. Light and shadow in KГ¶pfe des Alltags shape the sitters. A thin, focused beam of light stretches across the bridge of the accountant’s nose in plate 9, becoming wider and more diffuse as it spreads across his cheek. Light reflected off a mirror gives pattern and texture to the painter’s face in plate 16. These techniques serve to visualize a spirituality that can only be conjured up by the camera. Through light and shadow, Lerski establishes visual signs of interiority and suggests each head can Page 142 →be read as an index of the soul. But Lerski’s photographic techniques also expose an excessive amount of detail. Plate 44 presents a close-up of a cleaning woman’s face in which her coarse skin fills the picture. Pores, glistening skin, moles, wrinkles, blemishes, hairs, and freckles are pressed to the surface and given importance by their proximity. Plate 37 shows the head of a beggar from Saxony against crinkled paper, emphasizing contrasts in texture. Light hits the beggar’s face directly and exposes a field of pores and pockmarks. Using a mirror, Lerski creates a luminescent outline of the beggar’s profile, setting up a contrast between the reflective shadows on the paper and the porous surface of the face. Although the book’s photographs display various parts of the head—hair, whiskers, glasses, and even the occasional scarf or collar—skin takes up the most space in Lerski’s images. Pressed to this picture plane, all of this skin invokes the photographic negative. It is present as opaque surface, obscuring as well as revealing content. A number of heads are marked by an oily sheen brought about by reflected light. Chins, upper lips, and jaw lines seem to be covered in glistening moisture. The dramatic articulation of the skin is graphic and awkwardly personal, and the proximity of the heads insists we connect with these people intimately. But as much as skin is the barer of spirit, it is also the source of glares and reflections that block the transparent presentation of interiority. Many of the heads are partially cloaked in darkness; light and reflections expose only partial, abstracted features. Other heads are blurred, forming only an ephemeral presence on the page. In plate 47, the soft outlines of the cleaning woman’s face and lips and the imprecise shadows of her fly-away hairs make her appear as an illegible form rather than a clearly defined person. Rather than presenting the direct manifestation of spirit, KГ¶pfe des Alltags stages a conflict between identity and interiority.

Folkwang, Essen, Germany. Photo Credit: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

The Cinematic Book In addition to Lerski’s photographic techniques, KГ¶pfe des Alltags’s cinematic features contribute significantly to its complication of physiognomic clarity. Swiss by birth, Lerski began his career as an actor in a small theater group in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He opened up a photography studio in 1910 and produced portraits and publicity shots of fellow actors. Lerski moved to Germany in 1915 and worked in the film industry from 1916 to 1929.16 He contributed to the films Die PerГјcke (1925) and Der heilige Berg (1925), as well as classics such as Paul Leni’s Das Wachsfigurenkabinett (1923). From his work on these films, Lerski earned a reputation for his intensely lit close-ups. While KГ¶pfe des Alltags produces a temporal experience, it Page 147 →does not attempt to create the illusion of motion. The book’s pages are not limited to a single, linear progression; it is possible to flip back and forth to view the book’s pages in a variety of different sequences. When exploring a relationship between the photographic book and film, such clear differences should not be overlooked.17 Nonetheless, Lerski’s approach to portraiture developed from his career as a film cameraman. The bookformat enhances the cinematic aspects of Lerski’s heads by presenting them in sequence. As a result, KГ¶pfe des Alltags lies in between still photography and cinematic motion.

Page 143 →Lerski. “Buchhalter,” (Accountant) in KГ¶pfe des Alltags, 9. В© Helmar Lerski Archive, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany. Photo Credit: The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

” (Cleaning Woman) in Köpfe des Alltags, 44. © Helmar Lerski Archive, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany. Photo Credit: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

Page 145 →Lerski. “Bettler aus Sachsen,” (Beggar from Saxony) in KГ¶pfe des Alltags, 37. В© Helmar Lerski Archive, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany. Photo Credit: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

” (Cleaning Woman) in KГ¶pfe des Alltags, 47. В© Helmar Lerski Archive, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany. Photo Credit: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. There is considerable visual evidence that Lerski was interested in the interaction between his photographs and the pages on which they are viewed. Every page presents a photograph surrounded by a white space, yet the place of the image on the page changes throughout the book. At times, the photograph dominates the page, as on page 17 where the white space acts as a border around the centered face. The same wife of a chauffeur appears in the upper left corner on the next page. She looks down and seems to contemplate the wide space of white that surrounds her image. The farmer’s son on page 19 mirrors her position: he looks in the direction of the white space from the upper right corner. Throughout the book, the place of the image drifts around the page. The movement of the image from here to there seems random, yet the heads are often positioned to balance and complement the image’s location on the page. Heads that look to their right appear in the upper left corner and vice versa. The changing place of the photograph emphasizes the difference in the heads from page to page and the variety of unexpected viewing angles the photographs present. The white space works to isolate the heads from what comes before and after and pulls our attention away from the continuous sequence of images. But this space also links one page to the next and strings the photographs along into a sequential group. Lerski photographed his sitters like a film cameraman who captures a temporally unfolding scene, and the photographs in KГ¶pfe des Alltags are individual frames that reference the longer period from which they were generated. The downcast eyes and far-away expressions of the sitters encourage the viewer’s voyeuristic gaze and draw our attention to the experience of viewing them. Their absorption thus leads to a heightened awareness of the book-format, its sequence of images, and the relationships among the various photographs. Light, the essence of photography, is responsible for the progression of the book as well as its stagnation. It produces multiple appearances of the heads that compel the viewer to flip back and forth to compare one head with another, but it also draws us into a slow, immersive process of intense looking that delays progression from page to page.18 Glaser compares Lerski’s heads to painted portraits, but he also invokes recent Page 150 →experiments in Soviet film: “Just as the Russian film directors have come to believe that the simple people of the working class are better material for their formative work than famous actors, so has Lerski found his models on the street.”19 After his claim that Lerski’s photographs “lay bare the soul,” Glaser’s reference to Soviet film is striking. In their discussions of portraiture in the late 1920s, Soviet filmmakers and photographers emphasized seriality and anonymity. They also made clear distinctions between photography and more traditionally bourgeois conceptions of portraiture. In his essay, “Against the Synthetic Portrait, for the Snapshot,” Alexander Rodchenko suggests replacing the painted portrait with “a file of photographs” in which “no single snapshot bears an absolute resemblance.”20 Rodchenko redefines the photographic portrait as an archival collection of images that expands infinitely and never achieves a complete or comprehensive representation of the sitter. “It should be stated firmly that with the appearance of photographs, there can be no question of a single, immutable portrait. Moreover, a man is not just one sum total; he is many, and sometimes they are quite opposed.”21 By referring to Soviet film, Glaser alludes to the cinematic structure of the book and implies that the publication of Lerski’s photographs accomplishes more than the circulation of the 1930 Kunstbibliothek exhibition to a larger audience. KГ¶pfe des Alltags attempts to reconcile the temporal unfolding of a photographic sequence with the expressive intensity of Lerski’s photographic techniques. By doing so, KГ¶pfe des Alltags constitutes a project in which photography and film, still and moving images, are brought into dialogue.

Essen, Germany. Photo Credit: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

Page 149 →Lerski. “Frau eines Chauffeurs,” (Wife of a Chauffeur) in KГ¶pfe des Alltags, 18. В© Helmar Lerski Archive, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany. Photo Credit: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. Although it does not formulate its collective through momentary snapshots, KГ¶pfe des Alltags answers Rodchenko’s call for the multi-dimensional construction of identity. Only seven of the thirty sitters in KГ¶pfe des Alltags are represented by a single photograph. Series of the same head range in length from two to ten pages long. A front and profile view is often shown in sequence like a mug shot. In plate 17, the wife of a chauffeur appears with her face positioned squarely in front of the camera with lips pursed and eyes focused ahead. On the following page, she appears in profile, eyes contemplatively focused down and to her left. Plates 23 and 24 of a young fruit seller present a similar sequence. The girl first meets our gaze, then turns away from the camera, displaying the shine of her skin at the hairline and the broad plane of her cheek. Five more images of the porter follow the first one in the book. From page to page, each camera angle offers another aspect of his appearance. After the ephemeral haze of the first photograph, the camera sharpens in the second and the porter looks to his left. The third image is more like the first: the porter’s downcast head is rendered sharply in the center, softer around the periphery. In the fourth photograph, the outline of the porter’s head is blurred and glowing,Page 153 → while the fifth image is sharp, complementing his direct gaze at the camera and highlighting the silvery stubble of the whiskers on his chin. The transition from fifth to sixth is the most jarring of the sequence. The head in the former appears relatively smooth. In the sixth, light shines on his haggard face directly, forming a bulbous head of lines, wrinkles, swelling veins, and drooping eyes. In the longest sequence in the book devoted to one sitter (plates 33 to 42), a beggar from Saxony appears in ten images. His head hangs at a variety of angles revealing separate parts of the face while concealing others. As a result, none of the ten images offers a holistic representation of the face. Plates 66 and 67, two photographs of a boiler man, are almost exactly alike, doubling

the sitter and drawing attention to the doubling and multiplying of the photographic process. While the position of the head and the camera angle remain the same, the boiler man is photographed under different lighting conditions—shadows make the man’s cheek and jaw bones appear more defined on the first page, the eyes are slightly more open on the second. These repetitions and multiplications suggest multiple selves. Hyperbolic in both size and detail, the close-ups transform the sequence of heads into a temporal portrayal that changes, builds, and shifts with each turn of the page.

Page 151 →Lerski. “Heizer,” (Boilerman) in KГ¶pfe des Alltags, 66. В© Helmar Lerski Archive, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany. Photo Credit: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

(Boilerman) in KГ¶pfe des Alltags, 67. В© Helmar Lerski Archive, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany. Photo Credit: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. Physiognomic theories played a particularly prominent role in theories of film in the 1920s. Despite regular verbal and musical accompaniment, silent film seemed to provide a concentrated experience of looking and was often described as a purely visual media. For BГ©la BalГЎzs, a Hungarian film critic writing in Vienna and Berlin in the late 1920s, silent film raised the issue of how the visual could create meaning on its own terms and offered an alternative to communication based on semiotics and linguistics. The predominance of text in Western civilization had all but stymied the ability to communicate in a nonverbal way. BalГЎzs begins his 1926 treatise, Der sichtbare Mensch (The Visible Man): “With time the invention of the art of book printing has made the face of man unreadable.В .В .В . Today, all of humanity is on the verge of relearning this utterly neglected language of expressions and gestures. It is not a substitute for words, but rather the visual correspondences of the immediately embodied soul.”22 BalГЎzs was interested in something more than pairing visual expressions with character traits, or defining and organizing a direct system of correspondences. For BalГЎzs, film was reviving a form of communication more immediate than verbal language: a system based on bodily expression. BalГЎzs argues the gestures of a man on screen are “not in any way concepts, but rather show, without mediation, his irrational self.”23 For BalГЎzs, silent film was able to shed the burdens of signification and enter a realm of pure, irrational expression that exceeds language. Images should not signify thoughts, but open up a new world of meaning based on what cannot be verbally articulated. KГ¶pfe des Alltags Page 154 →demonstrates how this revival of the language of gesture and expression took place, in part, in the book, a space traditionally dominated by words. Lerski and BalГЎzs knew each other well. In the same year that Der sichtbare Mensch was published, Lerski worked as a cameraman for Die Abenteuer eines Zehnmarkscheins (Adventures of a Ten Mark Bill), a film for which BalГЎzs wrote the screenplay.24 The two men had a remarkably similar understanding of the cinematic close-up. In Der sichtbare Mensch, BalГЎzs defined the close-up as “the area most characteristic of film” and describes it as the intensification of cinema’s visual power. As a moment of “pure expression,” the close-up temporarily suspends the narrative development of the film. This delay threatens the continuity of the narrative, prolonging its eventual resolution. The close-up is, by definition, a moment when nothing happens and nothing progresses. It operates in opposition to clear structure and signification, thereby intensifying the drama through suspense. For a brief moment, the close-up denies the audience’s full understanding of the drama taking place on screen. Or, in BalГЎzs’s terms, it shows us “there is something there that we cannot see.” Like BalГЎzs, Lerski argues photography’s importance to the age was located in its expressive power: “In every way it [photography] is eminently important for our age! Look at film! Has art ever possessed such a more extraordinary means of expression? Do we take the time to put this medium to proper use?”25 The excessive detail and proximity of the portraits in KГ¶pfe des Alltags, their insistence on offering something other than clear narrative and signification, is how they approximate the cinematic close-up. Rather than conveying a fixed, structured typology of the working class, KГ¶pfe des Alltags explores the expressive potential of vagueness. These photographed heads suggest an irrational, internal realm that exists in opposition to clear meaning and transparent signification. BalГЎzs’s theory of the close-up contributed to a debate on the basis of cinematic meaning.26 In contrast to BalГЎzs, the Russian director Sergei Eisenstein argued the meaning of a particular shot depended on its context within a montaged whole.27 Eisenstein accuses BalГЎzs of celebrating the cameraman at the expense of the “union of equally creative individuals” that contribute to a film’s production. In theorizing film for a socialist culture, Eisenstein advocates looking for the essence of cinema “in the relationships between the shots just as in history we look not at individuals but at the relationships between individuals, classes, etc.” The expressive effect of cinema is the result of juxtapositions. It is this that is specific to cinema. The shot merely interprets the object in a setting to use it in juxtaposition to other sequences. That is characteristic. BalГЎzs always says вЂpicture’, вЂshot’, but not once Page 155 →does he say вЂsequence’! The shot is merely an extension of selection. That is, the selection of one

object rather than another, of an object from one particular angle, in one particular cut (or Ausschnitt, as the Germans say) and not another. The conditions of the cinema create an вЂimage’ [obraz] from the juxtaposition of the вЂcuts’ [obrez].28

While Balázs searches for a fundamentally visual form of meaning, Eisenstein argues for a basis of cinematic meaning in montage. For cinema scholars, this debate between Eisenstein and Balázs has been seen as one of the earliest and most important attempts to define the fundamental building blocks of cinematic meaning. But this debate influenced photographic meaning in general in Germany during the 1920s, and meaning in the photographic book in particular. For Lerski, the close-up embodied the expressive power of photography. By transferring the close-up from film to book, Lerski declared photography to be a new form of communication that would supplant text in modern life. Lerski claimed the printed book, an object Balázs blamed for the destruction of bodily expression, for the expressive power of photography. The photographic book potentially offered a visual system of meaning that, in the end, never fully came to fruition. When it was published, Köpfe des Alltags would have resonated as homage to an age of cinema quickly moving into the past. By 1931, the era of silent film was nearly over, and investigations into its resurrection of lost forms of expression waned with the coming of sound film. However, this brief moment suggests a potential alternative to photography’s dependence on and indivisibility from text. The silent era also calls for a reconfiguration of the boundaries between film and photography, motion and stasis. Köpfe des Alltags is perhaps one of the last products of those silent years.29

Reading the Face Even outside of movie palaces, modern Germans were growing accustomed to reading faces, and Weimar’s illustrated press promoted physiognomy as a visual skill essential to modern life. An article from 1927 published in the women’s magazine, Praktische Berlinerin, presents physiognomy as a way to enhance the enjoyment of summer vacations. “For the married woman,” it states, “who is wrapped up in her occupation as housewife and mother, vacation is the only opportunity to meet new people.В .В .В . Luckily, the nature of man was created so that his character can for the most part be determined from facial features. Writing, hands, gait, posture, shape of the head, and face create a unity that good judges of character quickly utilize for Page 157 →their purposes.”30 Although its origins lie in the ancient world, the article describes physiognomy as a modern visual skill that can be developed through experience. The determination of character from isolated facial features recalls the training of “good observers” by illustrated magazines I discussed in this book’s introduction. Physiognomic reading is considered a skill necessary to interact with strangers in modern life. It requires modern viewers to organize information and establish a coherent worldview from an overwhelming visual field. The photographs accompanying the essay break the human face up into the most concentrated areas of physiognomic meaning: eyes, forehead, lips, chin, and nose. The layout of the article emphasizes the separation of the face into parts, yet it also allows the viewer to imagine their reorganization into a unified whole. Columns of text appear to separate eyes from lips, foreheads from chins, while the photographs of noses appear in the middle of the page. The article’s photographs provide views of the face from which the overall character and identity of a person can be deduced. Two photographs appear of each part of the face, allowing us to compare, for example, a “softly outlined, good-natured nose” to a “sharply outlined, egotistical nose.” As presented in this article, physiognomy involved determining the whole from the part, deducing characteristics of a certain type from an individual, telling detail.

Germany/Art Resource, New York. Scholars have identified two key features of Weimar’s fascination with physiognomy.31 First, physiognomy served as an instrument of control and order, providing certainty and stable meaning during a disorienting time. Second, physiognomic practices sought to identify features that characterize a social group. The popularity of physiognomy during the Weimar Republic indicates a growing emphasis on social types instead of exemplary individuals.32 These features of physiognomy certainly apply to the article in Praktische Berlinerin, in which facial features are clear and direct expressions of a generalized type. But a description of Weimar physiognomy as a form of fixed meaning proves inadequate when paging through KГ¶pfe des Alltags. Wolfgang BrГјckle has examined KГ¶pfe des Alltags as an attempt “to photographically fix the German face.”33 But I contend the book ultimately accomplishes the opposite. Rather than showing the direct translation of character into physical form, KГ¶pfe des Alltags confounds the clear visualization of identity by offering a dense network of detail. Lerski’s images are rich with visual signs yet unable to directly transmit interiority. The book suggests an irrational, internal realm that resists clear meaning and transparent signification. Many photographic books sought to train their audiences in physiognomic viewing through the sequencing and arrangement of portraits. According to Walter Benjamin, the ability to read facial types was “a matter of vital importance,” and photographic books functioned as training manuals for this visual skill.34 PhotographicPage 158 → books collected people of all types in all forms: notable persons and anonymous workers, disembodied hands and death masks. Books with titles such as Menschen der Zeit (People of Our Time), Unsere Zeit in 77 Frauenbildnissen (Our Time in 77 Portraits of Women), Menschen am Werk (People at Work), Das Buch der hunderte HГ¤nde (The Book of One Hundred Hands), and Unsere deutschen Kinder (Our German Children) sought to articulate a connection between appearance and character.35 Most of them were priced for a mass audience, aiming to reach a larger public than what Glaser had in mind for KГ¶pfe des Alltags.36 These books responded to the instability of contemporary social identity, affected by Germany’s recent economic crisis, and the resurgence of physiognomic and racial theories.37 Because it implies the communication of knowledge, the book-format was essential to the portrait of German society that photographic sequences attempted to convey. These photographic books invoked the metaphor of the face as book, as a locus of reading and legibility. They also accumulate a large number of photographs in order to visualize features that define and unite the age.38 The saturation of Weimar culture with photographed faces prompted the critic Siegfried Kracauer to ask, “Why are there so many portraits, especially those that return to the so-called artistic portrait?”39 Kracauer was aware of the current interest in photography’s ability to provide a correspondence between visual form and identity. While Benjamin and many others during the Weimar Republic believed in the potential and “vital importance” of physiognomy as a fixed and rational system of meaning, Kracauer points out the arbitrary and often fabricated nature of this new visual language. In an essay published in 1933, Kracauer discounted the validity of a “so-called physiognomic” way of seeing. The face appears at a bold angle that should express something meaningful, the chin or forehead are given a heavy weight they probably don’t posses normally, and the reflection of glasses becomes a primary optical element. All of these cases possess the same flaw. Photography does not visualize a portrayed physiognomy, but is used instead as a means to an end that lies outside the object.В .В .В . In other words, from the start they aim less for the reproduction of the object than the presentation of collected effects from which something can be lured out.40 Kracauer argues false signs produced through artful camera angles and reflections fabricate a connection between spirit and form. The camera, according to Kracauer, is a “passively recording organ” that “must finally let go” of the “visualization of the archetype [Urbild].”41 By Urbild, Kracauer refers to a certain spiritual principle or feature, the essence of a culture that unites it into a coherent whole.42 But here, Page 159 →Kracauer argues those invested in photography’s ability to salvage any correspondence between inner spirit and outer form in the modern age have been misguided. Although he does not state the name of the photographer or the photographic project that inspired his essay, his mention of bold angles and the reflection of light off eyeglasses could refer to KГ¶pfe des Alltags. In any case, Kracauer’s essay serves as a warning that physiognomy does not bring about a universal system of meaning. Given this warning, it is worth exploring the

ways in which several photographic books of portraits protect again the arbitrariness of physiognomic meaning that Kracauer identifies and how they compare to the construction of meaning in KГ¶pfe des Alltags. August Sander’s Antlitz der Zeit is perhaps the most well-known of these physiognomic projects.43 It has come to exemplify the systematic and comparative nature of physiognomic looking that the book format facilitates.44 Antlitz der Zeit presents sixty portraits taken between 1910 and 1929. Sander’s sequenced portraits stand for the rise and decline of modern society, and thereby take advantage of the narrative structure that traditionally defines the book-format. Starting with portraits of farmers, the book then moves to the working class. The narrative then peaks with portraits of academics and the middle class, followed by musicians, artists, and bohemian types, and finally ending with portraits of those the Nazis would describe as the “degenerate” of society several years after Antlitz der Zeit was published—the unemployed, the disabled, and the poor. Sander selected the book’s portraits from his larger project known as Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (People of the Twentieth Century). He intended to publish this magnum opus eventually, yet historical events prevented it from being completed in Sander’s lifetime. In 1934, the year in which the Nazi Ministry of Culture ordered the destruction of copies of Antlitz der Zeit and confiscated many of Sander’s photographs and negatives, Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts consisted of approximately 540 portraits. In his 1931 radio address, Sander describes photography’s physiognomic potential and his ambitions for Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Sander states, “It is possible to record the historical physiognomic image of a whole generation and—with enough knowledge of physiognomy—to make that image speak in photographs.”45 Sander makes two claims in his speech that echo Weimar photographers and theorists I have discussed in this book: photography constitutes a new, universal language and viewers and photographers alike must be trained to use new visual skills. “The ability to judge physiognomy can be inherited,” Sander declares, “it can also be developed by education.”46 Sander based his life’s work on the belief that “the photographer who has the ability and understands physiognomy can bring the image of his time to speaking expression.”47 Nonetheless, Sabine Hake and George Page 161 →Baker have argued that Sander’s own project consists of semantic instabilities and indeterminate meanings that challenge its role as a clear, legible training manual.48

Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur—August Sander Archiv, Cologne/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Published two years before Köpfe des Alltags, Antlitz der Zeit constitutes the sitter through the clearly signified paraphernalia of social identity. In Sander’s photograph of a cleaning woman, the handle of her broom, her soiled apron, the dirt on her hands, and the safety pin that holds together the collar of her shirt convey the woman’s occupation and class as if unmediated by artistic choice. Sander’s objective style adapts to the edifying potential of a book, offering information about society through visual signs. In Köpfe des Alltags, the social identities of the sitters are not visibly apparent. In contrast to Sander’s cleaning woman in Antlitz der Zeit, the cleaning woman in Köpfe des Alltags possesses no social signs of her occupation. While Sander positions his subject at a standard three-quarter distance, Lerski has brought his camera in so close the surface of photograph and skin become one. Lerski’s heads are also isolated from signifiers of class—clothing, working environment, body language—that might specify their identity. Books of notable Germans were some of the most popular photographic publications.49 These books consist of portraits by different photographers credited for their contribution. With the subtitle “One hundred and one photographic portraits of important men and women from the German present and its recent past,” Menschen der Zeit compiles a sample of Weimar society notables, including a young Konrad Adenauer, Gerhart Hauptmann, Käthe Köllwitz, and Thomas Mann, taking care to collect a diverse sample from all walks of public life. These notables appear in a variety of poses and lighting conditions. On page 57, the scientist Max Planck sits at a small desk with pen and paper in hand. The face of the actor Paul Wegener appears on page 67 in front of a dramatic, black background. Paging through the book, it is clear the publisher did not seek compositional coherence when selecting images. The choice to collect one hundred and one portraits emphasizes quantity, and the diversity of portrait formats enhances the sprawling amount of images assembled. The impetus for the book’s publication was the opportunity to gather an impressive amount of portrait photographs into a comprehensive survey of society. The book attempts to impress the viewers with the sheer volume of images as much as the celebrity status of the sitters themselves. Many titles of books of portraits announce the number of photographs they contain, suggesting a hefty quantity could legitimize its appeal to a potential customer. Publishers were aware, however, that the sheer volume of images could get out of hand. The introduction to Menschen der Zeit addresses anxieties about quantity and the pressures of selecting photographs from an infinite number of possibilities.

/Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, Germany/Art Resource, New York. Page 163 →It is only possible for the publication to be taken seriously as an image sequence of this kind when a certain moderate number of included portraits is defined. Only in this way can the danger of boundlessness be prevented. Given the present abundance of important people, the publication could not represent all important people or the most important people of the age, but instead at least suggests in the portraits of very diverse men and women a small number of the intellectual and crucial people of the time.50 The introduction implies attempting to collect too many images would result in a loss of meaning, an uncontrollable, “boundless” collection that spurred anxieties over photo-inflation discussed earlier in chapter two. The quantity of photographic portraits, as well as the ease with which they could be produced, endangered the status of the face as a bearer of visual signs. In order to combat potential disorder and confusion caused by a large quantity, Menschen der Zeit presents a sample and organizes its portraits into clearly defined categories. “Since a completely free and unbound arrangement and sequencing of portraits seems impossible, they are collected here into several loose groups of a non-pedantic manner: state and political life; technology and science; biology and medicine; philosophy and history; religion and the church; music, poetry, theater; architecture, sculpture, painting.”51 Defining the features of the age through a series of portraits thus involved the selection of a representative group from a large quantity of images as well as the organization of these images into a coherent and legible sequence. The production of books like Menschen der Zeit involved organizing an overwhelming quantity of faces into a coherent representation of the age they aimed to provide. In the construction of Antlitz der Zeit, Sander confronted a similar challenge. In a typewritten outline for Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts, Sander states “the forthcoming large publication” will consist of “a still finer gradation than the present work [Antlitz der Zeit].”52 While Antlitz der Zeit presents a complete cycle of human society, Sander was nonetheless dissatisfied with the thoroughness of the project and, it would seem, wanted to present more photographs and “finer gradations.” While Antlitz der Zeit insists on its own completeness and comprehensive representation of society, it is also marked by an inevitable sense of inadequacy when faced with the issue of quantity—the project could contain infinitely more photographs that would improve the transparency and legibility of society. But Sander finds himself caught in a double bind. The increased quantity of photographs also threatens the cohesion and organization of the project. The project en masse promises objectivity but is continually haunted by incoherence and illegibility. While Sander arranged his photographs in Antlitz der Zeit to construct a narrative of progress and decline and Menschen der Zeit categorizes its sitters by Page 164 →professional identity, KГ¶pfe des Alltags contains no such orderly structure. Lerski’s book seems unfettered by anxieties over the quantity of photographic imagery in Weimar culture voiced in the introductions to Antlitz der Zeit, Menschen der Zeit, and many other books like them.53 In light of Weimar’s rising celebrity culture and wealth of photographic books of recognizable figures, critics often noted Lerski’s choice to focus on anonymous people. “A book without notables,” is how one reviewer tersely described it.54 Photographic books often focused on anonymous subjects, who were almost always from the working class. Portraits of notables by the photographer Erna Lendvai-Dircksen appeared in books like Menschen der Zeit.55 However, she also produced her own series of books that feature anonymous subjects. Published in 1932, Das deutsche Volksgesicht (The Face of the German People) was a series of twelve books, each devoted to a region of Germany expressed through the faces of its indigenous people. The series serves as a categorical inventory of various cultures and traditions, yet Lendvai-Dircksen claims they represent one unified face of the German people. Between 1932 and 1945, 300,000 volumes from this series were sold. Scholars have researched how physiognomic theories were susceptible to appropriation by right-wing radicals and members of the Nazi Party, and so too was the photographic book. Lendvai-Dircksen’s project was an attempt to visually capture an enduring and unifying German spirit in each region, and her endeavors made her one of the most beloved photographers of the Nazi Party.56 In the first volume of Das deutsche Volksgesicht, Lendvai-Dircksen writes: “Form and appearance of inherent being is the same in man and animal, in plant and stone. As long as life lies among them, united in mystery, it

reveals itself in multi-faceted ways. It underscores what truly is comparable among us. True form grows from the living, from the unity of all powers, unconsciously and innocently. It has physiognomy; it is visible. It is a document. The face of man is the strongest focus of all that was and will be of the earth.”57 As in Lerski’s book, Das deutsche Volksgesicht focuses on the heads of anonymous sitters. Lendvai-Dircksen’s book focuses on the faces of the elderly, presenting their wrinkles, coarse beards, and sagging skin as signs of the fundamental essence of the region. The face of the blacksmith from Holstein on page 33 comes close to the camera’s lens, so much so that the man’s wiry beard and long chin flatten out into a patterned plane. In the lower right corner, his beard and neck are blurred, which contrasts with the precise clarity of the wrinkles and veins on the man’s weathered forehead and the minute pores and metallic sheen of his skin. Other figures in the book appear in traditional hair, dress, and costumes, thus using social signs to establish identity, as in Sander’s Antlitz der Zeit. Rather than the photographs unfolding without text, a poem or brief description accompaniesPage 165 → many of the images in Das deutsche Volksgesicht. Across from the face of the blacksmith from Holstein, we read a short verse from the Edda Poems, a collection of Nordic prose and poems dating from the ninth to the twelfth centuries. The mythification of the faces in the book and their transformation through the text into iconic symbols contrast sharply with the unfixed physiognomy of the sitters in KГ¶pfe des Alltags. Text, traditional costumes, and the dignified appearance of the sitters in Das deutsche Volksgesicht shape the sitters as heroic icons of an imagined German identity. Through these inscriptions, Lendvai-Dircksen allows little in the visual realm to remain unresolved.

Erna LendvaiDircksen. “Blacksmith from Hollstein,” in Das deutsche Volksgesicht. Berlin: Kulturelle Verlagsgesellschaft, 1932, 32–33. KГ¶pfe des Alltags dispels with legible symbols of class, a categorized structure, and textual guidance. In this way, KГ¶pfe des Alltags is the most unabashedly visual photographic book of portraits, boldly relying entirely on the human face for its claims to meaning. But attempts to read the identities of sitters in KГ¶pfe des Page 166 →Alltags—the place of individuals within society, their relationship to one another—are persistently frustrated by excessive details, blurs, shadows, and the slick sheen of skin. The heads are isolated from all signifiers of class—clothing, working environment, body language—that might specify their identity. The connection between occupation and appearance is arbitrary, and the role of each head in the book is interchangeable—the saleswoman looks like the seamstress, the stenographer resembles the chauffeur’s

wife. The porter’s appearance is no more suited for this occupation than for a reporter or painter. Different heads often appear remarkably similar, and the appearance of a sitter in several photographs in a row exacerbates the confusion. The wife of a chauffeur in plate 17 shares the broad cheekbones and round nostrils of the stenographer in plate 10, but less so the same woman in plate 11. The round face of the domestic servant in plate 72 resembles the worker on the previous two pages. The young saleswoman in plate 76 has the same eyes and freckles as the seamstress in plate 78, yet she does not resemble the more bloated visage of the same seamstress in plate 77. Inversely, photographs of the same sitter often seem to show two different people. According to the index, plates 10 and 11 show the same stenographer. In the first photograph, she wears a cap. On the next page, the cap is exchanged for eyeglasses. Lerski also distinguishes the two faces through different camera angles. The lighting in plate 10 creates various contrasts that draw out the bumps and blemishes of the stenographer’s skin. In the next plate the light is brighter, giving her skin a damp, pasty texture. Glaser and Lerski were apparently aware of the confusion. A note at the bottom of the index page tries to clarify: “All images for which their numbers in the index are grouped under the same description represent different photographs of the same person.”58 Even with the footnote, KГ¶pfe des Alltags stages the indeterminacy of identity and its destabilization at a moment of social crisis. Glaser describes the sitters as those that have fallen through the cracks, teetering on the brink of losing their identity due to economic hardship and unemployment. The sitters in KГ¶pfe des Alltags are those who “first lived in prosperity, were impoverished through war and inflation and must resign themselves to their lowly occupation. The photographer sees the decline of their existence and shapes it into a sequence of images, in which he keeps the light soft and quiet in some, hard and flickering in others, in which he models the forms tenderly in some, sharper in others, in which he positions his camera so that the head appears to sink or to straighten up.”59 This focus on the unemployed draws attention to the marginal, uncertain status of the individual caused by the social and economic catastrophes of the late Weimar Republic. Although sympathetic to the working class, KГ¶pfe des Alltags is not an attempt to mobilize the underprivileged, nor does Lerski identify with his subjects. AccordingPage 169 → to Glaser, Lerski offers expression to those so impoverished they can no longer manage to visually signify for themselves. “Here is a street-sweeper, who never in his entire life raised his head. The camera does it for him, and the dictator in his handsome profile might be envied.В .В .В . The beggar, as the camera moves around him and the sunbeams illuminate his face here and there, becomes an accomplished actor, who plays as many roles as photographs shown.”60 Rather than revealing their authentic character, Lerksi ushers his weary sitters into a world of performative fiction. The street sweeper becomes a dictator; the beggar becomes an “accomplished actor.” Glaser notes how Lerski’s camera circles around the face of the beggar. The repetition of the same sitter on several pages invokes a sense of cinematic motion and adds to the performativity of the heads. Lerski’s photographic techniques allow them to play a different role in each photograph. The depiction on one page is no more authentic than on the page before or after it in the sequence.

Photo Credit: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

Page 168 →Lerski. “Stenotypistin,” (Stenographer) in KГ¶pfe des Alltags, 11. В© Helmar Lerski Archive, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany. Photo Credit: The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. Glaser explains Lerski “found his models on the street. Or he allowed them to come from the employment agency, because he believes that each person has a face. One must only make the effort to see it.”61 Although Lerski charitably attempts to reveal the faces of these downtrodden sitters, it is unclear how he obtained information about their professional or social status. Was it from the sitters themselves? From a form filled out at the employment agency? The brief labels in the introduction are the only insights given into the individuality of each sitter, and we are unable to know for sure that the pairings of head and occupation have not been fabricated. Ultimately, KГ¶pfe des Alltags reveals the arbitrary nature of physiognomy. This comes across clearly in the critical response to the book. The anonymity of Lerski’s sitters and his suggestive photographic techniques compelled viewers to generate their own physiognomic associations. A critic for Filmtechnik wrote that Lerski’s “вЂyoung merchant’ is a stout piglet. The вЂbook seller’ has the head of Dante. The вЂstenographer’ studies law. The вЂpainter’ shines like classical marble. The вЂwife of a chauffeur’ is a sphinx. The вЂfarmer’s son’ wears the death mask of Alfred Kerr. Robespierre awakens in the вЂrevolutionary worker.’ .В .В . The вЂwash woman’ is the mother. Another вЂwash woman’ is the mother-in-law. The вЂdomestic servant’ the woman. The вЂcraftsman’ a dictator. The вЂboiler man’ Rudolf Valentino.”62 This critic’s imaginative interpretation of Lerski’s sitters indicates the book created an opportunity for free association rather than a system of fixed meaning. Others saw the book’s lighting and dramatic proximity as distancing the sitters from their social reality and

transforming anonymous workers into icons and prototypes. In Die Form, Wilhelm Lotz wrote, “through many attempts certain surprises reveal themselves in the plates, in the prints, heroes come forth rather than Page 170 →beggars.”63 But Lotz later contradicts this idealized description of Lerski’s sitters by likening them to bestial figures: “The comparison with the best sculptures of animals is assumed. Chinese, primitive, the earliest pre-classical and Egyptian sculptures and drawings, animalism is also there, brutal power, the most vulgar craftiness is boldly and clearly represented, not deliberately but as the outcome of the pure creation of form from intentional processes.”64 For Lotz, physiognomic associations arise because of Lerski’s devotion to the inherent properties of photography. “Because he attempts to make photographs instead of psychological documents, and therefore strives to rule with the purest means of photography, a psychological document emerges, unintentionally but grandly.”65 According to Lotz, photography has a privileged relationship to the human psyche. The medium allows inner character to arise inadvertently and thereby authentically. It also transforms humans into sculptures and dispels features of the individuals photographed.

Death Masks In KГ¶pfe des Alltags, shadows and cropping isolate heads from bodies, abstract designs of light and shade fragment faces, and, on some pages, the effects of such manipulation are grotesque. Dark shadows start at the hairline of the bookseller in plate 9 and the cleaning woman in plate 46, transforming their faces into detached masks. In plate 50, shadows transform a reporter’s face into a death mask. Darkness isolates his face from the rest of his head, and the close cropping of the photograph obscures his hair. His round, sunken eyelids and bony visage emphasize the presence of death. The reporter’s face, among others in KГ¶pfe des Alltags, bares a chilling resemblance to the death masks that appeared in photographic books in the last years of the Weimar Republic. Perhaps KГ¶pfe des Alltags has the most in common with books such as Das letzte Gesicht (The Last Face) (1929), Totenmasken (Death Masks) (1927), and Das ewige Antlitz: eine Sammlung von 112 Totenmasken (The Eternal Face: A Collection of 112 Death Masks) (1927), which feature the death masks of anonymous and historical figures.66 Totenmasken dispays the cast faces of ThГ©odore GГ©ricault, Isaac Newton, and Richard Wagner. Das letzte Gesicht includes death masks of Filippo Brunelleschi and Martin Luther, as well as anonymous Roman masks in terra cotta and bronze. Traditionally, the death mask lies at the origins of portraiture itself. But these photographic books of death masks seem particularly germane to the Weimar Republic’s obsession with the photographed face. Claudia SchmГ¶lders has argued that these strange books served as a kind of family album for a German audience, Page 173 →functioning to define and stabilize the history that brought them to the present moment of the Weimar Republic.67 The art historian Rudolf Arnheim emphasizes this function in his review of Richard Langer’s Totenmasken: “Biographies come together from a multiplicity of personal impressions that are crystallized into a clear polished profile, memorable and easy to copy. Photography is similar—the longer the subject has been dead, the more convincing and clear and therefore often more dissimilar the image of the historical personality becomes.”68 Arnheim describes photography as a process of deindividualization that reassigns the construction of identity to eternalizing forces.69 “The calm of physiological muscle relaxation destroys nothing of what the energy of life has formed. Through comparative instruction in perception, all viewers can investigate here whether their favorite and finest endure. And no one can do it without being enriched.”70 According to Arnheim, the relaxation of the face leads to the clear visualization of character. Arnheim sees Totenmasken as a form of physiognomic training and describes it as “a wonderful, instructive picture book for adults who have not forgotten how to see.”71 The comparison of one face to another can teach an audience vital perceptual skills at risk of being forgotten in the modern world.

Credit: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. Page 172 →Richard Langer. “GГ©ricault,” in Totenmasken. Leipzig: Georg Thieme Verlag, 1927. Photo Credit: bpk Berlin/Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, Germany/Art Resource, New York. In KГ¶pfe des Alltags, Glaser describes the tedium of sitting for Lerski’s photographs for two-hour periods, a process more familiar to daguerreotype portraits of the nineteenth century than the instantaneous images taken with handheld Leica cameras in the 1920s. The sitter “is not asked to sit this way or that way or to change his expression. He sits quietly, and he must sit for a long time. Because the procedure is difficult and the exposure time cannot be short, he relaxes his features. The neutral character that the photographer needs to give expression to what he sees inside takes over.”72 This process of deindividualization is similar to the one Arnheim describes. In Lerski’s case, it is difficult not to interpret it as the exploitation of the most vulnerable members of society. Lerski undertakes this elaborate act of portrayal in order to diffuse his sitters’ identities, relieving them of the burden of shaping their own appearance for the camera. The long duration of Lerski’s process lulls the sitters into a state of introspective absorption during which they disclose an interiority they might otherwise be unwilling to stage. The prolonged stillness is meant to dispel the presence of the individual, and the “neutral character” the sitters eventually acquire allows an interior spirit to emerge. This portrait process is thus somewhat of a paradox: it is a deliberately staged performance undertaken to make the sitters forget their participation in the act of posing. Wolfgang BrГјckle has argued that in these books of death masks, viewers searched for a spiritual notion of the individual that had been stripped from modern man.73 More than an opportunity to compare and classify facial characteristics, Page 174 →the death mask attempted to provide a connection to the invisible soul. In his introduction to Das letzte Gesicht, the Austrian philosopher Egon Friedell announces the physiognomic ambitions

of the book and expresses confidence in the abundance of information that can be provided by the careful visual scrutiny of the human face. “Whoever examines attentively the following death masks will be able to read effortlessly entire biographies and monographs from them.”74 Friedell also describes the death masks as opening up a mystical, spiritual world of knowledge that the written word cannot access. He contrasts the past era of text with the new era of “the language of the face.” “The last age of man was filled with skepticism.В .В .В . A new certainty is developing, that is as unclear as earlier but is nonetheless certain. It is unspeakable and not able to be refuted with words, more incomprehensible than any other and therefore equally inviolable.”75 Knowledge acquired through studying the face surpasses verbal explanation and intersects with the mystic world of death. “We force our way deeper into the dark chambers of destiny and arrive suddenly at something peculiar. Our eyes get used to the darkness and sense a weak shimmer of light that comes from the opposite side and indicates to us that the area we have entered is not fully ruled by darkness. We have removed the Thing, but it appears to us again by the light behind the Thing. A light that we will never catch sight of as long as we are bound to these bodies.”76 While also alluding to Plato’s cave, Friedell’s reference to a “dark chamber” and a light source originating from the “opposite side” likens the spiritual realm of death to a camera obscura and conflates clairvoyant knowledge of the afterlife with the knowledge photography can provide. “The creative mystery of the only true reality,” concludes Friedell, “is enthroned behind our visible being.”77 Friedell explains that beyond our earthly life, a mysterious and creative soul remains. This realm can be sensed in photography and the death mask. Along with these books, KГ¶pfe des Alltags participated in efforts to enchant photography with clairvoyant powers and occult suggestions. While relevant to the Weimar context in many ways, an understanding of physiognomy limited to a form of objective identification and classification proves inadequate when paging through KГ¶pfe des Alltags. The connection between visual form and meaning looks remarkably different in Lerski’s book. This has much to do with modern man’s lost connection to the spiritual realm that BrГјckle sees as motivation for Weimar’s craze for death masks. Lerski’s photographic techniques deliberately shape the appearance of the face in an attempt to conjure up a spiritual presence. They claim a privileged, spiritual connection to the soul that undermines the sitter’s participation in the construction of their identity. In KГ¶pfe des Alltags, the inner soul manifests itself primarily through light, which is defined as the essence of photography but also a spiritually charged realm. Lerski’s portraits suggest Page 175 →an irrational system that resists clear meaning and transparent signification. KГ¶pfe des Alltags requires us to revise our understanding of physiognomy in the Weimar Republic as more than a pseudo-scientific way to compare and quantify various racial, social, and professional types. It was also a discourse that was often willing to accept the obscure and indeterminate nature of the soul. KГ¶pfe des Alltags guides us to a culture of physiognomic study concerned with a spiritual connection between inner soul and outer form. The term Ausdruck, or “expression,” played a central role in this discourse. Far from a fleeting gesture or the signification of a passing emotion, Ausdruck refers to the visual manifestation of spirit in the human face. In his 1932 book Gesicht und Seele (Face and Soul), Phillip Lersch, psychologist and pioneer of the rising field of Ausdruckpsychologie, explains Ausdruck addresses the mediation of the interior, the “unbodily,” through the “symbolic world” of the outside. 78 “Ausdruck is typically understood as the indication of content that forms through the unity between external symbolic perception and an inner perception.В .В .В . Ausdruck is thereby a sign for something of the soul, a carrier of a sign that can be understood.”79 For Lersch, the study of Ausdruck focused on the translation of pure feeling, something that can only be “felt in the breast,” into a sign that can be communicated and understood in the signifying world. But Lersch also sought to challenge formulations of a direct relationship between inner soul and outer appearance. As much as the study of Ausdruck argued for the possibility of visualizing the soul, it also acknowledged the density of bodily expression and the body’s refusal to transparently manifest interior spirit. “The effective appearance of symbolic phenomenon is actually created through psychic and psycho-physical processes through which they are detached from their origin,” Lersch writes.80 He emphasizes exterior signs are not a clear and direct expression of the interior soul. The human psyche involves “a fundamental difference between, on one side, all individual acts within the collective circumstances of the sensory world of appearances and, on the other, the individuality and secrecy of the unmediated given contents of consciousness.”81 Lersch makes a distinction

here between content and form, between what is immaterial and how it appears in the world of expression and communication. Lersch goes on to explain: “We mean something absolutely unbodily [UnkГ¶rperliches], namely the contents of consciousness, which remain inconceivable behind the surface of the body. In layman’s terms, we want to know what goes on behind the forehead and how it looks in the body. We are talking about the feelings that are concealed in everyone’s chest.”82 To Lersch, the expression of the soul was a process clouded by bodily distortions. The study of Ausdruck aimed to identify a unifying feature of humankind, something eternally present rather than shaped by circumstances. In his book, Das Page 178 →Gesichtausdruck des Menschen (The Facial Expressions of Man), the German doctor Hermann Krukenberg wrote, “above all else it is an issue of whether a legitimate inner connection exists or whether facial expression is determined only by habits and upbringing. In the latter case, the entire study of facial expression can demand only a relatively small amount of interest.”83 Krukenberg attempts to move the study of communication away from linguistic theory and semiotics.84 Human identity, and the expression of that identity, he argues, is not entirely discursive or arbitrarily motivated. Instead, the spiritual core of humanity remains constant, but manifests itself in various forms. “The human Gesichtausdruck is a combination of facial expression and enduring features. The latter primarily forms the characteristic traces of human kind and the peculiarities of race specifically.”85 Because the face displays the “enduring features,” its expressions make up a universal form of communication that is purely visual. “One language is still understood by all people but is not taught in any school nor found in any grammar book, is understood by a child as well as by a language teacher: the silent language of the face.”86 This facial “language” of expression is, according to Krukenberg, beyond the capacity of verbal language to express. This visual language thus remains somewhat mysterious and uncertain; its “signs” of expression are not codified. Krukenberg acknowledges the multi-dimensional and transformative nature of the human subject. “Each face continually changes in every direction in which our soul is active,” Krukenberg writes.87 The different appearances of the face provide opportunities to see multiple manifestations of the soul. Such a relationship between the soul and multi-dimensional aspects of its expression informs KГ¶pfe des Alltags. Lerski’s book presents multiple visual forms of an inner, fixed spirit, something beyond the power of language to express. The lighting conditions, camera angles, and perspectives attempt to emanate spirit, expanding our knowledge of it through its visibility.

Germany. Photo Credit: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

Page 177 →Lerski. “Landstreicher aus Schlesien,” (Vagrant from Silesia) in KГ¶pfe des Alltags, 74. В© Helmar Lerski Archive, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany. Photo Credit: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. Physiognomic theories such as these guided discussions of portrait photography in the late Weimar Republic. Manuals for amateur portrait photographers often included chapters that offered introductory lessons in physiognomy.88 An essay by the psychologist Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss appeared in the 1931 issue of Das deutsche Lichtbild, an annual publication devoted to contemporary photographic trends. This publication by a psychologist in a reputed photography journal suggests a close connection between physiognomic studies and photographic approaches such as Lerski’s. Clauss argues modern man’s distance from nature has made it difficult to capture his “natural expression” in a photograph. In opposition to “atelier portraiture,” Clauss calls for a photographic practice that “wants to capture the human face in the deepest sense of its expression of life.”89 Clauss goes on to contrast the unposed behavior of animals with “the вЂmodern’ urbanite, who knows Page 180 →too much about the camera” and has a tendency to unnaturally pose and “play a role” while being photographed. It is easier, he states, to capture the “expression” of animals because they “know nothing about cameras or photographs.”90 Clauss emphasizes the importance of capturing what the sitter does not control. By virtue of their unconscious nature, certain details can provide access to the interiority of the subject. The less consciously such details are produced the more purely interiority is expressed.

Credit: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. Clauss argues that it is the responsibility of the photographer, rather than the sitter, to conjure up the interior “expression of life.” “Whether he is successful at guiding the play of expression on the face of his subject depends on the strategy of the photographer—his approach to the camera and towards an unconscious expression. There are hardly any general rules. The ways are as varied as the people themselves that we want to capture in photographs.”91 In KГ¶pfe des Alltags, Lerski demonstrates such an approach by treating his sitters as “raw material” that can be shaped and modeled by his photographic techniques. The prolonged time that the sitters spend in front of Lerski’s camera, lulled into a lack of pose, also contributes to this effect. Clauss also argues that multiple photographs of a single person, seen from different viewpoints and various conditions, can expose previously unseen aspects of a subject’s inner being. “In the most seldom cases—even the most вЂfruitful’ ones—is a single view enough to understand the entire character of a person,” Clauss writes. “A turn to the side, a change of lighting, a change in expression from something serious to laughing and already the style disappears in which we had understood the face and a new style suddenly breaks through.”92 Like Glaser in his introduction to KГ¶pfe des Alltag, Clauss highlights the importance of the photographer’s control and abilities to call forth an “authentic expression” from the unknown sitter.93 As we turn the pages, we encounter the sitters at intimate moments of non-expression brought about because Lerski’s sitters must “sit quietly” before the camera. Through the staging of long periods in front of the camera, Lerski’s photographed his sitters as if he was filming a continuous shot. As a result, the photographs seem to reference a longer duration. The sitters appear to be lost in thought and entrenched in the passing time. With few exceptions, lips are drawn together in a neutral line and facial muscles are at rest. The factory worker in plate 30 emits a vague smile; the vagrant in plate 74 furrows his brow. These subtle expressions appear to arise unconsciously. While the sitters stare out at the viewer in a handful of plates, most appear as if they are absorbed in uncommunicated thoughts or feelings. Eyes are frequently closed, as in the image of the cleaning lady in plate 44, eliminating the traditional portal to the soul and displacing that intimacy onto Page 181 →Lerski’s command of shadow and light.94 The idleness of the faces complicates their ability to communicate clearly and directly. They address no one, inside or outside the visual field. The heads also express no one fixed attribute or emotion. Lerski’s heads are rich with facial details, yet they do not clearly convey emotions, identity, or general characteristics. As a result of their long nonperformance in front of the camera, many sitters in KГ¶pfe des Alltags appear more like sculptures (or corpses) than active, living human beings. Heads are often cropped so the chin rests slightly above the bottom edge of the image, like a bust resting on a pedestal. Cropping and lighting materialize each head. But they also enact abrupt transitions of light and shade that slice, carve, and fragment the heads in a way analogous to the effects of a sculptor carving stone. In plate 51, a white plane slices off the right side of the reporter’s face. Areas of darkness in many of the photographs—plates 30, 39, and 48, for example—decapitate heads from bodies. While most photographic books of portraits attempt to teach viewers to recognize a general type, KГ¶pfe des Alltags reveals the melancholic fate of the individual under this system of modern vision. Ultimately, it articulates the unsettling death of the individual in the face of Weimar’s desperate craze for visual legibility and a fixed system of identity. Rather than providing such a system, the ephemeral faces of KГ¶pfe des Alltags uncannily remind us of what was lost in the heady alliance of modernity and physiognomy during the Weimar Republic.

Page 182 →

Conclusion After the Weimar Photographic Book This study has argued that Weimar photographic books mark a moment of possibility that never fully comes to fruition. Photographic book publication continues vigorously during the Third Reich, and these publications are part of the legacy of Weimar photographic books. It seems appropriate to conclude this study by addressing connections between the books published in these two eras of German history. But I also want to suggest significant differences between the books produced during these two moments and recuperate the visual potential of photography—so inspiring for those involved with the books discussed in this study—that endured beyond its disturbing transformation at the hands of the Third Reich. Published in 1931, Erich Retzlaff’s photographic book Menschen am Werk was published two years before the official end of the Weimar Republic yet signaled strongly what was to come. It contains 56 photographs; most of them are close-ups of an anonymous worker’s face.1 Menschen am Werk presents the sequence of photographs without interruption by text and includes an index at the back of the book that identifies the workers by profession. Like in KГ¶pfe des Alltags, the anonymous, terse labels lead to ambiguities and inconsistencies about where one individual ends and another begins. Plates 14 and 15 for example show a three-quarter and frontal view of the same factory worker. Plates 23 and 24 display profile and frontal views of one railway worker. In most photographs, Menschen am Werk exhibits intense detail provided by close proximity to the face. But while the facial detail in KГ¶pfe des Alltags confounds the identity of Lerski’s anonymous heads, Retzlaff’s images establish the working class identity of the sitters. The shimmering beads of sweat hanging from the blast furnace worker’s cheek on page 9, for example, signify his toil and the hot conditions of his daily world. Intermixed with the close-ups, the book includes several photographs of the environment of these subjects. In page 26, we see an unpeopled image of cranes on a harbor. The opposite page shows us a corresponding stevedore or Hafenarbeiter, perhaps sitting on one of the cranes photographed on the last page and looking away from the camera to his left. Page Page 186 →45 shows a worker bending over to set a stone in the ground, the sun reflecting off of his glistening neck. These images provide a context for the facial close-ups.

of Erich Retzlaff. “Factory Worker” in Menschen am Werk, 15. © Family of Erich Retzlaff.

Page 184 →Retzlaff.

Worker” in Menschen am Werk, 9. В© Family of Erich Retzlaff. The right-wing poet Heinrich Lersch wrote the introduction to Retzlaff’s Menschen am Werk and stated “these are faces that remain with the Volk, grow up in Volk, decline in Volk. And there are certainly interesting life stories here to be told, even if the destiny of these faces is anonymous.”2 Lersch argues the physical appearance of the people photographed in the book is shaped by their work and their environment: Fire, blows, and rays, the features of the forger are formed by the attention and violent force of the physically painful process of work. Under the influence of this unnatural power, the forger grows old quickly due to the intensive exertion of bodily power. The tension of the muscles grows stiff, the flesh grows hard under the skin, the eyes sink deeper into the eye sockets. The glowing, shimmering look of the young forger grows dim in time under the shade of the covering brow. The mouth retains the strained distortion and gives the face a grumpy, embittered expression. The light eyes of the young smithy become the hard, austere face of the invalid.3 In his text, Lersch argues for continuities, conventional features that are inherently present in a worker’s face throughout time. “A look at a worker’s face shows that form and expression originate in the ancient craftsman. Although industry has almost completely dissolved them, the people have held on to the imprint of these fundamental forms.В .В .В . We find the look of blacksmiths and men of fire again today in the expression of people that work with fire and heat, despite the protective glasses and masks on the faces of those that toil in autos and electricity.”4 This argument is similar to Nierendorf’s in the introduction of Blossfeldt’s Urformen der Kunst. Deeply seeded continuities of form endure despite modern industry’s superficial dissolution of it. Photography allows us to rediscover these enduring forms, preserved in the physiognomy of the worker’s face. Menschen am Werk shows these features can be recuperated through the camera’s lens and identified through physiognomic comparison. Retzlaff’s images and Lersch’s words work in tandem to mythify the anonymous worker by associating him with the abstract concept of Volk. “And tomorrow, perhaps they are unemployed,” Lersch concludes, “A year of unemployment can transform those that believe, trust and sacrifice into embittered fighters.”5 Menschen am Werk attempts to reveal the German Volk in the anonymous worker, to identify, mythify these industrial workers, seemingly forgotten and disenfranchised by the Weimar government, as the backbone of German identity. Page 187 →Erna Lendvai-Dircksen condemned KГ¶pfe des Alltags in an essay from 1933 on the “purification” of the German portrait. She accused Lerski of “imposing his own temperament in the emptiness of these faces” and called KГ¶pfe des Alltags an example of “experimental psychology.”6 Lendvai-Dircksen’s critique was part of the usurpation of notions of objectivity by the Nazi Party. By mythifying its sitters through accompanying text and poetry, Lendvai-Dircksen’s Das deutsche Volksgesicht lacks as much objectivity as KГ¶pfe des Alltags. The acute framing of the head and clear focus on the details of the face distill the visual signs of the German race. In the essay “Zur Psychologie des Sehens” [On the Psychology of Vision], Lendvai-Dircksen describes physiognomy as the search for continuity between an inner truth or “essence” and an outer form that has endured through history, a concept quite similar to the relationship between vision and form articulated by Nierendorf in the introduction to Blossfeldt’s Urformen der Kunst. “What was in the beginning of the world has not changed, only how it is seen, noticed and utilized, ” she writes.7 Lendvai-Dircksen describes the collection, assessment, and organization of a large quantity of visual signs from a culture as a way of forming knowledge about it. “Behavior, emphasis and grouping of things determine what is important to a people, a Volk, and the legacy of the culture is in this sense the lifelong production of an inner image that creates an exterior as a likeness. So powerful is the impression of the spiritual inheritance [Geistererbes], that it expresses itself as unified among diversity and diverse among unity.”8 The “inner image” of a culture remains constant, while its exterior appearance is multifaceted and transformative. This belief motivated Lendvai-Dircksen’s photographic practice, including the organization of her photographic books. Lendvai-Dircksen collected various anthropological types and organized her series of photographic books into Germanic regions as a way to manifest the inner essence of culture. In contrast to the politicization of the face in Lendvai-Dircksen’s books, KГ¶pfe des Alltags stays in the realm of the approximate. Lerski’s photographic techniques muddle the identity of the sitters, not allowing any one

to be securely heroized.9 Rather than monumentalizing its heads into statuesque icons, light and shade works to dispel the appearance of individuals. Glaser’s introduction to KГ¶pfe des Alltags plays a significant role by framing the photographs that follow. Yet the text does not interrupt Lerski’s photographic sequence. Glaser and Lerski did not attempt to match the photographs with captions or literary inscriptions. KГ¶pfe des Alltags stays in the realm of the visual, and the predominantly visual experience of the photographs contributes to the undetermined identities of the sitters. However approximate and unresolved these heads might appear, they are distinctly less dangerous than the politicized faces of Lendvai-Dircksen. Page 188 →This study could end with these brief looks at two photographic books in which textual guidance firmly secures a radically conservative reading of nationalist subjects.10 Scholars have used photographic books as a way of demonstrating continuities in cultural production in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich.11 The publications of Retzlaff and Lendvai-Dircksen are examples of how photographic books adapted to the right-wing cause. But such a narrative risks interpreting the Weimar Republic and its culture as a prelude to the Third Reich, a naГЇve experiment that inevitably ended in disaster. Photographic books contributed to this transition, but they were also rediscovered in the postwar moment by a new generation of German photographers and artists.12 Like their Weimar predecessors, these artists develop strategies of selection and accumulation that experiment with photography’s potential for visual communication.13 Moholy-Nagy signals the endurance of this potential in his 1936 essay, “From Pigment to Light.” He concludes with a brief section on the photographic series. “The series is no longer a вЂpicture,’” he writes, “and none of the canons of pictorial aesthetics can be applied to it. Here the separate picture loses its identity as such and becomes a detail of assembly, an essential structural element of the whole which is the thing itself.”14 As in Malerei Photographie Film, Moholy implores artists to move beyond the traditional rules of painting and embrace the universal principles of optics, which can best be explored through photography and film. Significantly, the essay ends with this discussion of the photographic sequence and its expansion of visual, rather than rhetorical, meaning. Clearly, Moholy-Nagy is thinking of film and its illusion of motion when he writes of the photographic series. But I also think his comments refer to photographic sequences more generally—photographic books as well as film—as a fundamental basis of modern visual experiences. Much of “From Pigment to Light” echoes ideas Moholy first presented in Malerei Photographie Film. Given the revolution in photographic technology; its proliferation in mass culture during the late 1920s; and its usurpation for radical right-wing interests by Lendvai-Dircksen, Retzlaff, and others, I find the consistency between the two essays remarkable. Photographic books published in the intervening years explored different conceptions of modern vision. They show us that conceptions of knowledge developed during the Weimar Republic were deeply focused on the new visual experiences photography could provide. Through the collections and sequences of photographs, the books discussed in the preceding chapters tell us much about the expectations for photography as a form of visual communication during the Weimar Republic. Yet, none can be considered typical of photographic book production at this time. The disparate selection of books addressed in this study reflects the experimental nature of this format. In other words, none managedPage 189 → to articulate the “new visual literature” that Moholy was searching for, and in which meaning is conveyed exclusively in the visual. But apparently, these publications, as well as the cultural and political upheaval of the late Weimar Republic, had little influence on Moholy’s ideas about the role of photography in the modern world. He ends the essay with the prediction he first made nine years before: “The illiterate of the future will be ignorant of the use of camera and pen alike.” In the decade following the publication of his first photographic book, photography came to dominate the pages of mass media. Photographic sequences were used effectively by left- and right-wing political parties. But according to Moholy, all this belongs to a “confused and groping age.” This suggests that Lendvai-Dircksen and Retzlaff should not be allowed to control the legacy of the Weimar photographic book. The realization of a purely visual form of communication remained in the future. And still in our own accelerated age of digital imagery and communication in the twenty-first century, we are waiting for Moholy’s “new visual literature,” in which photographic images cast off the training wheels of the caption and textual guide.

Page 190 → Page 191 →

Notes Introduction 1.Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine. “ вЂNicht mehr lessen! Sehen!’ wird das Motto der Erziehungsfragen sein. вЂNicht mehr lessen! Sehen!’ wird der Leitgedenke der Entwicklung der Tageszeitungen seinВ .В .В .” Johannes Molzahn, “Nicht mehr lesen! Sehen!” Das Kunstblatt 12, no. 3 (1928): 80. 2. Max Taut: Bauten und PlГ¤ne. Mit einem Beitrag von Dr. Adolph Behne (Leipzig and Berlin: F. E. HГјbsch, 1927). 3.“Nicht der Schrift-, sondern der Photographieunkundige wird der Analphabet der Zufunft sein.” LГЎszlГі Moholy-Nagy, “Die Photographie in der Reklame,” Photographische Korrespondenz 63, no. 9 (1927): 259. 4.Moholy repeated his prediction in “Fotografie ist Lichtgestaltung,” Bauhaus: Zeitschrift fГјr Bau und Gestaltung 1 (1928): 2–9. 5.Michael Jennings, “Agriculture, Industry and the Birth of the Photo-Essay in the Late Weimar Republic,” October 93 (2000): 23. 6.Daniel Magilow, The Photography of Crisis: the Photo-Essays of Weimar Germany (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2013), 5. 7.Magilow, The Photography of Crisis, 2. 8.Roland Barthes and Stephen Heath, “Rhetoric of the Image,” Image Music Text (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 36. 9.“Nach der glГ¤zenden Periode der Daguerreotypie hat der Photograph alle Richtungen, Stile, Erscheinungsformen der Malerei nachzuahmen versucht. Es dauerte ca. 100 Jahre bis er zur VerwendungsmГ¶glichkeit seiner eigenen Mittel kam.” LГЎszlГі Moholy-Nagy, Malerei Photographie Film, 1st ed. (Munich: Albert Langen, 1925), 41. In keeping with the attempts of modern typographers to make German script more efficient, Moholy changed the spelling in the title of the second edition, published in 1927, to Malerei, Fotografie, Film. Here I refer to the first edition of the book, unless stated, and all further references to it will be abbreviated as MPF. 10.“Die neue Optik—das ist Ursache der Dinge des hier behandelten Kreises, dessen Wirkungsformen Гјberall die entsprechenden Funktionen aufnehmen mГјssen. Greifen wir ein Gebiet heraus das unmittelbar von Photo abhГ¤ngt: Das illustrierte Buch! Die MГ¶glichkeiten sollen die Abbildungen der nebenstehenden Buchseiten zeigen. Das Buchkinema, in optisch folgerichtiger Entwicklung und aus das Stoff heraus geformt.” Johannes Molzahn, “Nicht mehr lesen! Sehen!” 82. 11.“Dass die Photographie auch schГ¶pferisches Ausdruck- und Gestaltungsmittel sein kann, ist fast unbekannt.” MPF, 5. 12.Eleanor Hight, Picturing Modernism: Moholy-Nagy and Photography in Weimar Germany Page 192 →(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), 175. Hight’s discussion of MPF and the Bauhaus Books, although limited to a discussion of Moholy’s theories and a brief description of the book, is the most substantial to date. See also Alain Findeli, “Laszlo Moholy-Nagy und das Projekt der BauhausbГјcher,” in Das A und O des Bauhauses: Bauhauswerbung, Schriftsbilder, Drucksachen, Austellungsdesign, ed. Ute BrГјning (Berlin: Bauhaus Archiv, 1995), 22–26. 13.See Andrea Nelson, “LГЎszlГі Moholy-Nagy and Painting Photography Film: A Guide to Narrative Montage,” History of Photography 30, no. 3 (2006): 258–69. With the exception of Nelson, any sustained visual analysis of this book written up to this point has been limited to its final section, “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt,” which much more obviously serves a non-illustrative role than the sequence of photographic images printed before it. See for example, Michael Opitz, “Laszlo MoholyNagys Filmskizze Dynamik der Gross-Stadt: Ein Bild-Text der Moderne,” Jahrbuch zur Literatur der Weimarer Republik 3 (1997): 209–36. Frederic Schwartz limits his discussion of MPF to “Dynamik

der Gross-Stadt,” and claims this section to be the “focal point of the book.” See Frederic J. Schwartz, Blind Spots: Critical theory and the History of Art in Twentieth-Century Germany (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 46–47. Exceptions to the lack of visual treatment of the book, although brief, are Hanne Bergius, “Die neue visuelle RealitГ¤t: Das Fotobuch der 20er Jahre,” in Deutsche Fotografie: Macht eines Mediums, 1870–1970, eds. Klaus Honnef, Rolf Sachsse, and Karin Thomas (Bonn: Kunst- und Austellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 1997), 90–94 and Brigid Doherty, “Photography, Typography, and the Modernization of Reading,” in A New History of German Literature, ed. David E. Wellbery (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), 733–37. 14.See Matthias Uecker, “The Face of the Weimar Republic: Photography, Physiognomy, and Propaganda in Weimar Germany,” Monatshefte 99, no. 4 (2007): 469–84. 15.For more on Kurt Wolff, see Barbara Weidle, ed., Kurt Wolff: ein Literat und Gentleman (Bonn: Weidle Verlag, 2007). 16.On female photographers during the Weimar Republic, see Elisabeth Moortgat and Marion Beckers, Atelier Lotte Jacobi: Berlin, New York (Berlin: Verborgene Museum, 1998). Exceptions to the male dominance of photographic book production include the work of Erna Lendvai-Dircksen, discussed in chapter four. See also Franz Roh, ed., Aenne Biermann: 60 Fotos (Berlin: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1930). 17.Lisa Gitelman, Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 7. 18.See Michael North, Camera Works: Photography and the Twentieth-Century Word (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 19.George Baker, “Photography’s Expanded Field,” October 114 (2005): 120–40. 20.The photographic books to which Maurus refers are Sasha Stone, Berlin in Bildern (Leipzig: Epstein, 1929) and Albert Renger-Patzsch, Die Halligen, Das Gesicht der Landschaft (Berlin: Albertus Verlag, 1928). 21.“Es will dies erreicht haben, indem es sich zwischen Bildbuch und Film stellte; jenem entnahm es die anspringende Kraft der Akzentfolge und der kombinierten Technik, diesem die WГјrze der suggestiven FГјhrung und der dramatischen Struktur.” Marc Maurus, “Zu einem Bildbuch,” Die Form 4, no. 21 (1929): 583. 22.“Die Bilder dieses Buches sind im Grund einfach genug montiert; nicht nach Historie, StГ¤dtebau oder FremdenfГјhrung, sondern nach den Gesetzen eines Sehtheaters, das Geist und Intellekt verlangt, Ethos und Herz.” Ibid. 23.“Das moderne Buch hat aufgehГ¶rt nur ein kinomatografischer Ablauf von verschiedenen VorgГ¤ngen zu sein. An Stelle der вЂDauer’ ist die вЂIntensitГ¤t’ getreten.” ThГ©o van Doesburg, “Das Buch und seine Gestaltung,” Die Form 4, no. 21 (1929): 569. Page 193 → 24.On the development of the photographic press industry in Germany, see Ulrich Keller, “Photojournalism around 1900: the Institutionalization of a Mass Medium,” in Shadow and Substance: Essays on the History of Photography, ed. Kathleen Collins (Bloomfield Hills, MI: The Amorphous Institute Press, 1990), 283–303; Bernd Weise, “Pressefotografie I. Die AnfГ¤nge in Deutschland, ausgehend von einer Kritik bisheriger ForschungsansГ¤tze,” Fotogeschichte 9, no. 31 (1989): 15–40; Weise, “Pressefotografie II. Fortschritte der Fotografie und Drucktechnik und VerГ¤nderungen des Pressemarktes im deutschen Kaiserreich,” Fotogeschichte 9, no. 33 (1989): 27–62; Weise, “Photojournalism from the First World War to the Weimar Republic,” in German Photography 1870–1970: Power of a Medium, ed. Klaus Honnef, Rolf Sachsse, Karin Thomas (Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag, 1997), 52–67. 25.Kurt Korff, “Die вЂBerliner Illustrirte’,” in 50 Jahre Ullstein, 1877–1927, ed. Max Osborn (Berlin: Verlag Ullstein, 1927), 290–91. Translated in Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg, eds., The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 646. 26.Edlef KГ¶ppen, “Das Magazine als Zeichen der Zeit,” Der Hellweg (17 June 1925): 457. Translated in Kaes, Jay, and Dimendberg, eds., The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, 644. 27.On the ambivalence of photographic practices during the Weimar Republic, see AndrГ©s Mario ZervigГіn, John Heartfield and the Agitated Image (Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 2012). 28.See Carolyn Marvin, When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking about Electric Communication in the

Late Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). 29.“Mit einem Blick! Welches von beiden Bildern ist das Spiegelbild?” “KГ¶nnen Sie schnell denken? Sind Sie ein guter Beobachter?,” Uhu 2, no. 11 (1926): 108. 30.“Sie sind kein mГјГџiger вЂZeitvertrieb,’ sondern—wie uns zahlreiche Zuschriften beweisen—ein willkommenes Training fГјr scharfes Sehen und fasches Denken.” Ibid. 31.Tom Gunning. “The Whole Town’s Gawking: Early Cinema and the Visual Experience of Modernity,” Yale Journal of Criticism 7, no. 2 (1994): 193–94. 32.Ibid., 190. 33.Ibid., 193. 34.Malcolm Turvey, The Filming of Modern Life: European Avant-Garde Film of the 1920s (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), 162–81. 35.David Bordwell, On the History of Film Style (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 141–43. 36.“Wir lesen mehr Zeitung als BГјcher. Die BuchhГ¤ndler verkaufen wenigВ .В .В . In StichwortauszГјgen, die viele AufsГ¤tze vieler Zeitschriften ersetzen. Und von diesen bevorzugen wir die illustrierten: das Bild unterrichtet schneller und besser, die Bildseite ist in Sekunden zu erfassen.В .В .В . Also, wir entfernen uns von Buch.” Josef Albers, “Zur Г–konomie der Schriftform,” Offset: Buchund Werbekunst 7 (1926): 395. 37.See Anton Kaes, “The Debate about Cinema: Charting a Controversy (1909–1929),” New German Critique 40 (1987): 7–33. See also, Priscilla Coit Murphy, “Books are Dead, Long Live Books,” in Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition, eds. David Thorburn and Henry Jenkins (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 81–93. 38.Joseph FrГ¶bes, Lehrbuch der experimentellen Psychologie (Freiburg: Herder & Co., 1920), 2:72. 39.“Mit der Weiterentwicklung der Reproducktionstechnik: des Lichtdrucks, der Bildtelegrapfie, die die Beschaffung und den Druck von exakten Illustrationen im Augenblick ermГ¶glicht, werden all, wahrscheinlich sogar philosophische Werke mit den gleichen illustrativen Mitteln arbeiten—wenn auch auf hГ¶herer Ebene—wie die jetzigen amerikanischen Magazine.” LГЎszlГі Moholy-Nagy, “ZeitgemГ¤sse Tyographie—Ziele, Praxis, Kritik,” Offset: Buch und Werbekunst 7 (1926): 378. 40.“.В .В .В einen gesteigerten aktiven Zustand des ZuschauersВ .В .В .” MPF, 18. 41.“Ist es nicht mГ¶glich, ein neues Material zu finden, das dem modernen GefГјhl fГјr Griffigkeit und Sauberkeit entspricht? Ist es nicht mГ¶glich ein Verfahren zu finden, das die Buchseiten in einer Page 194 →Weise verbindet, die sich aus der maschinellen Massenfertigung heraus ergibt?” “Von der Form des Buches,” Die Form 4, no. 21(1929): 572. 42.Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), 15. 43.AndrГ© Gaudreault and Philippe Marion, “A Medium is Always Born TwiceВ .В .В .” Early Popular Visual Culture 3, no. 1 (May 2005): 3–15. 44.See Magilow, The Photography of Crisis, 17. 45.Walter Benjamin. “Little History of Photography,” Die literarische Welt (September–October 1931). Translated by Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter in Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility and Other Writings on Media, eds. Michael Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 295

Chapter 1 1.“Bücher (meist wissenschaftliche) mit photographischen Reproduktionen existieren heute schon, aber die Photographien sind darin nur sekundäre Erläuterung zu dem Text. Die Entwicklung überwindet auch diese Phase, und die kleinen wie grossen Photographien werden in dem Text an die Stelle heute noch immer individuell interpretierbarer Begriffe, Ausdrücke gesetzt. . . . Man könnte sagen, dass eine derartige Verwendung der Photographie in kurzer Zeit dazu führen muss, einen wesentlichen Teil der Literatur durch den Film zu ersetzen.” László Moholy-Nagy, “Die Neue Typographie,” in Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar, 1919–1923 (Weimar: Bauhausverlag, 1923).

2.“Was die unexakte Urbildschrift der Г„gypter begonnen hat, welche damals ein jeder nach Tradition und persГ¶nlicher FГ¤higkeit deuten konnte, fГјhrt die Einbeziehung der Photographie in das heutige Druckverfahren zu ganz exaktem Ausdruck.” Ibid. 3.“Wir planen die Herausgabe einer BroschГјren-Serie, welche mit den heute aktuellsten Fragen sich beschГ¤ftigen wird.” Letter from Moholy-Nagy to Alexander Rodchenko (18.12.1923) reprinted in Krisztina Passuth, ed., Moholy-Nagy (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1987), 392. 4.According to an advertisement for the BauhausbГјcher printed in Offset: Buch und Werbekunst 7 (1926): 385, a copy of MPF bound in paper wrappers sold for 7 DM, while a hardbound version sold for 9 M. An illustrated magazine such as Das Magazin or Die Dame sold for about 1 M. In a letter to one Carl Garte, Moholy informs him the BauhausbГјcher series can be obtained at the Kaufhaus des Westens, Berlin’s most famous department store (Bauhaus Archiv, Special Collections, Walter Gropius, Bauhaus Verlag, Korrespondenz, folder G). This would imply that MPF and the BauhausbГјcher series in general was aimed at a middle class audience. In a review of MPF in a working-class periodical, the book is noted for being valuable to the worker but too expensive. See Franz HГ¶llering, “Buchbesprechung: BauhausbГјcher, ” Der Arbeiter-Fotograf 2, no. 10 (1928): 18. 5.“Ein вЂMagazin,’ wie es sein soll. Ein leidenschaftliches Buch. Ein Buch, das einem davonzurennen scheint.” Martin Knauthe, “Die BauhausbГјcher,” Die Baulaterne (1926): 5. 6.“Moholy hat in seinem Bauhaus-Buch: вЂMalerei Photographie Film’ (bei Albert Langen in MГјnchen) das schГ¶nste material aus deutschen und auslГ¤ndischen Journalen zusammengestellt, und das ist ein fesselndes, Гјberraschendes, famoses Buch geworden.” Adolf Behne, “Die Illustrierten,” Die WeltbГјhne 22, no. 31 (1926): 187. 7.“In allen diesen Zeitschriften besteht heute eine Spannung zwischen Bild und Text.В .В .В . Sonst aber wird mehr und mehr der Text zu einem blossen FГјssel zwischen den Bildern, und der вЂWeltspiegel’ verzichtet schon prinzipiell auf jeden Text, will eine reine Bilder-Zeitschrift (mit RГ¤tselecke und Novelle) sein.” Ibid., 188. Page 195 → 8.“FГјr eine solche Zeitschrift tauchen nun neue Schwierigkeiten auf—zunГ¤chst, typographische, dann aber auch geistige. Man kann ja nicht einfach Bild auf Bild stopfen.” Ibid. 9.“Man weicht bewusst von der schematischen AusfГјllung der vier Ecken oder dem Nachziehen der Mittellinien ab und versucht eine freie Ausbalanzierung der einzelnen Bilder nach den verschiedenen Momenten der Form, des Ausschnitts, des Inhalts, der Tendenz, der Schwarzweiss-Wirkung, der Grosse; Kontraste bildend, Parallelen fГјhrend oder Bewegungen quer durch das Feld stoОІend, wobei auch die entstehenden weissen Aussparungen bewusst im Sinn eines Ganzen gewertet werden mГјssen.” Ibid. 10.“Dieses Buch wurde im Sommer 1924 zusammengestellt. Technische Schwierigkeiten verhinderten das rechzeitige Erscheinen.” Moholy-Nagy, MPF, 4. 11.For example, “Produktion Reproduktion” 23–24, appeared as “Produktion-Reproduktion, ” De Stijl 5, no. 7 (1922). The essay “Typophoto” was published as “TypographiePhotographie, Typo-Photo,” Typographische Mitteilung (1925): 202–4. 12.“FilmvГЎz a NagyvГЎros dinamikГЎja,” MA no. 8–9 (September, 1924). 13.Lucia Moholy has widely been acknowledged as an important contributor to Moholy’s writings. See Rolf Sachsse, Lucia Moholy (Dusseldorf: Marzona, 1985) and Lucia Moholy, Moholy-Nagy, Marginal Notes (Krefeld, 1972). 14.Born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Moholy moved to Berlin from Vienna in 1920. In that same year, he met Lucia Schultz. The close-up of a phonograph record on page 52 is the only photograph Moholy took with a camera that he included. See Hight, Picturing Modernism, 103–4. 15.The second edition of MPF (1927) includes seven photographs taken with a camera by Moholy. 16.LГЎszlГі Moholy-Nagy, “Neue Wege in der Photographie,” Photographische Rundschau und Mitteilungen 65, no. 32 (1928): 33–34. 17.In an email to the author, Hattula Moholy-Nagy, the daughter of Moholy, confirmed that he assembled published and nonpublished material throughout his life. Unfortunately, the collection was discarded after Moholy died in 1946. 18.“Unter den illustrierten Zeitschriften und BГјchern erscheinenden den Millionen Photographien findet man nur hin und wieder wirklich вЂgute’ Aufnahmen. Das MerkwГјrdige und gleichzeitig fГјr uns als Beweis Dienende dabei ist, dass wir (nach einer lГ¤ngeren Schaukultur) mit sicherem Instinkt die

вЂguten’ Photos Гјberall unfehlbar herausfinden, unabhГ¤ngig von der Neuheit oder Unbekanntheit des вЂThematischen.’” MPF, 26. 19.“Auf diesem Wege ist die Photographie in der Hauptsache zu einer visuellen enzyklopedischen Leistung geworden. Das genГјgt uns heute nicht. Wir wollen prouduzieren, da fГјr das Leben das Schaffen neuer Relationen von Wichtigkeit ist.” MPF, 22. 20.See Gunda Luyken, ed., Hannah HГ¶ch: Album (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2004). 21.On Berlin Dada photomontage, see Brigid Doherty, “Berlin,” in Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, New York, Cologne, Paris, ed. Leah Dickerman (Washington DC: National Gallery of Art, 2005), 87–112. 22.See Benjamin Buchloh, “Gerhard Richter’s Atlas: The Anomic Archive,” October 88 (1999): 117–45. On HГ¶ch’s scrapbook, see also Maud Lavin, Cut with the Kitchen Knife: The Weimar Photomontages of Hannah HГ¶ch (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993). 23.“.В .В .В Existenzen, die mit unserem optischen Instrument, dem Auge, nicht wahrnehmbar oder aufnehmbar sind, mit Hilfe des fotografischen Apparates sichtbar zu machen.” MPF, 22. 24.“.В .В .В d.h. der photographischen kann unser optisches Instrument, das Auge, vervollkommen bzw. ergГ¤nzen.” Ibid. 25.“Damit ist wiederum gesagt, daОІ die Reproduktion (Wiederholung bereits existierende Relationen) ohne bereichende Gesichtspunkte aus dem besondern Gesichtspunkt der schГ¶pferischen Gestaltung im besten Falle nur als virtuose Angelegenheit zu betrachten ist.” Ibid., 23. Page 196 → 26.“.В .В .В unser Auge die aufgenommenen optischen Erscheinungen mit unserer intellektuellen Erfahrung durch associative Bedingungen formlich und rГ¤umlich zu einem Vorstellungsbild ergГ¤nzt, wГ¤hrend der photographische Apparat das rein optische Bild reproduziert und so die optisch-wahren Verzeichnungen, Verzerrungen, VerkГјrzungen usw. zeigt.” Ibid., 22. Moholy expands this argument in the second edition of the book, rewriting sections of the essay “Photographie” to focus more on this issue. For example, he adds that with photography “everyone will be compelled to see that which is optically true, is explicable in its own terms, is objective, before they can arrive at any possible subjective position. This will abolish the pictorial and imaginative association pattern which has remained unsuperseded for centuries and which has been stamped upon our vision by great individual painters.” LГЎszlГі Moholy-Nagy, Painting Photography Film, trans. Janet Seligman (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1969). 27.“Langsam sickert die Hygiene des Optischen, das Gesunde des Gesehenen durch.” MPF, 30. 28.“Die Verwicklung derartiger PlГ¤ne stellt neue Anforderungen an die LeistungsfГ¤higkeit unseres optischen Aufnahmeorgans, des Auges, und unseres Aufnahmezentrums, des Gehirns.” MPF, 35. 29.“.В .В .В kann man sagen, daОІ der Aufbau des Menschen die Synthese aller seiner Funktionsapparate ist; d.h. dass der Mensch einer Periode dann der vollkommenste ist, wenn die ihn aufbauenden Funktionsapparate—die Zellen ebenso wie die kompliziertesten Organe—bis zu der Grenze ihrer LeistungsfГ¤hligkeit ausgebildet sind. Die Kunst bewirkt diese Ausbildung—und das ist eine ihrer wichtigsten Aufgaben, da von der Vollkommenheit des Aufnahmeorgans der ganze Wirkungskomplex abhГ¤ngt—in dem sie zwischen den bekannten und den noch unbekannten optische, akustischen und anderen funktionellen Erscheinungen weitgehenden neue Beziehungen herzustellen versucht und deren Aufnahme von den Funktionsapparaten erzwingt.” MPF, 23. 30.Among the many discussions of practices of collecting photographs in relation to memory see Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981) and Geoffrey Batchen, Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance (New York and Amsterdam: Princeton Architectural Press and the Van Gogh Museum, 2004). 31.“Der Sieg des Impressionismus oder der misverstandene Photographie. Der Photograph ist Maler geworden.” MPF, 40. 32.“Das ist die вЂromantische’ Landschaft. Nach der glГ¤zenden Periode der Daguerreotypie hat der Photograph alle Richtungen, Stile, Erscheinungsformen der Malerei nachzuahmen versucht. Es dauerte ca. 100 Jahre bis er zur VerwendungsmГ¶glichkeit seiner eigenen Mittel kam.” Ibid., 41. 33.“Die organisierten Licht- und Schattenwirkungen ergeben eine neue Bereicherung des Sehens.” MPF, 66. 34.“Gesteigerte RealitГ¤t des AlltГ¤glichen Ein fertiges Plakat.” MPF, 52.

35.“Das Erlebnis der schrГ¤gen Sicht und verschobenen Proportionen.” MPF, 49. 36.“Ich lasse das Abbildungsmaterial getrennt vom Text folgen, da es in seiner KontinuitГ¤t die im Text erГ¶rterten Probleme VISUELL deutlich macht.” Moholy-Nagy, MPF, 39. 37.Thierry de Duve, “Time Exposure and Snapshot: The Photograph as Paradox,” October 5 (1978): 113–25. 38.Compare Moholy’s statements in MPF to Dziga Vertov’s claim in “Kinoglaz” that “the eyes of children and adults, the educated as well as the uneducated, are opening, as it were, for the first time.” Yet Moholy focuses more closely on the physiological transformations potentially accomplished by photography rather than emphasizing the socio-political implications of such a change, as is the case with his Soviet counterparts. See, for example, “On the Film Known as Kinoglaz,” “Kinoglaz,” and “The Birth of Kino-Eye” in Dziga Vertov, Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, ed. Annette Michelson, trans. Kevin O’Brien (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 34–35; 38–42. Page 197 → 39.See the discussion of de Duve’s essay in Mary Anne Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, and the Archive (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 206–32. 40.de Duve, “Time Exposure and Snapshot,” 121. 41.“Hier schaffen das neu auftretende Zeitmoment und seine immer weiter laufende Gliederung einen gesteigerten aktiven Zustand des Zuschauers, der—statt einer Meditation Гјber ein statisches Bild und statt eines Hineinsinkens, woraus seine AktivitГ¤t sich erst aufbaut—gezwungen wird, sich gewissermassen sofort zu verdoppeln, um eine Kontrolle und ein gleichzeitiges Mittun der optischen Ereignisse ausfГјhren zu kГ¶nnen.” Moholy-Nagy, MPF, 18. 42.“Die kinetische Gestaltung gibt dem AktivitГ¤tsdrang sozusagen eine Erleichterung zu einem sofortigen Erfassen neuer Lebenssicht=Moment, wГ¤hrend das statische Bild solche langsam keimen lГ¤sst.” Ibid. 43.The role of tactility in relation to photography was an important issue at the Bauhaus long after Moholy resigned in 1928. See T’ai Smith, “Limits of the Tactile and the Optical: Bauhaus Fabric in the Frame of Photography,” Grey Room 25 (2006): 6–31. While Smith argues the tension between the visual and the tactile in Moholy’s writings on photography “came to a head” in 1927 in order to “defend his optical agenda,” I argue here the tension between the multisensory effect Moholy expects photography to create and the “purely optical” of photographic vision was already present in the 1925 edition of MPF. 44.In addition to Film und Foto, other exhibitions included Photographie der Gegenwart (Museum Folkwang, Essen, 1928) and Das Lichtbild (Munich, 1930). See Kurt Wilhelm-KГ¤stner, “Photographie der Gegenwart,” Photographische Rundschau 66 (1929): 93–96; Hans Windisch, “Sehen” Das Kunstblatt 13, no. 5 (1929): 129–35. The associations of the term “New Vision” with Moholy’s theories on photography would be solidified in 1938 when it was used as the title of the English translation of his book Von Material zu Architektur of 1929, published by W.W. Norton in 1938. 45.“.В .В .В innerhalb der Reihe der Bauhaus-BГјcher einen Band Гјber die Gegenwarts- und Zukunftsfragen von Film und Foto verГ¶ffentlicht hatВ .В .В . ein unentbehrliches Brevier fГјr alle geworden ist, die sich mit Foto und Film als Kulturfaktoren von auОІeroderntlicher Wichtigkeit ernsthaft auseinandersetzen wollen.” Hans Hildebrandt, Atelier des Fotografen (1929): 154. 46.“.В .В .В man versuchte, die Fotolinse der Augenlinse anzugleichen, indem man ihr eigentliches Wesen vergewaltigte.” Wolfgang Hermann. “Geleitwort,” Internationale Wanderausstellung des deutschen Werkbundes: Film und Foto (Berlin: 1929): 3–4. 47.“.В .В .В durch beide unsere Erlebniswelt wesentlich erweitert ist. Um diese neuen MГ¶glichkeiten von Film und Foto zu zeigen, brachte der Deutsche Werkbund diese Ausstellung zusammen.” Ibid. 48.Olivier Lugon. “Neues Sehen, Neue Geschichte: LГЎszlГі Moholy-Nagy, Sigfried Giedion und die Ausstellung Film und Foto,” Sigfried Gideon und die Fotografie: Bildniszenierungen der Moderne, eds. Werner Oechslin und Gregor Harbusch (ZГјrich: gta Verlag 2010), 88–105. See also Beaumont Newhall, “Photo-Eye of the 1920s: the Deutscher Werkbund Exhibition of 1929,” in Germany, the New Photography, 1927–33, ed. David Mellor (London: Art Council of Great Britain, 1978), 77–86. 49.Wir wissen lГ¤ngst, daОІ die Geschichte der Kunst—formal genommen—eine Geschichte des

Sehen ist. Das ist der Grund fГјr die erstaunlicht Tatsache, dass die scheinbar rein mechanische Photographie sich dem Kunstwollen der Zeit und PersГ¶nlichkeit anpasst.“ Wolfgang Born, “Sinn und Sendung der Photographie,” Internationale Ausstellung Film und Foto: Wanderausstellung des deutschen Werkbundes (Vienna: Verlag Michael Winkler, 1930), n.p. 50.See Christopher Phillips, “Resurrecting Vision,” in The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars, ed. Maria Morris Hambourg (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989), 285; Matthew Witkovsky, Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918–1945 (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2007), 16–17. Page 198 → 51.Moholy was asked to design the first room of the exhibition several months before it opened in Stuttgart in May 1929. In addition to designing the introductory room of the exhibition on the history of photography, Moholy displayed 97 photograms, photographs, and photomontages in the fifth room of the exhibition. See Carol Georg Heise, “вЂFilm und Foto’: Zur Austellung des deutschen Werkbundes in Stuttgart.” LГјbecker Generalanzeiger (18 June 1929): 2. Precisely which photographs, photograms, and photomontages by Moholy were displayed is not known. See also Inke Graeve, “Internationale Ausstellung des Deutschen Werkbunds Film und Foto,” Stationen der Moderne: die bedeutenden Kunstausstellungen des 20 Jahrhunderts in Deutschland (Berlin: Berlinische Galerie, 1988), 240. 52.Gustav Stotz. “Werkbund Ausstellung вЂFilm und Foto’ Stuttgart 1929,” Das Kunstblatt 13 no. 5 (1929): 154. 53.Ibid. 54.“Jan Tschichold und Franz Roh an Hannah HГ¶ch, MГјnchen, 19.7.1929,” Hannah HГ¶ch: eine Lebenscollage, eds. Ralf Baumeister und Eckhard FГјrlus (Berlin: KГјnstlerarchiv der Berlinischen Galerie, 1995). 55.“Mein Zeil war, ein anspruchloses, unpompГ¶ses Buch zu machen, das schГ¶n, aber doch billig sein sollte.” Jan Tschichold, “Wie das Buch foto-auge (1929) enstand,” Katalog 20: Buchkunst und Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts (Hamburg: Antiquariat Gunnar Kaldewey, 1974). Reprinted in Ute Eskildsen and Jan-Christopher Horak, eds. Film und Foto der zwanziger Jahre: eine Betrachtung der Internationalen Werkbundaustellung вЂFilm und Foto’ 1929 (Stuttgart: Verlag Gerd Hatje, 1979), 195. 56.The translation of text of Foto-Auge into these three languages does little to acknowledge the prominence of Eastern European photography in FiFo and among the works selected to be included in this photographic book. 57.Roh, “Mechanism and Expression: the Essence and Value of Photography,” Foto-Auge (Stuttgart, Akademischer Verlag Fritz Wedekind, 1929), 14. 58.Michael Jennings, “Agriculture, Industry, and the Birth of the Photo-Essay in the Late Weimar Republic,” 45. 59.Roh, “Mechanism and Expression,” 14. 60.Roh, “Mechanism and Expression,” 16. 61.Magilow, The Photography of Crisis, 16–33. 62.“Hier haben Sie zwei Fotos, die den gewГ¶hnlich gepredigten Regeln gemäß sind:” Werner GrГ¤ff, Es kommt der neue Fotograf! (Berlin: Hermann Reckendorf: 1929), 2. 63.“Wollen Sie zeigen, was zu sehen ist, wenn man den TГ¶pfer bei seiner Arbeit beobachtet: die ist zweifellos eine sehr schГ¶ne Aufnahme.” GrГ¤ff, Es kommt der neue Fotograf! 20. 64.“Aber vielleicht haben Sie sich eine andere Aufgabe gestellt? Sie wollen z.B. zeigen, was der Handwerker selbst bei seiner Arbeit sieht.” Ibid. 65.“Ansteigende SchГ¤rfe zeingt das Auge, der Rutschbahn zu folgen,” Ibid., 86. 66.Jennings and Newhall both claim that there were only two books related to FiFo, Foto-Auge and Es kommt der neue Fotograf! 67.“Damit haben sich die Stuttgarter das grГ¶sste Verdienst erworben, und man muss nur bedauern, dass verhГ¤ltnismГ¤ssig wenige Zeugen dieser VorfГјhrungen waren.” Walter Riezler, “вЂForm, ’ Foto und Film,” Die Form 4 no. 14 (July 1929): 366. 68.Andor Kraszna-Kraus, “Exhibition in Stuttgart, June 1929, and its Effects,” Close Up 5 (December 1929): 455. 69.“Typographie ist in Druck gestaltete Mitteilung. Photographie ist visuelle Darstellung des optische

FaОІbaren. Das Typophoto ist die visuell exaktest dargestellte Mitteilung. [.В .В .В ] Das Typophoto regelt das neue Tempo der neuen visuellen Literatur.” MPF, 30–32. 70.For a reading of “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” in relation to Constructivist and Futurist poems, Page 199 → see Michael Opitz, “Laszlo Moholy-Nagys Filmskizze Dynamik der Gross-Stadt: Ein Bild-Text der Moderne,” Jahrbuch zur Literatur der Weimarer Republik 3 (1997): 209–36; Edward Dimendberg, “Transfiguring the Urban Gray: LГЎszlГі Moholy-Nagy’s Film Scenario вЂDynamic of the Metropolis,’” in Camera Obscura, Camera Lucida: Essays in Honor of Annette Michelson, eds. Richard Allen and Malcolm Turvey (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2003), 109–26. 71.“Der ganze Film wird von hier (verkГјrzt) RГњCKWARTS gedreht bis zu der JaZZ-BAND (auch diese umgekehrt).” MPF, 126. 72.Of course, the concept of simultaneity was a major part of artistic and scientific understandings of space-time relationships in the 1920s. A discussion would include the influence of theorists such as Albert Einstein and Henri Bergson on avant-garde artists. See Linda Dalrymple-Henderson, The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). 73.“Der Tiger: Kontrast des offenen, unbehinderten Rennens zur BedrГ¤ngung, Beengtheit. Um das Publikum schon anfangs an Гњberrachungen und Alogik zu gewГ¶hnen.” MPF, 117. 74. MPF, 18. 75.Sergei Eisenstein also had the circus in mind when he developed the concept of the “montage of attractions,” according to Jacques Aumont, Montage Eisenstein, trans. Lee Hildreth, Constance Penley, and Andrew Ross (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 42. Moholy does not mention Eisenstein in his text and does not seem to have been familiar with Eisenstein’s work when he published Malerei Photographie Film. See also LГЎszlГі Moholy-Nagy, “Theater, Zirkus, VariГ©tГ©,” Spiel und Feier: BlГ¤tter des Theaters der Stadt MГјnster 3, no. 10 (1926): 101–6. 76.“LГ¶we. Wurstmaschine. Tausende von WГјrsten. Fletschender LГ¶wenkopf (GroГџaufnahme). Theater.В .В .В . Der LГ¶wenkopf. TEMPO-o-O Polizei mit GummiknГјppel auf dem Potsdamer Platz. Der KnГјppel (GroГџaufnahme). Das Theaterpublikum. Der LГ¶wenkopfe immer größer werdend, bis zuletzt der riesige Rachen die Leinwand fГјllt.” MPF, 127. 77.“Die hГ¤ufige und unerwartete Erscheinung des LГ¶wenkopfes soll Unbehagen und BedrГјckung hervorrufen (wieder-wieder-wieder). Das Theaterpublikum ist heiter—und der KOPF kommt DOCH! usw.” Ibid. 78.“GrГ¶sere Gesellschaften wie die UFA wagten damals das Risiko des bizarre Erscheinenden nicht; andere Filmleute haben вЂtrotz der guten Idee die Handlung darin nicht gefunden” und darum die Verfilmung abgelehnt.” MPF, 114. 79.Malcolm Turvey, The Filming of Modern Life, 165. 80.Ibid., 169.

Chapter 2 1.Ernst KГЎllai, “nachtГ¤gliches zur foto-inflation,” bauhaus: zeitschrift fГјr bau und gestaltung 3, no. 4 (1929): 20. Translated in Christopher Phillips, ed., Photography in the Modern Era (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/Aperture, 1989), 140–41. See also Karel Teige, “The Tasks of Modern Photography,” (1931) in Phillips, 312–22. 2.“Die Gefahr aber, dass durch den Erfolg der Ausstellung in der nГ¤chsten Zeit eine вЂKrisis der photographische BetГ¤tigung’ eintritt, besteht leider ohne Zweifel. Ja, sie ist schon da; denn es ist nicht schwierig, Architekturteile, belebte StraОІen und PlГ¤tze, Pflanzenteile, GlГ¤ser und Flaschen, Grammophone und Schreibmaschinen oder sonst irgendwelche GegenstГ¤nde nach den gebenen RezeptenВ .В .В . zu fassen.” F. Matthies-Masuren, “Zur Werkbundausstellung вЂFilm und Foto’ in Stuttgart,” Fotographische Rundschau 66 (1929): 260. Page 200 → 3.Albert Renger-Patzsch, “hochkonjunktor,” bauhaus: zeitschrift fГјr bau und gestaltung 3, no. 4 (1929): 20. Translated in Phillips, ed., Photography in the Modern Era, 141. 4.Ibid. 5.On the cultural response to the crisis of inflation, see Bernd Widdig, Culture and Inflation in Weimar

Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 6.An authoritative text on Weimar inflation, one that pays close attention to the cultural trauma that it induced, is Gerald D. Feldman, The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation, 1914–1924 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). 7.George Baker, “Photography and Abstraction,” in Words without Pictures, ed. Alex Klein (New York: Aperture Foundation, 2009), 359. Baker calls for the investigation of contemporary photography in terms of this process of abstraction, while also looking back to how photography’s ability to abstract was recognized by critics of the Weimar moment, such as Walter Benjamin and Berthold Brecht. Here I answer Baker’s heuristic essay retrospectively by examining how Die Welt ist schГ¶n is situated within this earlier moment of photographic abstraction. See also Matthew Witkovsky, “Another History: On Photography and Abstraction,” Artforum (March 2010): 214–21. 8.Albert Renger-Patzsch, Die Welt ist schГ¶n (Munich: Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1928). 9.Fritz Kuhr, “ist die welt nur schГ¶n? (noch eine renger-kritik),” bauhaus: zeitschrift fГјr bau und gestaltung 3, no. 2 (1929): 28. 10.Walter Benjamin, “Little History of Photography,” 293. See also Walter Benjamin, “The Author as Producer,” in The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility and Other Writings on Media, 86–87. 11.Benjamin, “Little History of Photography,” 274–75. 12.Books referenced by Benjamin in “Little History of Photography” include Die Welt ist schГ¶n, Karl Blossfeldt’s Urformen der Kunst, and August Sander’s Antlitz der Zeit. Benjamin also reflects on recent publications of nineteenth century photography: Helmuth Th. Bossert and Heinrich Guttmann, Aus der FrГјhzeit der Photographie, 1840–70 (Frankfurt, 1930); Heinrich Schwartz, David Octavius Hill, der Meister der Photographie (Leipzig: Insel, 1931); Camille Recht, E. Atget, Lichtbilder (Paris and Leipzig: H. JonquiГЁres, 1931). See Rolf H. Krauss, Walter Benjamin und der neue Blick auf die Photographie (Ostfildern: Cantz Verlag, 1998). 13.Olivier Lugon, “вЂPhoto-Inflation’: La profusion des images dans la photographie allemande, 1925–1945,” Les Cahiers du MusГ©e national d’art moderne 49 (1994): 90–113. Translated as “вЂPhoto-Inflation’: Image Profusion in German Photography, 1925–1945,” History of Photography 32, no. 3 (2008): 219–34. 14.Matthew Simms, “Just Photography: Albert Renger-Patzsch’s Die Welt ist schГ¶n,” History of Photography 21, no. 3 (1997): 197–204. 15.Despite these differences, the books share several images in common. “Cactus” on page 83 of MPF appears as “Euphorbia grandicronis” on page 8 of Die Welt ist schГ¶n. MPF includes two other photographs by Renger: “Industrial Smoke Stack” on page 51 and “Flowering Cactus” on page 82 of MPF are credited as “Renger, Auriga Verlag.” “Industrial Smoke Stack” is repeated in “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” on page 125 of MPF. 16.The GГјnther Wagner Company commissioned plate 54, a close-up of eight circular cups filled with paint. Plate 56, an overhead view of a coffee mug with beans spilling out from an overturned sack, was first used as an advertisement for Kaffee Hag. Three photographs, including plate 64 of the famous Fagus shoe factory designed by Walter Gropius, were produced for the Fagus Company’s photographic archive. The other two photographs are plates 50 and 93. For more on Renger’s work for the Fagus shoe factory see Annemarie Jaeggi, “Das Fagus-Werk im Bild,” in Fagus: Industriekultur zwischen Werkbund und Bauhaus (Berlin: Bauhaus-Archiv Museum fГјr Gestaltung, 1998). According Page 201 →to a note at the image index at the beginning of Die Welt ist schГ¶n, plates 62, 63, and 95 were taken from a commemorative project commissioned by a teacher’s organization in Dresden. 17.These include plate 10, “Tropische Orchis,” which is a cropped version of plate 28 in Ernst Fuhrmann, ed., Orchideen, vol. 1, Die Welt der Pflanze (Berlin: Auriga-Verlag, 1924). Plates 32, 33, and 84 appeared in Die Halligen (Berlin: Albertus Verlag, 1927). Plates 14, 78, and 94 were included in the architect Rudolf Schwarz’s Wegweisung der Technik (Potsdam: MГјller and Kiepenheuer, 1928). 18.The image appears on page 22 in Ernst Trimm, ed., LГјbeck: 80 Photographische Aufnahmen von Albert Renger-Patzsch. Mit einer Einleitung von Carl Georg Heise (Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth, 1928). 19.Plate 30, for example, shows the same sheep herded onto a boat in plates 38 and 39 of Die Halligen. Two other images of boats, plates 83 and 97, resemble Die Halligen’s photographs of the city’s

fishing industry. 20.Heise published the photographic book LГјbeck im Bilde (Berlin: Curtius, 1920) with the aim to introduce its audience to the city of LГјbeck and its art. 21.Heise organized an exhibition of Renger’s photographs at the Museum for Art and Cultural History in LГјbeck in December 1927. On Heise and his photographic collection, see Ortrud Westheider, ed., Die Neue Sicht der Dinge: Carl Georg Heises LГјbecker Fotosammlung aus den 20er Jahren (LГјbeck: Museum fГјr Kunst and Kulturgeschichte der Hansestadt LГјbeck, 1995). 22.The Folkwang Press moved from Hagen to Darmstadt in 1922 and went bankrupt in 1923. In the same year, Ernst Fuhrmann founded the Auriga Press, which inherited the Folkwang’s photographic archive and continued its publication activities, including the book series Kulturen der Erde. The books in the series, Die Welt der Pflanze, were published by the Auriga Verlag. For the sake of consistency and to mark the continuity between the publishing houses, I refer to the Folkwang-Auriga Press throughout this chapter. 23.I explore the relationship between Renger’s early career and his later success as a Neue Sachlichkeit photographer in Pepper Stetler, “The Object, the Archive, and the Origins of Neue Sachlichkeit Photography,” History of Photography 35, no. 3 (2011): 281–95. 24.The image on page 6 appears on page 17 of Crassula, the second volume of the book series, Ernst Fuhrmann, ed. Crassula, vol. 2, Die Welt der Pflanze (Berlin: Auriga Verlag, 1924). In Die Welt ist schГ¶n, the image has been cropped and the flower fills the entire photograph, flattening out the bloom into an abstract pattern. The three-petaled tropical orchid on page 10 of Die Welt ist schГ¶n appears on page 28 of Fuhrmann, ed. Orchideen, vol. 1, Die Welt der Pflanze (Berlin: Auriga Verlag, 1924). Here the view of the plant is widened to include another orchid that grows from the branch in the upper-left corner. 25.For example, the “Head of a Maori” in Die Welt ist schГ¶n appears in plate 18 in Neu Zeeland, the thirty-third volume in the series. 26.Ernst Fuhrmann, Folkwang-Heft 1922, quoted in Rainer Stamm, Der Folkwang-Verlag—Auf dem Weg zu einem imaginГ¤ren Museum (Frankfurt am Main: BuchhГ¤ndler-Vereinigung, 1999), 109. 27.Quoted in Roland Jaeger, “ Orbis Terrarum und Das Geschichte der StГ¤dte: Moderne PhotobГјcher Гјber LГ¤nder und Metropolen,” in Blickfang: BucheinbГ¤nde und SchutzumschlГ¤ge Berliner Verlage 1919–1933, ed. JГјrgen Holstein (Berlin: JГјrgen Holstein, 2005), 430. 28.“Der Verlag [KГ¶nigstein im Taunus] sucht auch weiterhin und honoriert hoch: technische Lictbildstudien von gleichem kГјnstlerisch-bildmГ¤ssigem Range wie ihn diejenigen dieses Bandes haben.” Das Werk: Technische Lichtbildstudien mit Vorbemerkung von Eugen Diesel (KГ¶nigstein im Taunus and Leipzig: Karl Robert Langewiesche, 1931), n.p. 29.Roland Jaeger argues the interest in travel and exploration was caused by the political isolation of Germany after World War I. See Jaeger, “Orbis Terrarum und Das Geschichte der StГ¤dte.” 30.Both were published by Martin HГјrlimann and the Ernst Wasmuth Verlag. Page 202 → 31.“BilderbГјcher fГјr den Menschen von heute, der mit Sekunden geizen muss, fГјr das Studium gelehrter LesebГјcher keine Zeit mehr hat und darum schnell, aber trotzdem gut unterrichtet werden mГ¶chte.” Quoted in Timm Starl, “SchaubГјcher: Eine Bildbandreihe 1929 bis 1932,” Fotogeschichte 16 (1996): 47. 32.The credit-line appears as “Photo Fuhrmann.” The portion of the Folkwang-Auriga photographic archive that is now housed in the Museum Folkwang in Essen includes a print of this photograph dated to 1926. (Inventory no. 1375/87). 33.“Ich nahm deshalb eine mir angebotene Stellung in einem Buchverlag an, der eine photographische Abteilung befass, und hier lernte ich—reichlich spГ¤t—tГјchtig arbeiten.В .В .В . Ich versuchte, QuantitГ¤t mit QualitГ¤t zu verbinden, was mir nicht immer gelang. Die Museen, in denen ich fГјr den Verlag arbeitete, verschlossen uns bald ihre Pforten, da das bei ihnen friedlich seit Jahrzehnten schlummernde Material unter unseren HГ¤nden innerhalb weniger Wochen die Form von Buchern annahm, die man uns aus den HГ¤nden riss, die aber nach der Meinung dieser HГјter SchГ¤tze nicht das wГјnschenswerte Nahrungsmittel geistig und kГјnstlerisch interessierte Menschen waren.” RengerPatzsch, “Ich photographiere,” Velhagen & Klasings Monatshefte 50, no. 6 (1936): 666–67. 34.Despite the “authorlessness” of archival photographs, scholars have attempted to identify photographs by Renger in the archive. For such a contribution, see Wiebke von Hinden, Ernst Fuhrmann, Fotoregisseur (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2003). The only book published by Folkwang-Auriga for

which Renger is credited for his photographic contribution is Das ChorgestГјhl von Kappenberg (Berlin: Auriga Press, 1925). This book was the last project Renger worked on for the Folkwang-Auriga Press. 35.For examples of this approach to Renger, see Peter Pollack, Die Welt der Photographie (Vienna and DГјsseldorf: 1962), 338 and Ulrich RГјter, “вЂDie Welt ist SchГ¶n’ von Albert Renger-Patzsch: Anmerkungen zu einer Inkunabel der Photoliteratur,” Jahrbuch des Museums fГјr Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg 15, no. 16 (1996–1997): 113–24. An exception to this approach is Virginia Heckert, “Albert Renger-Patzsch: Contextualizing the Early Work, 1920–1933” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1999). In treating Renger’s early career, Heckert positions Die Welt ist schГ¶n in relation the rest of Renger’s professional work during the Weimar Republic and corrects the normal tendency in scholarship to position Die Welt ist schГ¶n as a breakthrough for Renger in terms of his approach to photography. 36.See Magilow, The Photography of Crisis, 79–91. 37.Virginia Heckert, “вЂIch werde dafГјr tun, was irgend in meinen KrГ¤ften steht.’ Carl Georg Heise und Albert Renger-Patzsch,” in Die neue Sicht der Dinge. Carl Georg Heises LГјbecker Fotosammlung aus den 20er Jahren (Hamburg and LГјbeck: Kunsthalle Hamburg and Museum fГјr Kunst und Kulturgeschichte der Hansestadt LГјbeck, 1995), 19–27. 38.See Heckert, “вЂIch werde dafГјr tun,’” 22. Kurt Wolff had already published Heise’s doctoral dissertation, Carl Georg Heise, Norddeutsche Malerei. Studien zu ihrer Entwicklungsgeschichte im 15 Jahrhunderts von KГ¶ln bis Hamburg (Leipzig: Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1918). Wolff frequently undertook publishing projects of photographic books in the 1920s. In addition to Die Welt ist schГ¶n, Wolff published a six-volume series of books consisting of photographic reproductions of works of art, entitled Deutsche Plastik, between 1924 and 1926. The first volume in this series included an essay by Erwin Panofsky, the second and third by Wilhelm Pinder. Wolff also published the second edition of Carl Einstein’s Negerplastik in 1920 and August Sander’s Antlitz der Zeit in 1929. On the Kurt Wolff Verlag, see Michael Ermarth, ed., Kurt Wolff: A Portrait in Essays and Letters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991) and Wolfram GГ¶bel, Der Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1913–1930: Expressionismus als verlegerische Aufgabe (Frankfurt am Main: BuchhГ¤ndler-Vereinigung, 1977). 39.“Dr. Lotz, der Herausgeber der Werkbund-Zeitschrift вЂForm’ will das Buch in einer LuxusausgabenPage 203 → von 300 Exemplaren bringen. Ich fГ¤nde es indessen einen der schlechtesten Witze unserer Zeit, wenn die allervolkstГјmlichsten Ideen aus Mangel an Schneid in Ausgaben fГјr Snobs verwirklicht werden mГјssten.В .В .В . Ich fГ¤nde es einen Skandal, wenn Renger-Patzsch wieder erst Гјber den Umweg durch вЂbibliophile’ Ausgaben langsam seine VolkstГјmlichkeit erzwingen mГјsste.” Letter from Heise to Kurt Tucholsky, dated 3.5.1928 in the Getty Research Institute, Special Collections and Visual Resources, Albert Renger-Patzsch Papers, inv. no. 861187, box 1, folder 3. 40.“Photos aber, sind sie von so kГјhner, lebendiger, von so schГ¶pferischer Art wie Albert RengerPatzsch sie aufzunehmen versteht, bereichern uns, vereinigen einen grГ¶ОІeren Kreis wesensverschiedener Menschen zu gleichgestimmter Begeisterung, als etwa die Malerei unserer Tage das zu tun vermag.” Carl Georg Heise in Die Welt ist schГ¶n 7. 41.“Die Freude am Sehen ist in unserem verarmten Deutschland neu erwacht. Das ist ein Genuss, an dem jeder, der Г„rmste wie der Reiche in gleicher Weise teilhaben kann. Nur der Sinn muss dafГјr geweckt werden. Der beste Wegweiser dazu ist Die Welt ist schГ¶nВ .В .В .В . Rengers Photokunst gibt das Weltbild unserer Zeit. Es ist als wenn wir all Dinge neu und tiefer sehen lernten. Der Wert dieser Publikation, die dem Auge unentdecktes Land erschlieГџt, liegt nicht zuletzt in ihrer GemeinverstГ¤ndlichkeit edelster Art.” The advertisement is reproduced in David Mellor, ed., Germany: the New Photography (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1978), 8. 42.“Das Einzelne, Objektive, aus dem Gewoge der Erscheinungswelt erschaut, isoliert, erhoben, verschГ¤rfe bedeutsam gemacht, beseelt.” Thomas Mann, “Die Welt ist schГ¶n,” Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung 37, no. 52 (1928). Reprinted in Thomas Mann, Gesammelte Werke in zwГ¶lf BГ¤nden (Oldenburg: S. Fischer Verlag, 1960), 10:904. 43.“Er zeigt unsere Zeit. Wie seltsam polytheistisch, wie gottlos und wie des Gottes voll sind diese Bilder! Wie liegt alles nebeneinander—scheinbar urteilslos aneinandergesetzt! .В .В .В gut und bГ¶se gilt hier nicht—so sieht ein Gott die Welt. Und so ist sie schГ¶n.” Kurt Tucholsky, “Das schГ¶nste Geschenk,” Die WeltbГјhne 24, no. 2 (1928): 933.

44.“Der Sammelband вЂDie Welt ist schГ¶n’ ist universal orientiert, das LГјbecker Buch zeigt uns Renger-Patzsch vor eine einheitlich geschlossene Aufgabe gestellt.” Heinrich Schwarz, “LГјbeck,” Photographische Korrespondenz 65, no. 5 (1929): 157. 45.“Ich meine ein Buch herausgeben mit 100 Abbildungen aus den verschiedensten Arbeitsgebieten des Mannes. Er fotografiert nГ¤mlich durchaus nicht nur HГ¤nde, Maschinen, Blumen und Tiere, wie das aus seinen meist reproduzierten Arbeiten hervorzugehen scheint, sonder schlechthin allesВ .В .В . vom alten Kopfsteinpflaster und Heringsnetzen bis zu Dachrinnen und Kirchturmspitzen und allem was dazwischen liegt.” Letter from Heise to Kurt Tucholsky, dated 3.5.1928 in the Getty Research Institute, Special Collections and Visual Resources, Albert Renger-Patzsch Papers, inv. no. 861187, box 1, folder 3. 46.See Ernst Osterkamp, “Carl Georg Heise und Albert Renger-Patzsch. UnverГ¶ffentlichte Briefe,” in вЂBedeutung in den Bildern:’ Festschrift fГјr JГ¶rg Traeger zum 60. Geburtstag, eds. Karl MГ¶seneder and Gosbert SchГјssler (Regensburg: Verlag Schnell & Steiner, 2002), 247–54. 47.“Auch der Photograph lГ¶st aus der Vielheit der Erscheinungen das charakteristische TeilstГјck, unterstreicht das Wesentliche, lГ¤sst weg, was zum Schweifen ins Vielgestalitge verfГјhrt.” Heise in Die Welt ist schГ¶n 9. 48.“So gibt das Bild Гјber den Einzelfall hinaus die Gattung.” Ibid. My translation of Heise’s statement is significantly different from what appears in “Preface to Albert Renger-Patzsch, Die Welt ist schГ¶n” in Mellor, ed., Germany: the New Photography, 10 and used in Simms, “Just Photography, ” 199. In these texts, this statement is translated as “Thus the photograph makes a statement about the species over and above the single snake.” Simms claims that Heise was unaware the process of abstraction “does not stop at the level of species.” My argument here shows Heise was not only aware of this feature of this book but responsible for promoting it. Page 204 → 49.“Das ist die HГ¶chste: die Pflanze wird in ihrer typischen Besonderheit gedeutet und dann zugleich, ohne dass ihrer natГјrlichen Erscheinung nur im geringsten Gewalt angetan wird, ausgewertet zu einem spannungsreichen Linienornament.” Heise in Die Welt ist schГ¶n, 8. 50.“Er macht anschaulich, was der Wissenschaftler nur umschreiben kann.” Ibid., 7. 51.“Besonders verdient es hervorgehoben zu werden, dass nur in den allerseltensten FГ¤llen Pflanze oder Pflanzenteil Гјber die Natur hinaus vergrГ¶ssert sind, niemals aber ein neuer kГјnstlerischer Formenreiz gesucht wird, den nicht das Objekt selbst anbietet.В .В .В . Die Pflanze wird gekennzeichnet, nicht zu selbstgefГ¤lliger Spielerei missbraucht.” Ibid., 8. 52.Carl Georg Heise, “Der Kruzifixus von Gies,” Genius 3, no. 2 (1921). Translated in Stephanie Barron, ed., German Expressionist Sculpture (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Museum of Art, 1984), 39. 53.Ibid. 54.Heise made this claim in his first publication on Renger. See Heise, “Neue MГ¶glichkeiten photographischer Bildkunst.” Kunst und KГјnstler 26, no. 5 (1928): 182–88. Heise includes six photographs by Renger as illustrations, two of which appear in Die Welt ist schГ¶n. 55.See Wood’s introduction in Christopher S. Wood, ed., The Vienna School Reader: Politics and Art Historical Method in the 1930s (New York: Zone, 2000), 9–72, and Frederic J. Schwartz, Blind Spots, 137–44. 56.Trained as an art historian at the University of Freiburg, Heise was also an informal student of Aby Warburg. Heise’s dissertation on the development of northern German painting in the fifteenth century, published by Kurt Wolff in 1918, includes a gracious dedication to “Professor Dr. Warburg.” With his mentor, Heise shared an interest in identifying laws that govern the formation of pictorial expression and a belief that these continuities can be recuperated and examined through photography. For more on Heise and Warburg, see Carl Georg Heise, PersГ¶nliche Erinnerungen an Aby Warburg, eds. BjГ¶rn Biester and Hans-Michael SchГ¤fer (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005); Ortrud Westheider, ed., Die Neue Sicht der Dinge: Carl Georg Heises LГјbecker Fotosammlung aus den 20er Jahren (Hamburg: Hamburger Kunsthalle, 1995); Oliver Breitfeld, ed., Albert Renger-Patzsch: Parklandschaften, 60 Fotos fГјr die Warburgs (Hamburg: Conference Point Verlag, 2005). 57.AloГЇs Riegl, Late Roman Art Industry (1901) trans. Rolf Winkes (Rome: G. Brentschneider, 1985), 9. Riegl has in mind here the theories of mid-nineteenth century architectural theorist Gottfried Semper. 58.On discussions of Riegl in the 1920s, see Henri Zerner, “AloГЇs Riegl: Art, Value, Historicism,” Daedalus 105, no. 1 (1976): 177–88, Frederic J. Schwartz, The Werkbund: Design Theory and Mass

Culture before the First World War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 18–25. 59.Riegl, Late Roman Art Industry, 231. 60.“Wenn wir es auch gewiss nicht vergessen dГјrfen, dass es im Grunde die Natur und das gestaltete Leben selber sind, die solche Symbolkraft fГјr jeden Schauenden in sich tragen, dass die Arbeit des Photographen die Sinnbilder nicht erschaffen, sondern sie nur sichtbar machen kann! Aber Wegweisung zu selbstГ¤ndigem Sehen, zur StГ¤rkung unseres GefГјhls fГјr die Spiegelung des Alls im einzelnen Objekt der SchГ¶pfung, das allein schon ist ein Dienst, der gerade heute kaum hoch genug zu veranschlagen ist. Da die wunderkrГ¤ftigen Sinnbilder unseres VorvГ¤ter uns zu verblassen beginnen, ist es von hГ¶chster Bedeutung, dass wir langsam das unerschГ¶pfliche Leben selbst in allen seinen Teilen als Symbol von neuem aufzufassen lernen.” Heise in Die Welt ist schГ¶n, 16. 61.“Unsere Гјberlieferten hГ¶chsten Begriffe fangen an, uns dunkel zu werden.” Ibid. 62.“Wenn uns heute die Photographien von Renger-Patzsch einen reineren Genuss schaffen als manche Werke von Malern, so ist es kein Zufall, sondern Beweis dafГјr, dass die Zeit im Photographen ein empfindlicheres und signifikanteres Instrument fГјr ihr Kunstwollen gefunden hat als im Maler.” Heinrich Schwarz, “Die Welt ist schГ¶n,” Photographische Korrespondenz 65, no. 5 (1929): 156. Schwarz Page 205 →corresponded with Renger-Patzsch later in 1929 about Die Welt ist schГ¶n and Schwarz’s forthcoming “Hill-Buch,” David Octavius Hill: Meister der Photographie. See Getty Research Institute, Special Collections and Visual Resources, Albert Renger-Patzsch Papers, inv. no. 861187, box 1, folder 8. 63.See Heinrich Schwarz, David Octavius Hill: der Meister der Photographie. On the origins of the art history of photography, see Matthew S. Witkovsky, “Circa 1930: Histoire de l’art et nouvelle photographie,” Г‰tudes photographiques 23 (2009): 116–138; Martin Gasser, “Histories of Photography 1839–1939,” History of Photography 16, no. 1 (1992): 50–60. 64.Riegl, Late Roman Art Industry, 17. 65.A longing for an idealized pre-modern (and imaginary) past as a critique of modernity has a long history in German cultural thought, which begins approximately with the work of nineteenth-century sociologist Ferdinand TГ¶nnies. See Ferdinand TГ¶nnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (Leipzig: Fues Verlag, 1887). 66.“Man lernt die Welt neu sehen.” Hildebrand Gurlitt, “Renger-Photos,” Das Kunstblatt 13, no. 2 (1929): 64. 67.“Statt dessen glauben wir jedes Ding in einem Formausdruck wesentlich und geistig enthalten. Aufbau, Material, OberflГ¤che eines Gegenstandes sind, richtig gesehen, seine einzige und vГ¶llige Wirklichkeit. An den Begriff der RealitГ¤t, an die strenge Forderung, realistisch zu sein, bindet sich jede wahre Photographie. Sie wird damit zu einem unschГ¤tzbaren Mittel der Naturerkenntnis in einem zugleich wissenschaftlichen und allgemeinen verstГ¤ndlichen Sinn. Sie fordert die lebendige Aufmerksamkeit des Beschauers; belebt einen Sinn fГјr gГјltige Dinglichkeit der Natur, und Г¶ffnet, in ihrem Spiegel, den wichtigen, fast verlorenen Zugang zur wirklichen, beharrenden Welt.” Walther Petry, “Bindung an die Dinge,” Das Kunstblatt 13, no. 8 (1929): 248. 68.Hugo Sieker, “Absolute Realistik. Zu Photographien von Albert Renger-Patzsch,” Der Kreis (1928). Translated by Joel Agee in Phillips, ed., Photography in the Modern Era, 112. 69.Ibid., 113. 70.“Es lГ¤sst sich nicht erzГ¤hlend nachzeichnen, was nur das Bild in der ganzen Tiefe seiner Deutbarkeit, mit der FГјlle seiner geheimen Hinweise auf den Sinn des Universums lebendig machen kann. Wer Augen hat zu sehen, der sehe.” Heise in Die Welt ist schГ¶n, 17. 71.“Die Dresdener Zwingertreppe mit ihrer geschwungenen Stufung gleicht der MeereswogeВ .В .В .” Ibid., 17. 72.“.В .В .В aus dem Wesen der Dinge heraus die erhГ¶hte Form gefunden wird.” Ibid., 14. 73.“Bunt ist diese Welt im hГ¶chsten, im Гјbertragenen Sinn—der Sinn aber ist leichter auffindbar und lГ¤sst sich wirksamer betonen, wenn er im neuen Reich schwarz-weisser FlГ¤chen, durch das Fehlen der Farbe halb schon entmaterialisiert, gleichsam in eine geistigere SphГ¤re gebannt wird.” Ibid., 15. 74.Sarah James foregrounds the commercial nature of Neue Sachlichkeit photography in her book, Common Ground: German Photographic Cultures Across the Iron Curtain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013). See also Gerda Breuer, “Convincing Rather than Persuading: On the Relationship between Object Photography and Product Design,” in The Ecstasy of Things: from the functional object to the

fetish in twentieth century photographs, eds. Thomas Seelig and Urs Stahel (GГ¶ttigen: Fotomuseum Winterthur, 2004), 88–95. 75.“Es ist bezeichnend fГјr Renger-Patzsch, dass er kein PortrГ¤t-Photograph ist, jedenfalls aus der beliebtesten SpezialitГ¤t niemals einen Beruf machen kГ¶nnte. Sind nicht auch die Tiere interessanter als die Menschen? Seine Photos kГ¶nnten es glauben machen. Wieder hebt er, wie bei den Blumen, die Erscheinung ins Typische.” Heise in Die Welt ist schГ¶n, 8–9. 76.“Und Menschen sind ihm wie Tiere. Er sucht auf, was die Gattung vertritt. Ein kleines SomaliMГ¤dchen mit einem Kopf blank wie eine Billardkugel, zeigt das durch die EinflГјsse der Natur stГ¤rker Page 206 →als durch Menschengeist gebildete Kindergesicht. Die Maori-Mumie erweckt gespenstisch eine ausgestorbene Rasse.” Ibid., 9. 77.“Es ist Гјblich geworden, auch von Kunstwerken schГ¶ne TeilstГјcke photographisch herauszuheben. Kein Buch Гјber mittelalterliche Plastik ohne einzelne KГ¶pfe. Der Г¤sthetische Reiz mag sich verstГ¤rken, das Heiligenbild aber wird aller Macht entkleidet, wenn etwa Kopf und Leichnam Christi auf dem Schoss der Mutter ohne deren trauerndes Antlitz erscheint. Eine Rechtfertigung ist einzig in der Tatsache zu suchen, dass uns die alten Symbole leer geworden sind und daher als berechtigte Folge hier eine nur kГјnstlerische Betrachtungsweise an die Stelle der anbetenden getreten ist. Die Kamera erschliesst neue Felder der Verehrung, andere zerstГ¶rt sie.” Ibid., 15. In his mention of books on medieval sculpture that contain photographs of single heads, Heise might have had the publication by Richard Hamann, Deutsche KГ¶pfe des Mittelalters (Marburg Press 1923) in mind. The reference testifies to Heise’s association of Renger’s photographs with an art historical context. 78.Siegfried Kracauer, “Photography,” in The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays, ed. and trans. Thomas Levin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 61. 79.“NatГјrlich sind die ausgewГ¤hlten Beispiele willkГјrlich, wie jedes Beispiel. Es kГ¶nnten auch andere Bilder der voraufgehenden Tafeln an die Stelle treten. Es soll nur abschliessend in gedrГ¤ngter Folge eine Vorstellung zu geben versucht werden von den verschiedenen MГ¶glichkeiten, die angeschauten GegenstГ¤nde zu symbolhaltiger EinprГ¤gsamkeit zu steigern.” Heise in Die Welt ist schГ¶n, 16. 80.“zum Ineinandergreifen zu hГ¶herem Zweck verpflichtet, wie das die MГ¶glichkeit klaren ZusammenfГјgens der zehn Finger zweier HГ¤nder zur geschlossen grossen Form, zu einem hГ¶chst unschematischen und doch ganz eindeutig aufstrebenden Bau beweist.” Ibid., 17. 81.“Im Гјbrigen sollte man solche Kitschtitel wie вЂDie Welt ist schГ¶n’ endlich mal als lediglich fГјr den Geschmack der grossen Menge berechnet abtun und versuchen, auf eine andere, sachlichere und daher honorigere Weise das Publikum zum Kauf anzulocken. Jedenfalls bei BГјchern mit so wertvollem Inhalt.” H.v. Wedderkop, “Albert Renger-Patzsch,” Der Querschnitt 9 (1929): 205. 82.See Heckert, “вЂIch werde dafГјr tun,” 19–27. 83.Karl With, “Photographie. Die Welt ist schГ¶n,” KГ¶nlische Zeitung (30 December 1928). Quoted in Ulrich RГјter, “The Reception of Albert Renger-Patzsch’s Die Welt ist schГ¶n,” History of Photography 21, no. 3 (1997): 192. 84.See Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, Neue Sachlichkeit: Deutsche Malerei seit dem Expressionismus (Mannheim: StГ¤dliche Kunsthalle, 1925). Hartlaub characterized Neue Sachlichkeit painting as a reaction against earlier developments in nonobjectivity. See also Franz Roh, Nach-Expressionismus, Magischer Realismus (Leipzig: 1925). 85.“Nicht zufГ¤llig erinnert gerade eine solche Aufnahme an ein bekanntes GemГ¤lde aus dem Kreise der Maler вЂNeue Sachlichkiet.’ Die Г¤sthetische Einstellung ist hier und dort die gleiche.“ Heise in Die Welt ist schГ¶n, 13. 86.“Analog zur Malerei kГ¶nnte man auch hier von einer вЂNeuen Sachlichkeit’ sprechen.В .В .В . In der Photographie Г¤ussert sich diese Sachlichkeit in der scharfen Wiedergabe des Objekts, in seiner klaren Hervorhebung, ja fast Isolierung gegenГјber der Umgebung und dem Hintergrund.” Kurt Wilhelm-KГ¤stner, “Fotografie der Gegenwart. GrundsГ¤tzliches zur Ausstellung im Museum Folkwang Essen,” Photographische Rundschau 66 (1929): 93–94. 87.Kurt Wilhelm-KГ¤stner, Das MГјnster in Essen (Essen: Fredebeul & Koennen Verlag, 1929). WilhelmKГ¤stner credits Renger for the photographs in this volume. 88.Hermann Muthesius, Stilarchitektur und Baukunst: Wandlungen der Architektur in neunzehnten Jahrhundert und ihr heutiger Standpunkt (MГјlheim-Ruhr: K. Schimmelpfen, 1902), 50–51. Translated

as Hermann Muthesius, Style-Architecture and Building-Art: Transformations of Architecture in Page 207 →the Nineteenth Century and its Present Condition, trans. Stanford Anderson (Santa Monica: The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994). 89.Frederic Schwartz, The Werkbund, 42. 90.Schwartz has convincingly argued that discussions of style and Sachlichkeit in the context of the Werkbund were also heavily informed by the writings of Georg Simmel, in particular “Das Problem des Stiles,” Dekorative Kunst 11, no. 7 (1908): 307–16. “Simmel sees the possibility of the generation of Style by the serial reproduction of identical forms.” Schwartz, The Werkbund, 65. 91.“.В .В .В inneren Strebungen, die seelische VitalitГ¤t, das Gegeneinander der KrГ¤fte und WollungenВ .В .В .” Walter Riezler, “Einheit der Welt: Ein GesprГ¤ch,” Die Form 2, no. 8 (1927): 246. 92.“Aber ich sehe, dass unter diesen Bildern sich auch Aufnahmen von technischen Formen, Teilen von Maschinen und von Eisenkonstruktionen befinden.В .В .В . Wo die Technik beginnt, dass es da mit der Einheit alles Lebendigen zu Ende ist.В .В .В . Wie es mГ¶glich ist, auch diesen toten, rechnerischnГјchternen Gebilden mit der Hilfe der photographischen вЂKunst’ einen trГјgerischen Schein von Leben zu verleihen.” Ibid., 246–47. 93.“.В .В .В sondern dass er besser und anders zu sehen lernt. Wir wollen einstweilen einmal die вЂSeele’ aus dem Spiel lassen und lieber von der вЂlebendiger Kraft’ reden, von der wahrscheinlich auch die вЂSeele’ nur ein Teil istВ .В .В .” Ibid., 247. 94.“Es ist keine Frage, dass das Massenerzeugnis fГјr unsere Zeit so charakteristisch ist wie das handwerkliche Einzelerzeugnis kunsthandwerklicher Art fГјr Mittelalter und Altertum.” Wilhelm Lotz, “Das Massenerzeugnis,” Die Form 4, no. 18 (1929): 501. 95.“.В .В .В wГ¤hrend das wesentliche Charakteristikum des Massenerzeugnisses eine stetige Fertigung ist, begleitet con stГ¤ndigem Massenabsatz.” Ibid. 96.“.В .В .В dass das Massenerzeugnis nicht ein Gebilde ist, das uns die Maschine diktiert, sondern dass es das Ergebnis der Feststellung gleichartiger BedГјrfnisse der heutigen Menschen ist.” Ibid., 503. 97.“Der Reporter, der wissenschaftliche Fotograf und viele, die sich als Gruppen nicht festlegen lassen, wollen vorerst nur das Object mГ¶glichst gut und sachlich aufnehmen.” Wilhelm Lotz, “Fotografie und Objekt: zu den Fotos von Renger-Patzsch,” Die Form 4, no. 7 (1929): 163. 98.“Es ist sicher eine wichtige und vornehme Aufgabe der Fotografie, ihrem Beschauer das Objekt zu zeigen. Sie ist uns heute unentbehrliches Hilfsmittel der Vorstellung und der Vermittlung von sichtbaren Tatsachen geworden. Durch die Fotos der illustrierten Zeitungen und Zeitschriften erfahren wir viel von dem, was heute vorgeht, und es macht uns oft einen strГ¤rkeren Eindruck als der Text der Zeitung. Dem Wissenschaftler gibt das Foto die MГ¶glichkeit, Vergleiche anzustellen, und oft zeigt ihm das Objektiv Dinge, die er mit seinem Auge nicht sehen kann.” Ibid., 163–64. 99.“Rengers Aufnahmen lehren uns ganz anders sehen.В .В .В . Wir lernen die Ding sozusagen sehen, wie es unserer Zeit entspricht.” Ibid., 167. 100.“Das Auge orientiert sich Гјber die Aussenwelt nicht mit einem Blick, sondern durch eine grosse Anzahl von Einzelbildern.” Albert Renger-Patzsch, “Von den Grenzen der Fotografie: aus AufsГ¤tzen von Albert Renger-Patzsch,” in Albert Renger-Patzsch: der Photograph (Berlin: Ulrich Riemerschmidt Verlag, 1942), 20. 101.For a discussion of the term Sachlichkeit in the architectural context of Weimar Germany, see Frederic J. Schwartz, “Form Follows Fetish: Adolf Behne and the Problem of Sachlichkeit,” Oxford Art Journal 21, no. 2 (1998): 45–77. 102.See Rosalind Krauss, “Grids,” in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), 8–22. 103.“Auch der Photograph lГ¶st aus der Vielheit der Erscheinungen das charakteristische TeilstГјck, unterstreicht das Wesentliche, lГ¤sst weg, was zum Schweifen ins Vielgestalitge verfГјhrt.” Heise in Die Welt ist schГ¶n, 7.

Page 208 →Chapter 3

1.The Wasmuth Press printed series of photographic books with copper engravings, such as Orbis Terrarum: Die LГ¤nder der Erde im Bild. Ernst Wasmuth also published many architectural volumes in the 1920s, such as Wasmuths Montasheft fГјr Baukunst and Werner Lindner Bauten der Technik: ihre Form und Wirkung (Berlin: Wasmuth, 1927). Nierendorf originally intended to publish Urformen der Kunst himself under the title Architektonische Grundformen in Grossaufnahamen (Fundamental Forms of Architecture in Enlargements) in 1926 through his own publishing house, Nierendorf Verlag. A note at the end of Robert Breuer, “GrГјne Architektur,” Uhu 2, no. 9 (1926): 28–38 announces the forthcoming publication. 2.Anna Atkins cyanotype album Photographs of British Algae (1843) is one example of a comparable nineteenth-century book with plants. See Carol Armstrong, Scenes in a Library: Reading the Photograph in the Book, 1843–1875 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 179–275. See also Ulrike Gauss, August Kotzsch 1836–1910: Pionier der deutschen Photographie (Stuttgart: Graphische Sammlung Staatsgalerie, 1992). 3.See Bernhard Mensch and Peter Pachnicke, eds., Die Wunder der Natur: Romanische Kapitelle, alte PflanzenbГјcher, Blossfeldts Fotografien (Oberhausen: Ludwig Galerie, 2005). On the history of botanical books, see Elisabeth B. MacDougall, “A Paradise of Plants: Exotica, Rarities, and Botanical Fantasies, ” in The Age of the Marvelous, ed. Joy Kenseth (Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, 1991), 145–57. 4.Paul Dobe, Wilde Blumen der deutschen Flora (KГ¶nigstein im Taunus & Leipzig: Karl Robert Langewiesche, 1929), Karl Otto Bartels, BlГјte und Frucht im Leben der BГ¤ume, (KГ¶nigstein and Leipzig: Langewiesche, 1930), BlГјhende Welt (KГ¶nigstein im Taunus and Leipzig: Karl Robert Langewiesche, 1929), Paul Wolff, Formen des Lebens: Botanische Lichtbildstudien (KГ¶nigstein im Taunus and Leipzig: Karl Robert Langewiesche, 1931), and Ernst Fuhrmann, ed., Die Welt der Pflanze (Auriga Press, 1924). See Rainer Stamm and Kai Uwe Schierz, eds., Die Sprache der Pflanzen: Klassiker der Pflanzenfotografie im FrГјhen 20. Jahrhundert (Erfurt: Kunsthalle Erfurt, 2000). 5.“вЂFГјr Alle,’ das heisst fГјr den Gelehrten und den Ungelehrten, den Armen und den Reichen, den Hand-Werker und den Geist-Werker.В .В .В . Der Preis ist auch bei sehr kleinen Mitteln erschwinglich.” BlГјhende Welt, n.p. The price of BlГјhende Welt is listed on its cover as 120 Pfenning. Paul Wolff’s Formen des Lebens was priced at 3.30 Marks. Books in the Blauen BГјcher series were priced between 2 and 4 Marks. 6. Deutscher Wald in schГ¶nen Bilder (KГ¶nigstein im Taunus: Karl Robert Langewiesche, 1927); Der kГ¶lner Dom in 32 Bilder (KГ¶nigstein im Taunus: Karl Robert Langewiesche, 1928); Deutsche Alpen in schГ¶nen Bildern (KГ¶nigstein im Taunus: Karl Robert Langewiesche, 1930). 7.“Aus jedem Bande spricht eine WГ¤rme und eine EinfГјhlung in Deutschen Wesen.” BlГјhende Welt, n.p. 8.“Vielmehr will dieses Buch ein Beitrag und Hilfsmittel zur Erkenntnis des Wesens der Pflanze sein. Die Mittel der modernen Photographie sind hier in Dienst gestellt, um innerhalb des Pflanzenreichs etwas erkennen, vielleicht nur ahnen zu lassen von der formbildenden Kraft des Lebens.” Wolff, Formen des Lebens, 5. 9.The caption reads, “Die BlГјte hГ¤ngt am Ende eines Stammgliedes herab und die zahlreichen StaubgefГ¤sse kommen aus der BlГјtenrГ¶hre wie ein Wasserstraht heraus.” Ibid., 13. 10.See Romy Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia: Art and Politics in France between the Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); Michael Hau, Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany: A Social History, 1890–1930 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003); John A. Williams, Turning to Nature in Germany: Hiking, Nudism, and Conservation, 1900–1940 (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2007). Page 209 → 11.“Alle Bilder dieses Buches stellen deutsche Pflanzen dar. Diese wachsen wild in unserem Vaterland oder immerhin im deutschen Sprachgebiet, von Ursprung an. Solche Pflanzen, die in Deutschland aus Kulturen verwildert vorkommen, oder die auf Strassen unserer Verkehrsmittel aus fremden LГ¤ndern hereingekommen sind, befinden sich nicht in dieser Sammlung.” Dobe, Wilde Blumen der deutschen Flora, 5. 12.Anne Biermann is credited with the photograph on page 101. The photographs on pages 31, 104, 105, and 107 are by Renger-Patzsch. 13.On Wilde Blumen der deutschen Flora, see Magilow, The Photography of Crisis, 63–77. 14.Dobe, Wilde Blumen der deutschen Flora, 7.

15.As a comparison, 25,000 copies of Formen des Lebens were printed by 1931 and 65,000 were printed by 1960. Fourteen editions of Urformen der Kunst were printed between 1928 and 1953, including versions published in English, French, and Swedish. 16. Die Kamera—Ausstellung fГјr Fotografie, Druck und Reproduktion (4–19 November 1933). The exhibition traveled to Stuttgart in March 1934. 17.Rittelmann, “Constructed Identities: The German Photobook from Weimar to the Third Reich” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 2002), 173. 18.See the text by Gert Mattenklott. “Karl Blossfeldt—Photographs.” In Karl Blossfeldt: Art Forms in Nature, the Complete Edition (Munich: Schirmer Art Books, 1999), 13–27; Anne GantefГјhrerTrier, “Das Photographische Oeuvre von Karl Blossfeldt und seine Umsetzung in Lehre und Kunst,” Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 59 (1998): 259–79; Andreas Haus, “Die fotographische Verlebendigung der Form bei Karl Blossfeldt,” Konstructionen von Natur, ed. Angela Lammert (Berlin: Akademie der KГјnste, 2001), 89–100. For a discussion of the surge of interest in Blossfeldt’s work in the 1990s, see Dorothea Peters, “Karl Blossfeldts Geysir neuer Bildwelten?” Fotogeschichte 20 (2000): 60–73. 19.JГјrgen Wilde and Ann Wilde, eds., Karl Blossfeldt: Working Collages (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 8. 20.Paul Wedephol, Karl Blossfeldt, 1865–1932: Pflanzenfotografien (Berlin: Galerie Taube, 1984), n.p. 21.A second edition of Urformen der Kunst (5,000 copies) was published in 1929, along with British (Art Forms in Nature: A. Zwemmer, London), American (Art Forms in Nature: E. Weyhe, New York), and French (La Plante: A. Calavas Г‰diteur, Paris) editions. A Swedish edition was published in 1930 (Konstformer I Naturen: BokfГ¶rlaget Natur och Kultur, Stockholm). The popular success of the book prompted Blossfeldt to produce a sequel in 1932 entitled Wundergarten der Natur: neue Bilddokumente der schГ¶ner Pflanzenformen (Nature’s Garden of Miracles: New Documentary Images of Beautiful Forms of Plants) (Berlin: Verlag fГјr Kunstwissenschaft, 1932). 22.Although Nierendorf introduced the idea of assembling a book of Blossfeldt’s photographs to Wasmuth, the publisher would have already been somewhat familiar with Blossfeldt’s work. Wasmuth published the decorative art manuals of Blossfeldt’s mentor, Moritz Meurer, in 1889. Moritz Meurer, Das Studium der Naturformen an kunstgewerblichen Schulen. VorschlГ¤ge zur EinfГјhrung eines vergleichenden Unterrichts von M. Meurer (Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth, 1889). 23.On the history of Galerie Nierendorf, see Anja Walter-Ris. “Die Geschichte der Galerie Nierendorf: Kunstleidenschaft im Dienst der Moderne Berlin/New York 1920–1995.” (Ph.D. dissertation, Freie UniversitГ¤t, 2000). Nierendorf was running into financial troubles by 1927 and was unable to finance the publication of Urformen der Kunst. However, Nierendorf earned an honorarium of 10,000 Marks from the publication of Urformen der Kunst with Wasmuth, enough to correct his financial problems. See WalterRis, 158–60. 24.“.В .В .В merkwГјrdig verwandt scheint die phantastische Welt der Kakteen der fremdartigen Formenwelt der Neger Afrikas und Neu-Guineas.” Berliner-BГ¶rsen-Courier, no. 127 (12 April 1926), n.p. Page 210 → 25.“So unendlich vielgestaltig das Reich der mit uns wachsenden und vergehenden kristallische, animalischen und vegetativen Formen auch ist: sie werden bestimmt von einem jenseitigen, starren und ewigen Gesetz und gehorchen dem unergrГјndlich geheimnisvollen Machtwort der SchГ¶pfung, das sie ins Dasein rief. Alle Naturform ist stГ¤ndige Wiederholung des gleichen Ablaufs seit Jahrtausenden und nur durch klimatische Verschiebungen oder wechselnde Bodenbeschaffenheit VerГ¤nderungen unterworfen, die an der Grundgestalt nicht rГјtteln. Farn und Schachtelhalme hatten ihre heutige Form schon vor unvorstellbaren Zeiten. Nur ihre GrГ¶sse hat sich unter der Entwicklung der ErdatmosphГ¤re geГ¤ndert.” Karl Nierendorf in Urformen der Kunst (Berlin: Wasmuth Verlag, 1928), v. 26.“.В .В .В die alle Stilformen der Vergangenheit umfasst, von dramatischer Gespanntheit bis zu strenger Ruhe und selbst zum Ausdruck lyrischer, innerster Beseelung.” Ibid., viii. 27.“Kunst entspringt unmittelbar dem gegenwГ¤rtigsten Kraftstrom der Zeit, deren sichtbarster Ausdruck sie ist.” Ibid., v. 28.For a discussion of connections between Naturphilosophie and the invention of photography, see Anne McCauley, “Talbot’s Rouen Window: Romanticism, Naturphilosophie and the Invention of

Photography,” History of Photography 26, no. 2 (2002): 124–31. 29.Quoted and translated in S.R. Morgan, “Schelling and the origins of his Naturphilosophie,” in Romanticism and the Sciences, eds. Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 31. On the development of Naturphilosophie, see also Walter D. Wetzels, “Johann Wilhelm Ritter: Romantic physics in Germany,” in Romanticism and the Sciences, 199–212. 30.J.W. Goethe, “Naples, 17 May 1787,” Italian Journey, 1786–1788, trans. W.H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer (New York: Pantheon Books, 1962), 305–06. 31.“Die flatternde Zierlichkeit eines Rokoko-Ornamentes wie die heroische Strenge eines RenaissanceLeuchter, mystisch-wirres Rankenwerk gotischer Flamboyants, edel SГ¤ulenschafte, Kuppeln und TГјrme exotischer Architektur, goldgetriebene BischofsstГ¤be, schmiedeeiserne Gitter, kostbare ZepterВ .В .В . allgestaltete Form hat ihr Urbild in der Welt der Pflanzen.” Nierendorf in Urformen der Kunst, viii. 32.“Die Aufnahme dieses kleinen keimenden Triebes (Tafel Nr. 96) kГјndet mit besonderer Deutlichkeit die Einheit von lebender und gestalteter Form. Der Tanz, gebunden an den zietlichen Ablauf des NaturgeschehensВ .В .В .” Ibid., ix. 33.“In Film erleben wir durch Zeitraffer and Zeitlupe das Auf-und Abschwellen, das Atmen und Wachstum der Pflanzen. Das Mikroskop offenbart Weltsysteme im Wessertropfen, und die Instrumente der Sternwerte erГ¶ffnen die Unendlichkeiten des Alls. Die Technik ist es, die heute unsere Beziehung zur Natur enger als je gestaltet und uns mit Hilfe ihrer Apparate Einblick in Welten schafft, die bisher unseren Sinnen verschlossen waren.” Ibid., vii. 34.“Photographie bergen phantastische MГ¶glichkeiten hohen Г¤sthetischen Ranges, und tausend Anzeichen beweisen, dass der so oft beklagte Sieg der Technik kein Sieg der Materie ist, sondern des schГ¶pferischen Geistes, der sich nur in neuen Formen manifestiert.” Ibid. 35.“Die vorliegende Auswahl umfasst 120 Tafeln aus dem reichen Material, und jede einzelne offenbart die Einheit des schГ¶pferischen Willens in Natur und Kunst, dokumentiert durch das sachliche Mittel der photographischen Technik und gerade dadurch um so stГ¤rker Гјberzeugend.” Ibid., viii. 36.“Von assyrischen Tempel bis zum Stadion der Gegenwart, von dem in Meditation versunkenen Buddha bis zum Denker von Rodin,” Ibid., v. 37.Breuer, “GrГјne Architektur,” Uhu 2, no. 9 (1926): 28–38. 38.The photograph of Indian balsam appears, although cropped slightly closer, as plate 19 in Urformen der Kunst. Plate 55, an image of a maiden-hair fern, also appears in Breuer’s photo-essay. Page 211 → 39.“Der eine [Blossfeldt] arbeitet systematisch eine besondere Kategorie von photographischem Dokument heraus, pflanzlich Formen, die den Гјberraschenden Beweis fГјr die organische Natur der bildnerischen Phantasie erbringen, ein geistiges Unternehmen, fГјr das die Photographie als zauberes Mittel eintritt.” Walther Petry, “Neue Photographie: aus Anlass einer Ausstellung in der Galerie Nierendorf,” Frankfurter Zeitung 73, no. 310 (1929): 2. 40.“Sie verleiht dem AlltГ¤glichen, dem immer und doch nie Erfasten die GrГ¶sse des auОІerordenlichen Ereignisses, des Erlebnisses einer Sensation. Geheimnisvolle Beziehungen zwischen Menschengeist und Natur werden mit symbolhafter Kraft erhellt und bestГ¤tigt. In vielen Jahren mГјhevoller Arbeit gelang es Herr Professor Blonssfeldt [sic] diese Photos herzustellen, die das Kleine ins Monumentale und das Monument auf seinen Ursprung rГјcken.” Karl Otten, “Das Genie der Pflanzen,” Das Illustrierte Blatt 14, no. 22 (1926): 478. 41.“zufГ¤llige Г¤hnlichkeit (der noch hier und da durch zurechtstutzen nachgeholfen wird) zwischen natur- und kunt- form bedeutet noch lange keinen inneren zusammenhang—oder meint autor und herausgeber wirklich, dass zwischen der aufnahme des kurztriebes vom ahorn und einem stammbaumpfal der indianer, einem hauspfosten der maori, oder Г¤hnlichen plastischen arbeiten primitiver irgendein noch so Г¤usslicher umstand besteht? ich fГјrchte, dass sie das wirklich meinen.” Stanislav Kubicki, “Urformen der Kunst,” a bis. z: organ der gruppe progressiver kГјnstler kГ¶ln 1, no. 3 (1929): 10. 42.“man denke noch, dass die geforgerte Г¤hnlichkeit nur in dieser ansicht zu finden ist, etwas mehr von rechts oder links gesehen sieht die pflanze ganz anders aus.” Ibid. 43.вЂUrformen der Kunst’ lautet sein irreleitender Titel. Nach diesem Titel wГ¤ren die Pflanzenbildungen als Vorbilder zu den architektonischen SchГ¶pfungen der Menschen genutzt worden. Wohl ist es verblГјffend, AnklГ¤nge an alle mГ¶glichen Stilgattungen der Kulturzeiten in den Knoten- und

Knospenbildungen, in den Ranken und Blattstruktur der Pflanzen zu erkennen: Г¤gyptische KapitГ¤le, persische SchnГ¶rkelein, indischen Pomp, primitive GГ¶tzenschnitzerei, spГ¤tgotische Treibarkeit—Filigran und SГ¤ulen, Katakomben und Zinnen, Portale und Rosetten—den Schwung des Barock, hellenische Strenge, gotische HysterieВ .В .В . Diese AnklГ¤nge, so nahe sie vielfach sind, beweisen mitnichten, dass die frГјheren Schaffenden Plagiatoren der Pfanzen waren. Vielleicht beweisen sie allerdings, dass sie pflanzenhafteren Wesen waren als die Schaffenden von heute.” Hugo Sieker, “Mit 1/25 Sekunde: Zu neuen lichtbildnerischen BГјchern und Begebenheiten,” Der Kreis 6, no. 6 (1929): 354. 44.On Blossfeldt’s apprenticeship to Meurer, see Anne GantefГјhrer-Trier, “Das photographische Oeuvre von Karl Blossfeldt und seine Umsetzung in Lehre und Kunst,” Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 59 (1998): 259–79. On Meurer, see Nancy Rudloff, “Von Waldenburg nach Rom: der Maler und Kunstschulreformer Moritz Meurer (1839–1916),” in Zwischen Residenz und TГ¶pferscheibe. 750 Jahre Waldenburg (Waldenburg: 2004), 117–29. 45.“Die letztere ist aber der einzige Weg, sich deren Formensprache anzueignen. Vor allem muss die Liebe zur selbstГ¤ndigen Beobachtung der Naturformen wieder erweckt werden.” Moritz Meurer, Die Ziele und Bedingungen des Naturformenstudiums an technischen Kunstschulen und meine Bestrebungen auf diesem Gebiete (Dresden: Gerhard KГјhtmann, 1894), 21. 46.“Der Unterricht der Schule wird sich weniger mit den Stilformen einzelner Zeiten und LГ¤nder, als vielmehr mit den allgemeinen Bedingungen und Prozessen des kГјnstlerischen Schaffen beschГ¤ftigen mГјssen, welche uns die Kenntnis der kunstgeschichtlichen Гњberlieferungen zu erfassen lehrt.” Moritz Meurer, Vergleichende Formenlehre des Ornamentes und der Pflanze: mit besonderer BerГјcksichtigung der Entwicklungsgeschichte der architektonischen Kunstformen (Dresden: Gerhard KГјhtmann, 1909), x. 47.“Die fortlaufende GegenГјberstellung von Kunst- und Naturformen dient dabei gleichzeitig dem allgemeineren Zwecke, die den technischen KГјnsten und Naturerscheinungen gemeinsamen Page 212 →Gesetze und Formenelemente anschaulich zu machen, deren Erfassung bei der Behandlung kГјnstlerischer Probleme heute noch ebenso wirksam werden kann, wie sie es in den SchГ¶pfungen der Vergangenheit war.” Ibid., xi. 48.“.В .В .В VerviefГ¤ltigungen und Modelle von Naturformen zu beschaffen, welche den hГ¤ufigen Mangel der Originale ersetzen kГ¶nnen, zugleich aber auch geeignet sind, den Weg zu zeigen, welchen das Naturstudium des technischen KГјnstlers zu nehmen hat, um den Uebergang der Naturform in die Kunstform zu finden.” Ibid., x. 49.“Gelegentlich dieser photographischen VergrГ¶sserungen lernt man Гјbrigens auf einen Formenreichtum der Natur achten, welcher dem flГјchtigen Betrachter wegen seiner Kleinheit entgeht. So sehen Sie z.B. in dieser schГ¶nen Form, die keiner wieder erkennt und die meist fГјr eine Ananas gehalten wird, die Kelchgruppierung der KleeblГјte, aus welcher die BlГјtenblГ¤tter entfernt wurden.” Ibid., 30. 50.“Die Beispiele der dem Schulgebrauche dienenden Wandtafeln wurde in den Rahmen eines Stufenganges gebracht, der dem zunehmenden Auffassungs- und DarstellungsvermГ¶gen der SchГјlers Rechnung trГ¤gt, gleichzeitig aber auch den aufsteigenden Entwickelungsphasen der historischen Ornamenttypen folgt. Die ornamentalen wie die pflanzlichen Darstellung der Tafeln sind daher so geordnet, dass das Verstandnis der folgenden Formen durch die vorangehenden Beispiele erleichtert wird.” Ibid., 3. 51.Moritz Meurer, Meurers Pflanzenbilder: Ornamental verwerthbare Naturstudien fГјr Architekten Kunsthandwerker/ Musterzeichner (Dresden: Gerhard KГјhtmann, 1899). 52.Moritz Meurer, Pflanzenformen: Vorbildliche Beispiele zur EinfГјhrung in das ornamentale Studium der Pflanze (Dresden: Gerhard KГјhtmann, 1895). 53.While the creators of the models and plaster casts reproduced in Pflanzenbilder are noted in the book’s index, the authors of the photographs are not. When a plate shows a photograph of an actual plant (not a cast or mold) the image is said to be “from nature.” Therefore, it is not possible to say precisely for which photographs in Pflanzenbilder Blossfeldt is responsible. The notation that nature is the author of the images perhaps indicates that Meurer considered photography to be less skillful than sculptural modeling. According to the credits given in the index, Blossfeldt made the plaster relief of Nigella in volume 1, plate 5, which resembles the radial symmetry of flowers in Urformen der Kunst. In volume 2, plate 7, Blossfeldt’s bronze models are arranged into an ornamental layout with a model of Salvia

glutinosa in the center of the page and petrified blooms of Cobaea scandens at the four corners. 54.“WГ¤hrend meines siebenjГ¤hrigen Aufenthalts in Rom und einer lГ¤ngern gemeinsamen Studienreise nach Griechenland, lernte ich durch Prof. Meurer erkennen, wie die alten KulturvГ¶lker ihre Anregungen direkt dem unerschГ¶pflichen Formenschatz der Natur entnahmen, wie sie Pflanzenformen dem jeweiligen Zweck und Material anpassten und wie diese Formen wieder von spГ¤teren Generationen Гјbernommen und umgebildet wurden.” Blossfeldt, 1929, quoted in Bernhard Mensch and Peter Pachnicke, eds., Die Wunder der Natur: Romanische Kapitelle, alte PflanzГ«nbГјcher, Blossfeldts Fotografien (Oberhausen: Ludwig Galerie, 2005), 140. 55.Blossfeldt’s poster boards are now in the Karl Blossfeldt Archive, Ann and JГјrgen Wilde and reproduced in Karl Blossfeldt: Working Collages,. eds. Ann Wilde and JГјrgen Wilde (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 13. It is not known for certain when he began organizing his photographs on these boards, but it was likely long before Urformen der Kunst was conceived. 56.Ulrike Meyer Stump, “Karl Blossfeldt’s Working Collages—A Photographic Sketchbook,” in Karl Blossfeldt: Working Collages, 13. 57.In Karl Blossfeldt: Working Collages, the poster boards are sequenced using the numbers that were, according to Ulrich Meyer Stump, noted by Blossfeldt in their lower right corners. See Ibid., 10. Page 213 → 58.Anne GantefГјhrer-Trier has located the original image of every photograph in Urformen der Kunst on these poster boards. See Anne GantefГјhrer-Trier, “Der KГјnstler als Archivar. Zu den Arbeitscollagen von Karl Blossfeldt,” in Konstruktionen von Natur, ed. Angela Lammert (Berlin: Akademie der KГјnste, 2000), 13–22. 59.Based on the captions of Blossfeldt prints that appeared in Deutsches Lichtbild, as quoted by Gert Mattenklott, “Karl Blossfeldt—Photographs,” in Karl Blossfeldt: Art Forms in Nature, the Complete Edition (Munich: Schirmer Art Books, 1999), 16. 60.Stump, “Karl Blossfeldt’s Working Collages,” 12. 61.Rosalind Krauss, “The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism,” October 19 (1981): 3–34. 62.“Vor kurzem folgte die Histoire naturelle (bei J. Bucher, Paris VI), eine Mappe mit 34 grossen Phototypien nach Zeichnungen zu einer mythischen Natur- und SchГ¶pfungsgeschichte, mit kleinem Vorwort von Hans Arp.В .В .В . ZufГ¤llig liegen mir nun aber Proben aus den Blohsfeltschen [sic], hoffentlich bald erscheinenden Gross- und Nahaufnahmen der Pflanzenwelt vor, die ebenfalls wie eine mythische Natur- un SchГ¶pfungsgeschichte wirken. Es sind nur Photographien, bisweilen aber sogar noch symbolischer, noch unheimlicher als jene GeschГ¶pfe des wahrlich phantastischen Max Ernst.” Franz Roh, “Max Ernst und die StГјckungsgraphik,” Das Kunstblatt 11, no. 11 (1927): 397. 63.Nierendorf had a relationship with Max Ernst, a fellow RheinlГ¤nder, by 1914 and began exhibiting his work shortly thereafter. See Walter-Ris, “Die Geschichte der Galerie Nierendorf”, 51–72. 64.Georges Bataille, “Le Langage des Fleurs,” Documents 1, no. 3 (1929). Translated in Karl Blossfeldt: Art Forms in Nature, the Complete Edition, (Munich: Schirmer Art Books, 1999), 9. 65.Ibid.,10. Bataille’s emphasis. 66.Ibid. 67.On Einstein’s Negerplastik, see Ezio Bassani, “Les oeuvre illustrГ©es dans Negerplastik (1915) et dans Afrikansiche Plastik (1921)” Г‰tudes germanique 53, no. 1 (1998): 99–121; Sebastian Ziedler, “Totality Against a Subject: Carl Einstein’s Negerplastik,” October 107 (2004): 14–46. 68.“Ich lasse das Abbildungsmaterial getrennt vom Text folgen, da es in seiner KontinuitГ¤t die im Text erГ¶rterten Probleme VISUELL deutlich macht.” Moholy-Nagy, MPF, 39. 69.Charles Haxthausen briefly discusses compelling intersections between Moholy’s and Einstein’s visual theories in “Benjamin/Einstein: Reproduction/Repetition,” October 107 (2004): 47–74. 70.Despite my suggestion here that photography plays a large role in his visual theories, Einstein remained skeptical, if not hostile, to the revolutionary capacity of reproductive media. Haxthausen calls Einstein’s reluctance to consider the potential of film and photographs as a cognitive tool one of his great blind spots. (Ibid.) In his brief mentions of photography in his writing, Einstein seemed to have no concept of the medium outside of its reproductive capacity. 71.Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (Cambridge,

MA: MIT Press, 1989), 71–73. According to Buck-Morss, Benjamin’s interest in the Urform was brought about by George Simmel’s book on Goethe published in 1913. 72.Walter Benjamin, “News about Flowers,” in The Work of Art in the Age of its Mechanical Reproducibility, trans. Michael Jennings, 271. The essay was originally published in Die literarische Welt (November 1928). 73.Ibid., 271–72. 74.Ibid.,272–73. 75.Walter Benjamin, “Little History of Photography,” 279. 76.Benjamin, “News about Flowers,” 272. 77.Quoted in Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing, 114. 78.On Benjamin’s construction of history and temporality, see Georges Didi-Huberman, Devant le temps: histoire de l’art et anachronisme des images (Paris: Les Г‰ditions de Minuit, 2000). Page 214 → 79.Ernst Bloch, Erbschaft dieser Zeit (Zurich: Oprecht & Helbling, 1935). 80.Ernst Bloch, Heritage of Our Times, trans. Stephen Plaice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 1. 81.Ibid., 97. On Bloch’s notion of Ungleichzeitigkeit, see Frederic J. Schwartz, Blind Spots, 103–36; Anson Rabinbach, “Unclaimed Heritage: Ernst Bloch’s Heritage of Our Times and the Theory of Fascism,” New German Critique 11 (1977): 5–21. 82.Bloch, Heritage of Our Times, 62. Bloch’s emphasis.

Chapter 4 1.Lerski’s earlier work in the United States caught the eye of the champion of pictorialism, Sadakichi Hartmann. See Sadakichi Hartmann, “A New Departure in Light and Shade,” Wilson’s Photographic Magazine (Jan. 1913): 25. 2.The exhibition was organized by Paul Westheim and ran from February to March of 1930 at the Reckendorf-Haus, Berlin. Other photographers represented in the exhibition include Hugo Erfurth, Sasha Stone, and Umbo. 3.“Neben ihm interessiert vor allem Helmar Lerski, der einen Kopf durch raffinierte Beleuchtung und klug berechneten Ausschnitt in Wirkung setzt, der aber im allgemein mehr interresante Studien als unbedingt überzeugende Bildnisse shafft. Psychologie ist mehr in sie hineingesehen als aus ihnen herausgeholt.” Curt Glaser, “Gezeichnet oder geknipst,” Berliner Börsen-Courier, no. 71 (12 February 1930). Reprinted in in Christine Kühn, ed. Neues Sehen in Berlin: Fotografie der zwanziger Jahre (Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2005), 205. 4.A condensed version of Film und Foto traveled to the Staatliche Kunstbibliothek in Berlin after its debut in Stuttgart. A reviewer of this exhibition in Berlin commented, “One of the main tasks of the Staatliche Kunstbibliothek in Berlin is to develop its photography collection. An art library should not convey the art of today and yesterday only through the reproduced images in books.” Wolfgang Herrmann, “Rubrik Berlin,” Kunst und Künstler 25, no. 7 (1927): 271. Other exhibitions of photography at the Kunstbibliothek included The Photography of Albert Renger-Patzsch (1928) and Baroque and Rococo: Photographs by F. Hepner (1929). Curt Glaser’s interactions with photography in the 1920s and 30s are carefully documented in Christine Kühn, ed. Neues Sehen in Berlin: Fotografie der zwanziger Jahre. 5.Previous scholarship on Lerski includes Ute Eskilden and Jan-Christopher Horak, eds., Helmar Lerski, Lichtbildner: Fotografien und Filme, 1910–1947 (Essen: Museum Folkwang, 1982); and Florian Ebner, Metamorphosen des Gesichts: Die Verwandlungen durch Licht von Helmar Lerski (Göttingen: Steidl Verlag, 2002). Neither offers a close reading of Köpfe des Alltags nor positions it within the context of Weimar photographic books. See also Leesa Rittelmann, “Constructed Identities: The German Photobook from Weimar to the Third Reich.” While providing a valuable study of the critical response to Köpfe des Alltags and other Weimar photographic books across the political spectrum, Rittelmann does not offer an analysis of the images in these books or how they were meant to be experienced as a sequence. 6.“Diese Bilder mögen unähnlich genannt werden, da sie mehr von subjektiver Aussage enthalten als von objektivem Bericht. Aber man wird seit langsam schon irre an jener scheinbar objektiven Ähnlichkeit,

deren sich die Fotografie zu rГјhmen pflegt. Auch die Malerei ist auf dem Umwege Гјber das unbekannte Modell, dem sie die RГјcksicht der Г„hnlichkeit in einem bis dahin fГјr allgemein verbindlich erachteten Verstande nicht schuldete, zu einer neuen und tieferen Auffassung des PortrГ¤ts und zu einer verГ¤nderten Einstellung auch zu dem Begriff der Г„hnlichkeit gelangt. So will es scheinen,Page 215 → als sei in den Versuchen, die Lerski unternommen hat, der Bildnisfotografie ein Weg gewiessen, die estaunlicherweise von der Erneuerung der Lichtbildkunst in unserer Zeit bisher den geringsten Nutzen gezogen hat.” Curt Glaser in KГ¶pfe des Alltags: Unbekannte Menschen gesehen von Helmar Lerski (Berlin: Hermann Reckendorf, 1931), n.p. 7.“Sie haben die Entdeckungsreise der Kamera, die um die Erde und in die Ferne gefГјhrt hat, endlich beim NГ¤chsten und Unscheinbarsten beendet.В .В .В . Aber die schГ¶pferische BetГ¤tigung ist begrenzt auf Wahl und Ordnung der Objekte und die Bestiummung der Projektionsebene.” Ibid. 8.“Die neuen Apparate haben das Fotografieren so leicht gemacht, ein leidliches wahrhaftig keiner sonderlichen Fertigkeit oder Begabung mehr bedarf, ein leidliches oder sogar ein hГјbsches und gefГ¤lliges Bild anzufertigen. Die Technik ist endlich so weit sogar gelangt, dass sie die Hand und auch den Geist des Menschen vollkommen ausschaltet.” Ibid. 9.On portraiture and modernity, see Heather McPherson, The Modern Portrait in Nineteenth Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 1–13; Joanna Woodall, ed., Portraiture: Facing the Subject (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 1–25. 10.“So wird in diesen Bildern nichts verschwiegen und nichts hinzugefГјgt, nichts verschГ¶nert und nichts vertuscht.” Glaser in KГ¶pfe des Alltags. 11.“Der Fotograf will nicht mehr malen. Er will im Lichte und durch das Licht gestalten. Er will sich keiner anderen als der Mittel seiner Technik bedienen.” Ibid. 12.“Helmar Lerski is der Meinung, das Medium des Fotografen kГ¶nne seiner Natur nach kein anderes sein als das Licht. Mit seiner Hilfe modelliert er die ZГјge des menschlichen Antlitzes, um sie auf besondere Weise zum Sprechen zu bringen.” Ibid. 13.“Er arbeitet mit Spiegeln, die Sonnenstrahlen reflektieren, und er zeichnet mit Schatten scharfe Linien in ein Gesicht, tieft Furchen und HГ¶hlen, lГ¤ОІt Lichter Гјber die Hebungen der Formen spielen, bis die FlГ¤che Гјberall lebendig wird und das ausdrucksvoll plastische Bild eines menschlichen Kopfes entsteht.” Ibid. 14.“Bilder, die Seelisches zu enthГјllen scheinenВ .В .В .” Ibid. 15.“Es ist Zeit, dass wir umlernen. StoГџen Sie sich nicht an der вЂMaschine’! Es ist ja nicht nur die Maschine. Es ist ja auch hier der Geist, der die Werte schafft. Und er bedient sich des wunderbaren Mediums des Lichts, des Lichtes, das das Unsichtbare sichtbar macht, in die Tiefen leuchtet und die Geheimnisse entschleiert. Glauben Sie mir, die Photographie ist eine grosse Sache!” Helmar Lerski, “Die Photographie ist eine grosse Sache,” Berliner BГ¶rsen-Courier 62, no. 117 (1930): 11. 16.For an account of Lerski’s film career, see Jan-Christopher Horak, Making Images Move: Photographers and Avant-Garde Cinema (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), 55–78. 17.For a discussion of differences between film and photographic sequences, see Blake Stimson, The Pivot of the World: Photography and Its Nation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006) 36–43. 18.A similar experience is attributed to photographic sequences in general by Joel Smith, “More than One: Sources of Serialism,” in More than One: Photographs in Sequence, ed. Joel Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 10–11. 19.“Wie die russischen Filmregisseure zu der Meinung gelangten, dass einfache Menschen des Volkes ein besseres Material fГјr ihre gestaltende Arbeit seien als berГјhmte Schauspieler, so findet Lerski seine Modelle auf der StrasseВ .В .В .” Glaser in KГ¶pfe des Alltags. 20.Alexander Rodchenko, “Against the Synthetic Portrait, For the Snapshot,” (1928) translated by John Bowlt in Phillips, Photography in the Modern Era, 240. 21.Ibid., 241. For Rodchenko, the photographic portrait was contingent and infinitely expandable, but it nonetheless defined an individual. In his essay, Rodchenko offers Lenin as the quintessential subject of the photographic portrait. In 1924, he produced a series of six photographic portraits of the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. Page 216 → 22.“Die Erfindung der Buchdruckerkunst hat mit der Zeit das Gesicht der Menschen

unleserlich gemacht.В .В .В . Die ganze Menschheit ist heute schon dabei, die vielfach verlernte Sprache der Mienen und GebГ¤rden wieder zu erlernen. Nicht den Worteersatz der Taubstummensprache, sondern die visuelle Korrespondenz der unmittelbar verkГ¶rperten Seele.” BГ©la BalГЎzs, Schriften zum Film: Der sichtbare Mensch, Kritiken und AufsГ¤tze 1922–1926, eds. Helmut H. Diederichs, Wolfgang Gersch, and Magda Nagy (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1982), 1: 51, 53. 23.“Seine GebГ¤rden bedeuten Гјberhaupt keine Begriffe, sondern unmittelbar sein irrationelles Selbst, ” Ibid., 52 24.Although the film is now lost, published descriptions of it state it consisted primarily of countless shots of details, based on BalГ zs’s theory of the close-up and filmed by Lerski. See Jan-Christopher Horak, Making Images Move: Photographers and Avant-Garde Cinema (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), 65. 25.“Jedenfalls ist sie wichtig genug, eminent wichtig fГјr unsere Zeit! Sehen Sie sich den Film an! Hat Kunst je ein grossartigeres Ausdrucksmittel besessen? Geben wir uns MГјhe, dieses Mittel richtig anzuwenden?” Lerski, “Die Photographie ist eine grosse Sache,” 11. 26.On this debate, see Mary Anne Doane, “The Close-Up: Scale and Detail in the Cinema,” Differences 14, no. 3 (2003): 89–111; Frank Kessler, “PhotogГ©nie und Physiognomie,” in Geschichten der Physiognomik: Text, Bild, Wissen, ed. RГјdiger Campe and Manfred Schneider (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach Verlag, 1996), 515–34. 27.Sergei Eisenstein, “The Montage of Attractions,” (1923) translated in The Eisenstein Reader, ed. Richard Taylor (London: British Film Institute, 1998), 29–34. 28.Sergei Eisenstein, “Bela Forgets the Scissors,” (1926) translated in The Eisenstein Reader, 69. 29.Lerski immigrated to Palestine in 1932. In addition to making several documentary films, Lerski produced another series of portraits in 1936. Using the same photographic techniques he developed in KГ¶pfe des Alltags, Lerski focused this series of 125 portraits on a single sitter, a twenty-four-year-old engineer named Leo Uschatz. Ute Eskildsen, Curator of Photography at the Folkwang-Museum in Essen, Germany, edited the project and published it as Verwandlungen durch Licht (Freren: Luca Verlag, 1982). 30.“FГјr die verheirate Frau, die in ihrem Beruf als Hausfrau und Mutter aufgebt, ist die Fereinreise meist die einzige Gelegenheit, neue Menschen kennenzulernen. GlГјcklicherweise hat die Natur den Menschen so gebildet, dass man im groГџen ganzen aus seinen GezichtzГјgen auf seinen Charakter schlieОІen kann. Schrift, HГ¤nde, Gang, Haltung, Kopfform und Gesicht bilden eine Einheit, die der Menschenkenner schnell seinen Zwecken dienstbar macht.” “Physiognomik,” Praktische Berlinerin 16 (1927): 15. 31.The bibliography on physiognomic theories during the Weimar Republic is extensive. Studies I found particularly helpful while preparing this chapter are Richard T. Gray, About Face: German physiognomic thought from Lavater to Auschwitz (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004); Sander Gilman and Claudia SchmГ¶lders, eds., Gesichter der Weimarer Republik: eine physiognomische Kulturgeschichte (Cologne: DuMont, 2000); RГјdiger Campe and Manfred Schneider, eds., Geschichten der Physiognomik: Text, Bild, Wissen (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach Verlag, 1996); Claudia SchmГ¶lders, Das Vorurteil im Leibe: eine EinfГјhrung in die Physiognomik (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995). 32.See Sabine Hake, “Faces of Weimar Germany” in The Image in Dispute: Art and Cinema in the Age of Reproduction, ed. Dudley Andrew (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), 117–47; Wolfgang BrГјckle, “Kein Portrait mehr? Physiognomik in der deutschen Bildnisphotographie um 1930,” Gesichter der Weimarer Republik, eds. Gilman and SchmГ¶lders, 131–55. 33.BrГјckle, “Kein PortrГ¤t mehr?” 131. See also BrГјckle, “Wege zum Volksgesicht: Imagebildung fГјr das Kollektiv im fotografischen Portrait des Nachexpressionismus,” Bildnis und Image: das Portrait zwischen Intension und Rezeption, eds. Andreas KГ¶stler and Ernst Seidl (KГ¶ln: BГ¶hlau Verlag, 1998), Page 217 →285–308. In both of these important essays, BrГјckle discusses KГ¶pfe des Alltags as part of a reaction against the degeneration of urban existence, and thus understands it as a much more conservative project than I do here. 34.Walter Benjamin, “Little History of Photography,” 287. 35. Menschen der Zeit: Hundert und ein Lichtbildnis wesentlicher MГ¤nner und Frauen aus deutscher Gegenwart und jГјngster Vergangenheit (KГ¶nigstein im Taunus and Leipzig: Karl Robert Langewiesche, 1929); Unsere Zeit in 77 Frauenbildnissen (Niels Kampmann Verlag, 1930); Erich Retzlaff, Menschen am

Werk: SechsundfГјnfzig photographsiche Bildnisse aus deutschen IndustriestГ¤dten (GГ¶ttingen: Verlag der deuerlichschen Buchhandlung, 1931); Mme. Sylvia, Das Buch des hunderte HГ¤nde mit einer Geschichte der Chirosophie (Dresden: Verlag von Wolfgang Jess, 1931); Erna Lendvai-Dircksen, Unsere deutschen Kinder (Berlin: G. SchГ¶nfeld, 1932). 36.For example, Menschen der Zeit was published as part of the highly successful book series, Die Blauen BГјcher, produced by Karl Robert Langewiesche. Each volume in this series was priced at 3 to 4 Marks. See Tim Starl, “Die BildbГ¤nde der Reihe Die Blauen BГјcher,” Fotogeschichte 1, no. 1 (1987): 73–82. 37.Ulrich Keller, “Die deutsche Portraitfotografie von 1918 bis 1933,” Kritische Berichte 5, no. 2/3 (1977): 37–66; Helmut Molderings, “Die Gesellschaft der Weimarer Republik im photographischen PortrГ¤t,” in Realismus: Zwischen Revolution und Reaktion, 1919–1939, ed. Ingo Walther (Munich: Prestel, 1981), 300–06. 38.See Matthias Uecker, “The Face of the Weimar Republic: Photography, Physiognomy, and Propaganda in Weimar Germany,” Montashefte 99, no. 4 (2007): 469–84. 39.“Warum sind sehr viele Bildnisse, und gerade die sogenannt kГјnstlerischen, so verkehrt?” Siegfried Kracauer, “Anmerkung Гјber PortrГ¤t-Photographie,” Frankfurter Zeitung (1933): Reprinted in Siegfried Kracauer, Schriften, ed. Inka MГјlder-Bach (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1990) 5:196. 40.Das Gesicht erscheint in kГјhnen Perspektiven, die etwas Bedeutendes ausdrГјcken sollen, die Kinnoder Stirnpartien erhalten ein Гњbergewicht, das sie im Alltagsgebrauch vermutlich gar nicht besitzen, und Brillenreflexe werden zum optischen Hauptelement. Es besteht darin, dass die Photographie nicht die zu portrГ¤tierende Physiognomie vergegenwГ¤rtigt, sondern sie als Mittel zu Zwecken benutzt, die auОІerhalb des Objekt liegen.В .В .В . Mit anderen Worten: sie erstreben von vornherein weniger die Wiedergabe ihres Gegenstandes als die VorfГјhrung sГ¤mtlicher Effekte, die aus ihm etwa heausgelackt werden kГ¶nnen.” Ibid., 196. 41.“Er [der Maler] kann kraft seiner aktiven Eingriffe das Urbild, das er vor Augen hat, wirklich objektivieren; die Kamera dagegen, die nur passives Aufnahemeorgan ist, mГјsste sich in ihm zuletzt verlieren.” Ibid., 197. 42.Regular readers of Kracauer’s publications in the Frankfurter Zeitung would have already been familiar with his approach to mass culture. See Frederic Schwartz, Blind Spots, 137–44; Miriam Hansen, “Decentric Perspectives: Kracauer’s Early Writings on Film and Mass Culture,” New German Critique 54 (1991): 47–76. 43.August Sander, Antlitz der Zeit: sechzig Aufnahmen deutscher Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1929). 44.For a detailed overview of Sander’s photographic project, see Gunther Sander, ed., August Sander: Citizens of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986). Other important analyses of Antlitz der Zeit include George Baker, “Photography between Narrative and Stasis: August Sander, Degeneration and the Decay of the Portrait” and Andy Jones, “Reading August Sander’s Archive,” Oxford Art Journal 23 (2000): 1–22. 45.August Sander, “From the Nature and Growth of Photography: Lecture 5: Photography as Universal Language,” trans. by Anne Halley, The Massachusetts Review 19, no. 4 (Winter 1978): 678. Page 218 → 46.Ibid., 677. 47.Ibid., 678. 48.See Sabine Hake, “Faces of Weimar Germany,” and George Baker, “Photography between Narrative and Stasis.” 49.42,000 copies of Menschen der Zeit were printed in 1929. 50.“Überhaupt mГ¶glich ershien die Herausgabe einer ernstzunehmenden Bildererfolge dieser Art Гјbrigens nur, wenn zunГ¤chst eine bestimmte und mäßige Zahl aufzunehmender Bildnisse festgelegt wurde. Nur so konnte der Gefahr der Uferlosigkeit vorgebeugt werden. Nur so kommt zum Ausdruck, dass es bei der gegenwГ¤rtigen FГјlle bedeutender PersГ¶nlichkeiten von vornherein gar nicht darum gehen kann, вЂalle’ bedeutenden oder auch nur вЂdie bedeutendensten’ Menschen der Epoche darzustellen, sondern darum, in den Bildnissen einer kleinen Zahl sehr verschiedenartiger MГ¤nner und Frauen вЂden’ geistigen und wesentlichen Menschen der Zeit zu erfassen, mindestens anzudeuten.”

Menschen der Zeit, 5. 51.“Da eine ganz freie und ungebundene Anordnung und Reihenfolge der Bildnis untunlich erschien, sind sie in einer etwas lockeren, nicht gar so pedantlichen Weise zu den nachgenannten, einander folgenden Gruppen zusammengefaГџt: Staatliches und politiches Leben. Jura—Technik und Wirtschaft—Naturwissenschaft. Medizin—Geisteswissenschaften. Geschichte—ReligiГ¶s und kirchliches Leben. Erziehung—Musik, Dichtung, Theater—Baukunst, Plastik, Malerei.” Ibid., 6. 52.The outline is in the possession of Gunther Sander and quoted by Ulrich Keller in Gunther Sander, ed. August Sander, 23. 53.Regarding the selection process to compile its photographic collection, the introduction to the book Unsere Zeit in 77 Frauenbildnisen states, “the representation of a certain position in our era could be replaced by one or many personalities for whom photographs were not found.” The statement suggests the pressures of organizing a representative survey of society, and its dependence on the photographic material available. Unsere Zeit in 77 Frauenbildnissen, n.p. 54.“Ein Buch ohne Prominente,” Berliner BГ¶rsen-Courier, no. 193 (1931), n.p. 55.Lendvai-Dircksen contributed seven photographs to Unsere Zeit in 77 Frauenbildnissen and one photograph to Menschen der Zeit of Dr. Gertrud BГ¤umer, which also appears in 77 Frauenbildnissen. 56.In the early 1940s, Lendvai-Dircksen began a series of photographic books entitled Das Germanische Volksgesicht, which expanded beyond the borders of Germany to claim regions such as Scandanavia, Flanders, and Norway as part of the Germanic race. 57.“Gestalt und Erscheinung fГјr ein Innewohnendes ist sowohl Mensch als Tier, als Pflanze und Stein. Soweit die Lebensreiche auseinander liegen mГ¶gen, gemeinsam ist allen das Geheimnis, das sich in ihnen vielgestaltig offenbart. Es stellt sich etwas heraus, was wirklich uns zugleich wirksam ist. Echte Form wГ¤chst aus dem Lebendigen, dem Einheitlichen aller KrГ¤fte, unbewusst und unschuldig. Es hat Physiognomie, es ist anschaulich. Es ist Urkunde. Das Menschengesicht ist der stГ¤rkste Brennpunkt alles dessen, was je auf der Erde war und sein wird.” Erna Lendvai-Dircksen, Das deutsche Volksgesicht (Berlin: Kulturelle Verlagsgesellschaft, 1932), 3. 58.“Diejenigen Abbildungen, deren Nummern im Inhaltsverzeichnis unter der gleichen Bezeichnung zusammengefasst sind, stellen verschieden Aufnahmen der gleichen Menschen dar.” Glaser in KГ¶pfe des Alltags. 59.“Da ist einer der vielen, die einstmals im Wohlstand lebten, durch Krieg und Inflation verarmten und zu niederem Berufe sich bequemen mussten. Der Fotograf sieht diesen Niedergang eine Existenz und gestaltet ihn in einer Abfolge von Bildern, indem er das Licht einmal sanft und ruhig, ein andermal hart und flackerig fГјhrt, in dem er einmal die Formen weicher, ein andermal schГ¤rfer modelliert, indem er seinen Apparat so stellt, dass der Kopf gesenkt oder das er aufgerichtet erscheint.” Ibid. Page 219 → 60.“Da ist ein Strassenkehrer, der in seinem ganzen Leben den Kopf nicht aufzuheben wagte. Die Kamera richtet ihn auf, und ein Diktator kГ¶nnte ihn um sein herrisches Profil beneiden.В .В .В . Ein Bettler wird, wenn der Apparat ihn umwandert und die Sonnenstrahlen bald hier, bald dort seine ZГјge erhellen, zu einem Meisterschauspieler, der soviele Rollen darstellt, wie er Aufnahmen hergibt.” Ibid. 61.“.В .В .В so findet Lerski seine Modelle auf der Strasse, oder er läßt sie vom Arbeitsnachweis kommen, weil er der Meinung ist, jeder Mensch habe ein Gesicht, man mГјsse sich nur bemГјhen, es zu sehen.” Ibid. 62.“Sein вЂjunger HГ¤ndler’ ist ein feistes Ferkel. Der вЂBuchhalter’ hat den Kopf von Dante. Die вЂStenotypistin’ studiert Jura. Der вЂMaler’ glГ¤nzt nach klassischem Marmor. Die вЂFrau eines Chauffeurs’ ist eine Sphinx in Moll. Der вЂBauernsohn’ trГ¤gt die Totenmaske von Alfred Kerr. Im вЂrevolutionГ¤ren Arbeiter’ erwacht Robespierre persГ¶nlich.В .В .В . Die вЂWaschfrau’ ist die Mutter. Ein andere вЂWaschfrau’ ist die Schwiegermutter. Die вЂHausangestellte’ das Weib. Der вЂHandwerker’ ein Diktator. Der вЂHeizer’ Rodolfo Valentino.” Andor Kraszna-Krausz, “KГ¶pfe des Alltags,” Filmtechnik 7 (1931): 1. 63.“Da mag dann bei manchen Versuchen Гњberraschendes hervorgetreten sein, auf der Platte, auf dem Abzug kamen Heroen heraus statt Bettler.” Wilhelm Lotz, “FotobГјcher,” Die Form 6, no. 1 (1931): 36. 64.“Der Vergleich mit den besten Tierplastiken liegt nahe, Chinesen, Primitive, frГјheste vorklassische

und Г¤gyptische Skulpturen und Zeichnungen, auch dort ist die Tierhaftigkeit, die brutale Kraft, die gemeinste Verschlagenheit ganz groГџ und eindeutig dargestellt, aber das sicher nicht aus reinster Absicht, sondern als Ergebnis des gestalterischen, rein auf die Form bedachten Prozessen, wenigstens, soweit die SchГ¶pfung bewusst ist.” Ibid. 65.“Weil er nicht psychologische Dokumente suchte, sondern Lichtgebilde, und so das reinste Mittel der Fotografie zu beherrschen trachtete, entstand unbeabsichtigt aber um so größer ein psychologischen Dokument.” Ibid. 66.Egon Friedell, Das letzte Gesicht (Zurich: Orell FГјssli, 1929), Richard Langer, Totenmasken (Leipzig: Georg Thieme Verlag, 1927), Ernst Benkard, Das Ewige Antlitz: Eine Sammlung von Totenmasken (Berlin: Frankfurter Verlags-Anstalt, 1927). See Wolfgang BrГјckle, “Politisierung des Angeschichts: zur Semantik des fotografischen PortrГ¤ts in der Weimarer Republik,” Fotogeschichte 17, no. 65 (1997), 3–24. 67.Claudia SchmГ¶lders, “Das ewige Antlitz: ein Weimarer Totenkult,” in Gesichter der Weimarer Republic, 250–61. 68.“Die Biographen einigen sich, aus der VielfГ¤ltigkeit der persГ¶nlichen EindrГјcke kristallisiert sich ein eindeutig geschliffenes Profil, ein prГ¤gsam und leicht zu kopieren. Und so wie Photographien immer Г¤hnlicher werden, je lГ¤nger der Dargestellte tot ist, so wird auch das Bild historischer PersГ¶nlichkeiten immer einleuchtender und klarer und deshalb oft immer unГ¤hnlicher.” Rudolf Arnheim, “Totenmasken,” Die WeltbГјhne 23, no. 2 (1927): 74. 69.Arnheim’s interest in death masks stemmed from his scholarly study of physiognomy. His dissertation addresses the “problem of expression,” and was published in a psychology journal in 1928. Rudolf Arnheim, “Experimentell-psychologische Untersuchen zum Ausdrucksproblem,” Psychologische Forschung 11 (1928): 2–132. 70.“Die Ruhe der physiologischen Muskelentspannung zerstГ¶rt nichts von dem, was die Lebensenergien formten. In einem Anschauungsunterricht sondergleichen kann Jeder hier prГјfen, ob seine Lieblinge und Feinde standhalten. Und Niemand wird es ohne Bereicherung tun.” Arnheim, “Totenmasken,” 74. 71.“Ein wundervolles, belehrendes Bilderbuch fГјr Erwachsene, die das Sehen nicht verlernt haben.” Ibid., 75. 72.“Er wird nicht aufgefordert, sich so oder so zu stellen oder seine ZГјge verГ¤ndern. Er sitzt ruhig, Page 220 →und dadurch dass er lange sitzen muГџ, weil die Prozedur schwierig ist und auch die Zeit der Belichtung nicht kurz sein darf, entspannen sich seines ZГјge, gewinnen jenen neutralen Charakter, den der Fotograf braucht, da er ihnen selbst den Ausdruck geben will, den er in sie hineinsieht.” Glaser in KГ¶pfe des Alltags. 73.Wolfgang BrГјckle, “Politisierung des Angeschichts: zur Semantik des fotografischen PortrГ¤ts in der Weimarer Republik,” 3–24. 74.“Wer die nachfolgenden Totenmasken aufmerksam ansieht, wird aus ihnen mГјhelos ganze Biographien und Monographien herauslesen kГ¶nnen.” Egon Friedell, Das letzte Gesicht, 10. 75.“So entstand eine neue Gewissheit, die unklarer ist als die frГјheren, aber dafГјr um so sicherer; unaussprechlich, aber darum auch nicht mit Worten widerlegbar; unfassbarer als jede andere, aber eben deshalb um so unantastbarer.” Ibid., 5–6. 76.“Aber indem wir immer tiefer in die dunkeln Kammern des Schicksals eindrangen, ereignete sich plГ¶tzlich etwas Sonderbares: unser Auge, an die Dunkelheit gewГ¶hnt, empfand einen schwachen Lichtschimmer, der von der entgegengesetzten Seite her kam und uns anzeigte, daОІ auch in den Gegenden, die wir betreten hatten, nicht vГ¶llige Finsternis herrschte. Die Dinge hatten wir abgetan, aber nun erschien es uns auf einmal, als sei noch irgend ein Licht hinter den Dingen, ein Licht, das wir niemals erblicken werden, solange wir in diesen unseren KГ¶rper gebannt sind.” Ibid., 5. 77.“.В .В .В die einzige wahre RealitГ¤t geheimnisvoll schГ¶pferisch hinter unserem sichtbaren Dasein thront.” Ibid., 10. 78.For a general study of Lersch, see Klaus Weber, Von Aufbau des Herrenmenschen: Philipp Lersch—eine Karriere als MilitГ¤rpsychologe und Charakterologe (Pfaffenweiler: CentaurusVerlagsgesellschaft, 1993). 79.“Und zwar ist es Гјblich, von Ausdruck dann zu sprechen, wenn ein Inhalt der Г¤uГџeren sinnlichen

Wahrnehmung erfaГџt wird mit der Bedeutung eines Hinweises auf einen Inhalt, der sich in der Einsamkeit der inneren Wahrnehmung realisiert.В .В .В . der Ausdruck ist somit als sinnliches Zeichen fГјr etwas Seelisches immer TrГ¤ger eines Sinnes, der verstanden werden kann.” Philipp Lersch, Gesicht und Seele: Grundlinien einer Mimischen Diagnostik (Munich: Ernst Reinhardt, 1932), 13. 80.“WГ¤hrend also im Effektivzeichen das sinnliche PhГ¤nomen tatsГ¤chlich verursacht ist durch den psychischen bzw. psychophysischen Prozess, auf den es hinweist, und sich existential von seiner Ursache gelГ¶st hatВ .В .В .” Ibid., 17. 81.“Sie bildet sich in der Entwicklung des menschlichen Bewusstseins allmГ¤hlich mit immer schГ¤rferer Bestimmtheit heraus zur Kennzeichnung des fundamentalen Unterschiedes, der besteht zwischen den allen bewusstseinsbegabten menschlichen Individuen gemeinsamen Gegebenheiten der sinnlichen Erscheinungswelt einerseits und den nur dem Einzelnen in der Verschwiegenheit seiner Selbsterfahrung unmittelbar gegebenen Inhalten des Bewusstseins anderseits.” Ibid., 12. 82.“Dann aber meinen wir mit ihm auch etwas schlechthin UnkГ¶rperliches, nГ¤mlich die Inhalte des Bewusstseins, die wir aus weiter nicht zu erГ¶rternden GrГјnden hinter der OberflГ¤che des KГ¶rpers lokalisiert denken. Wir sagen im naiven Sprachgebrauch, wir mГ¶chten wissen, was hinter einer Stirn vor sich geht, wie es in einem Kopfe aussieht, wir sprechen davon, dass jemand seine GefГјhle in seiner Brust verbirgt.” Ibid. 83.“Da handelt es sich zunГ¤chst um die Frage, ob ein solcher innerer gesetzlicher Zusammenhang Гјberhaupt besteht oder ob nicht das Mienenspiel nur durch Sitte und Erziehung bedingt wird. Ist letzteres der Fall, so kann das ganze Studium des Gesichtsausdruckes nur ein verhГ¤ltnismГ¤ssig geringes Interesse beanspruchen.” Hermann Krukenberg, Der Gesichtausdruck des Menschen (Stuttgart: Verlag von Ferdinand Enke, 1920), 8. 84.Frederic Schwartz discusses the revived interest in physiognomy in the 1920s and 1930s as an effort to move theories of communication beyond the arbitrary motivation of signs. See Schwartz, Blind Spots, 188–89. Page 221 → 85.“Der menschliche Gesichtausdruck setzt sich zusammen aus dem Mienenspiel und den dauernden ZГјgen. Letztere bilden das charakteristische Merkmal des Menschengeschlechts Гјberhaupt und der RasseneigentГјmlichkeit im speziellen.” Krukenberg, Der Gesichtausdruck des Menschen, 3. 86.“.В .В .В eine Sprache, die noch jetzt alle VГ¶lker verstehen und die doch in keiner Schule gelehrt wird und in keiner Grammatik zu finden ist, die das Kind ebenso versteht, wie der Sprachlehrte: das ist die stumme Sprache des Antlitzes.” Ibid., 1–2. 87.“.В .В .В jedes Antlitz fortwГ¤hrend wechselt, je nach der Richtung, in welcher unser Seelenleben tГ¤tig istВ .В .В .” Ibid., 3. 88.For example, see Franz Fiedler, “Etwas Physiognomic,” in PortrГ¤t-Photographie (Berlin: Photokino-Verlag, 1934). 89.“Denn ein вЂAmateur’ im wahren platonischen Sinne, nГ¤mlich ein Liebender, muss sein, wer ein menschlisches Antlitz in den Tiefen seines lebendigen Ausdrucks erfassen will.” Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, “Das Menschliche Antlitz,” Das Deutsche Lichtbild (1931): n.p. 90.“Das Tier weiss nichts von der Kamera und von Bildern.” Ibid. 91.“Es hГ¤ngt von verstehenden Takte des Lichtbildners ab, ob es ihm gelingt, das Spiel des Ausdrucks im Antlitz seines Objektes zu lenken: weg von der Kamera und hin zum unbewussten Ausdruck. Wie dies zu machen sei? Es gibt kaum eine allgemeine Regel. Die Wege sind so verschieden wie die Menschen selbst, die wir im Lichtbild erfassen wollen. Jeder einzelne Mensch und ferner jeder Typus, z.B. Rassentypus, verlangt eine andere Behandlung.” Ibid. 92.“In den seltesten FГ¤llen freilich kann ein einzelner Augenblick, auch wenn er “fruchtbar” ist, genГјgen, um durch ihn das ganze Wesen eines Menschen zu begreifen.В .В .В . Eine Wendung zur Seite, ein Wechsel der Beleuchtung, ein Umschlagen des Ausdrucks etwa von Ernste zum Lachen, und schon schwindet der Stil, unter dem wir das Antlitz begriffen und ein neuer Stil bricht gleichsam aus ihm hervor.” Ibid. 93.Not all studies blatantly discuss the racist applications of physiognomy that would inform the ideology of the Nazi Party. Many did, however, including the work of Clauss. He applied physiognomic theories to the ordering of racial hierarchies, and published On the Souls and Faces of Races and People in 1929, which used photography to organize and compare the physical appearance of members of a variety of

cultures. See Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, Von Seele und Antlitz der Rassen und Völker: eine Einführung in die vergleichende Ausdrucksforschung (Munich: J.F. Lehmanns Verlag, 1929). 94.See Monika Faber, “Portraits zwischen Versunkenheit und Pose,” Photographie der Moderne in Prag: 1900–1945, eds. Monika Faber and Josef Kroutvor (Schaffhausen: Edition Stemmle, 1991), 89–104.

Conclusion 1.Erich Retzlaff, Menschen am Werk. Menschen am Werk was the second in a two-part series of photographic books by Retzlaff entitled Deutschen Menschen (German People). The first in the series was Die von der Scholle: sechsundfГјnfzig photographische Bildnisse bodenstГ¤ndiger Menschen (Those from the Soil: Fifty-six photographic portraits of native people) (GГ¶ttingen: Verlag der deuerlichschen Buchhandlung, 1931). 2.“Es sind Gesichter derjenigen, die Volk geblieben sind, aufgewachsen im Volk, untergehn im Volk. Und doch wГ¤ren interessante LebenslГ¤ufe von ihnen zu erzГ¤hlen, wenn auch die Schicksale dieser Gesichter anonym sind.” Heinrich Lersch in Menschen am Werk, iii. 3.“Feuer, Schlag und Strahlung, Aufmerksamkeit und gewaltsames Hinzwingen des Gesichtes in dem physisch schmerzhaften Arbeitsprozess formt am Antlitz des Feuermanns. Unter den Einwirkungen dieser unnatГјrlichen MГ¤chte, durch die intensive Ausgabe von KГ¶rperkrГ¤ften altert der Page 222 →Feuermann schnell; die Spannung der Muskeln erstarrt, das Fleisch verhГ¤rtet unter der Haut, die Augen kriechen tiefer in die StirnhГ¶hlen. Der glutvoll glГ¤nzende Blick des jungen Feuermanns erlischt mit der Zeit im Schatten der verdeckten Braue, der Mund behГ¤lt die angespannte Verzerrung und gibt dem Gesicht eine mГјrrisch verbitterte Miene; aus dem hellГ¤ugigen Schmiedstopf ist im Alter das harte, strenge Invalidengesicht geworden.” Ibid., iv–v. 4.“Ein Blick in die Gesichter der Arbeiter zeigt, dass Form und Ausdruck von den alten Handwerken stamen. Trotzdem die Grossindustrie sie nahezu vollkommen aufgelГ¶st hat, haben die Menschen die PrГ¤gung dieser Grundformen behalten.В .В .В . Diesen Schmieds- und Feuermannsblick finden wir mit der vorgereckten Kopfhaltung heute Гјberall wieder, wo der Mensch mit Feuer und Hitze hantier: trozt Schutzbrille und Glasmaske im Gesicht des Autogen- und EletroschweiГџersВ .В .В .” Ibid., iv. 5.“Und morgen: vielleicht sind sie Arbeitslose.В .В .В . ein Jahr Arbeitslosigkeit aus den GlГ¤ubigen, Vertrauenden, Hingegebenen erbitterte KГ¤mpfer machen.” Ibid., vii. 6.Erna Lendvai-Dircksen, “Über deutsche PortrГ¤tphotographie,” Das Atelier des Photographen 40, no. 6 and 7 (1933): 72–74; 84–85. For a discussion of this essay, see Rittelmann, “Constructed Identities”, 260–62. 7.“Was von Anbeginn in der Welt was, hat sich nicht geГ¤ndert, wohl aber, wie es angesehen, herausgegriffen und verwertet wurde.” Erna Lendvai-Dircksen, “Zur Psychologie des Sehens,” Das Deutsche Lichtbild (1931) n.p. 8.“Art, Betonung, Gruppierung der Dinge lassen erkennen, was einem Menschen, einem Volk wichtig ist, und der Nachlass der grossen Kulturen ist in diesem Sinn ein Lebenszeugnis fГјr das innere Bild, dem sie das Г„ussere zum Gleichnis schufen. Um so gewaltiger ist der Eindruck dieses Geisteserbes, je einheitlicher in der Mannigfaltigkeit und mannigfaltig in der Einheit es sich ausdrГјckt.” Ibid. 9.My identification of the physiognomic uncertainties of Lerski’s heads contrasts with Rittelman’s description of KГ¶pfe des Alltags’s photographs as “ennobling.” Rittelmann, “Constructed Identities,” 256–57. 10.A longer discussion of photographic books of a politically radical right-wing perspective would include the books of Erich Retzlaff, Das Antlitz des Alters (Dusseldorf: PГ¤dagogischer Verlag, 1930); Retzlaff, Die von der Scholle (1931) and Erna Lendvai-Dircksen, Reichsautobahn: Mensch und Werk (Berlin: Volk und Reich Verlag, 1937). 11.Rittelmann challenges “a German historiography that emphasizes rupture, rather than cultural continuity between Weimar and the Third Reich.” Leesa Rittelmann, “Constructed Identities,” v. But as Detlev Peukert has argued, Weimar’s problems were typical of other industrial nations at this time. See Detlev Peukert, The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity, trans. Richard Deveson

(New York: Hill and Wang, 1992). 12.See Sarah E. James, Common Ground. 13.Others have focused on the objective and taxonomic traditions in twentieth-century German photography without emphasizing the book-format as I do here. See Tim Griffin, “Faulty towers: The Legacy of the Impassive Eye in Contemporary German Photography,” Art on Paper 3, no. 1 (1998): 49–53, Norman Bryson, “The Family firm: Andreas Gursky and German Photography,” Art and Text 67 (1999–2000): 76–81. 14.Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, “From Pigment to Light,” in Photography in Print, ed. Vicki Goldberg (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981), 348. Originally published in Telehor, 1 no.2 (1936) 30–36.

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Index Note: an italicized page number indicates an illustration. Die Abenteuer eines Zehnmarkscheins (Adventures of a Ten Mark Bill ) (film), 154, 216n24 abstraction. See also color versus black-and-white; unity close-ups and, 18 commercial contexts and, 87–88 Foto-Auge and, 45 Köpfe des Alltags and, 142, 170, 186 Malerie Photographie Film and, 4, 7, 15, 35 mass production and, 87, 95, 100 nature and, 19 Neue Sachlichkeit and, 95, 100 new visual literature and, 53, 55 photo-inflation and, 60, 62 spirituality and, 79 text and, 91 Urformen der Kunst and, 108 Weimar moment and, 200n7 Die Welt ist schön and, 18–19, 20, 69, 72, 75, 79, 81, 83, 87, 91, 96–97, 201n24, 203n48 accountant, 140 Achillea clypeolata, 125–126, 127 Aconitum anthora, 112, 113, 117 acoustic experiences, 37–38 actor, 51, 52 Adenauer, Konrad, 161 Adventures of a Ten Mark Bill (Die Abenteuer eines Zehnmarkscheins) (film), 154 advertisements, 54 aerial photos, 32, 44, 45, 46

Africa, 107 African Sculpture (Negerplastik) (Einstein), 129–131, 130, 202n38 “Against the Synthetic Portrait, for the Snapshot” (Rodchenko), 150 agave plant, 73, 75 airplanes, 31, 32 Albers, Joseph, 15 “Albert Renger-Patzsch: Contextualizing the Early Work, 1920–1933” (Heckert), 202n35 alienation, 79, 115 “Aluminum Töpfe. Warenhaus Schocken, Zwickau” (Aluminum Pots, Schocken Department Store, Zwickau), 87 “Animals and People” (Heise), 88 anonymous subjects, 139, 150, 164, 169, 182, 186. See also “Portier” (Porter) and other anonymous subjects Antlitz der Zeit (The Face of our Time) (Sander) Benjamin and, 200n12 Döblin and, 8 faces and, 159 Köpfe des Alltags compared to, 138 objectivity and, 161, 163 quantity of photographs and, 164, 218n53 sequencing and, 163–164 K. Wolff and, 202n38 Arbeitscollage, 124 architecture, 90, 92, 106, 119, 207n101, 208n1. See also art; cathedral vaults; The Cologne Cathedral in 32 Pictures Arnheim, Rudolf, 173, 219n69 art. See also Kunstwollen; painting and photography Blossfeldt and, 106–107 Film und Foto exhibition and, 39 Heise on, 78 history of, 39

Kunstwollen and, 78–79 Moholy on, 29 nature and, 118, 119, 120–121 Page 236 →Neue Sachlichkeit and, 93 “new field of reverence” and, 90 popular feeling and, 78 Renger’s photographs and, 206n77 Urformen der Kunst and, 108 Die Welt ist schГ¶n and, 68–69, 68–70, 71 artists, 159, 169 Assyrian temples, 19 Atget, Lichtbilder (Recht), 200n12 Atkins, Anna, 208n2 Atlantis: LГ¤nder, VГ¶lker, Riesen (Atlantis: Countries, People, Travel), 66 “Attachment to Things” (Petry), 80–81 audiences and viewers. See also training of viewers BlГјhende Welt and, 103 Foto-Auge and, 42, 44 KГ¶pfe des Alltags and, 138, 158 Malerei Photographie Film and, 194n4 response of, 28–29 somatic instinct and, 25 Urformen der Kunst and, 102 Auriga Press. See Folkwang-Auriga Press Aus der FrГјhzeit der Photographie, 1840–70 (Bossert and Guttmann), 200n12 Ausdruck, 175, 178. See also expressions, facial avant-garde. See also MA (avant-garde journal) “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” and, 56 film and, 13, 14

Malerei Photographie Film and, 4 montage and, 9 Negerplastik and, 130 photograph collecting and, 25, 27 simultaneity and, 199n72 Urformen der Kunst and, 107 Baker, George, 8, 60, 159, 161, 200n7 Balázs, Béla, 153–155, 216n24 Ballet mécanique (film), 14, 56 balsam, Indian photograph of, 117, 210n38 Baroque and Rococo: Photographs by F. Hepner (exhibition), 214n4 Barthes, Roland, 2 Bataille, Georges, 128–129 bathtubs, 94–95 Bauhaus, 4, 38, 197n43 bauhaus (journal), 59 Bauhausbücher (series), 22, 23, 194n4 Bauten der Technik: ihre Form und Wirkung (Lindner), 208n1 Beckmann, Max, 137 “beggar from Bavaria,” 137 “Beggar from Saxony” (“Bettler aus Sachsen”), 142, 145, 153 beggars, 169 Behne, Adolph, 22–23, 25 Benjamin, Walter. See also “Little History of Photography”; “The Work of Art in the Age of its Mechanical Reproducibility” on abstraction, 200n7 on captions, 17 history and modernity and, 19 on modern vision, 13 on reading faces, 157–158

on time, 133–134, 213n71 on Urformen der Kunst, 61, 133–135, 200n12 Urformen der Kunst and, 133–135, 213n71 on Die Welt ist schön, 61, 81–82, 92 Bergius, Hanne, 192n13 Berlin, 41, 107, 214n4 Berliner Börsen-Courier, 140 Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung (BIZ) (illustrated weekly), 9, 25, 70 Berlin in Bildern (Stone), 9, 192n20 Berlin: Symphonie der Grosstadt (Berlin: Symphony of a City) (film), 9 “Bettler aus Sachsen” (“Beggar from Saxony”), 142, 145, 153 Biermann, Anne, 209n12 Bildbände (Bildreihen), 66, 69, 91 bindings, 15–16 birds, 30, 31 BIZ (Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung) (illustrated weekly), 9, 25, 70 black-and-white versus color, 83–84, 87 blacksmiths, 164, 165, 186 blast-furnace factory, 72, 84, 85 “Blast-furnace Worker,” 182, 185 Die Blauen Bücher (Blue Books), 66, 208n5, 217n36 Bloch, Ernst, 135–136 The Blooming World (Blühende Welt), 103, 208n5 Blossfeldt, Karl, 19, 102–136, 106. see also Urformen der Kunst (Originary Forms of Art) background of, 120 Meurer and, 122, 124 objectivity and, 139 text and, 8 Blue Books (Die Blauen Bücher), 66, 208n5, 217n36

BlГјhende Welt (The Blooming World), 103, 208n5 Page 237 →BlГјte und Frucht im Leben der BГ¤ume (Flower and Fruit in the Life of Trees), 102–103 boat, 73 bohemian types, 159 Boilerman (“Heizer”), 151–152, 169 Bolter, Jay David, 16 the book. See also bindings; layouts and formats; media; publishing houses; text and captions; Weimar photographic books faces and, 159 films and, 15, 16, 147, 155 Malerie Photographie Film and, 22 mass production images and, 96 modernity and, 14–16 modern vision and, 15–16 Moholy and, 18, 21 New Vision and, 21–22 visualizing, 21–58 Die Welt ist schГ¶n and, 101 book-cinema (Buchkinema), 3, 191n10 “book seller,” 169, 170 Bordwell, David, 13 Born, Wolfgang, 39 Bossert, Helmuth Th., 200n12 box of paints, 72 “Brazilianischer Melonenbaum” (Brasilian Melon Tree), 75, 77 Brecht, Berthold, 200n7 Breuer, Marcel, 107, 210n38 BrГјckle, Wolfgang, 173–174 Brunelleschi, Filippo, 170 Buchkinema (book-cinema), 3, 191n10

Buchloh, Benjamin, 27 Buck-Morss, Susan, 213n71 “Bügeleisen für Schuhfabrikation. Fagus-Werk Benscheidt in Alfeld” (Shoe Irons for Industrial Production, Fagus-Factory Benscheidt in Alfeld), 86 Bunte Welt, 83–84, 89–90 Burchartz, Max, 45 cable railway pulleys, 96 “Cactus,” 200n15 cactus plant, 75 Callistemma brachiatum, 131, 132 camera angles. see also close-ups, photographic; perspective faces and, 158–159, 161, 164, 166 Köpfe des Alltags and, 147, 150, 153, 180 “pure expression” and, 154 text and, 47–49, 48, 51–52 Die Welt ist schön and, 62, 75 candelabra, 117 capitalism, 60, 61, 68–69, 87, 88, 100, 100–101, 135. See also commercial contexts; mass production captions. See text and captions (verbal language) card catalog, 45 Carroll, Noël, 13 Cassiope tetragona, 112 The Cathedral of Essen (Das Münster in Essen) (Wilhelm-Kästner), 93 cathedral vaults, 64, 65, 90, 96 ceiling lights, 90 chestnut blooms, 131, 134 chimneys, 90 Christ, sculpted, 90–91 Chrysanthemum Leucanthemum, 112 cinema. See films

circuses, 55, 57 Claire, René, 14 clairvoyance, 174 Clauss, Ludwig Ferdinand, 178–180, 221n93 Cleaning Woman (“Reinemachefrau”), 142, 144, 146, 160, 161, 170, 180–181 clock, 32 close-ups, cinematic, 19, 154, 155, 216n24 close-ups, photographic abstraction and, 18, 72 “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” and, 55 Forms of Life: Botanical Photographs and, 103 Foto-Auge and, 45 Köpfe des Alltags and, 19–20, 137, 142, 153, 154, 155, 182 Malerei Photographie Film and, 29, 195n14 Menschen am Werk and, 182–186 Urformen der Kunst and, 128 Die Welt ist schön and, 72, 75, 82, 91, 200n16 coal heaps, 82 coastlines, 44 Cobaea scandens, 212n53 coffee mug, 72, 200n16 collages, 124 The Cologne Cathedral in 32 Pictures (Der kölner Dom in 32 Bildern), 103 color versus black-and-white, 83–84, 87, 125 columns, 24 comfrey, 124, 131 commercial contexts. See also capitalism; fashion; mass production abstraction and, 87–88 Neue Sachlichkeit and, 205n74

Die Welt ist schГ¶n and, 68–70, 71, 81 Page 238 →Common Ground: German Photographic Cultures Across the Iron Curtain (James), 205n74 Comparative Instruction of the Forms of Ornament and Plants (Vergleichende Formenlehre des Ornamentes und der Pflanze) (Meurer), 120–121 composition of photographs BildbГ¤nde and, 66 KГ¶pfe des Alltags and, 170 Malerei Photographie Film and, 49 mechanical reproduction and, 101 Menschen der Zeit and, 161 Neue Sachlichkeit and, 96 versus paintings, 47 text and, 51 training of viewers and, 37 Urformen der Kunst and, 122, 126 Die Welt ist schГ¶n and, 75, 82, 91, 96, 101 consciousness, 175 Constructivist poems, 53, 198n70 continuity. See sequencing, series and continuity cooking pots, 96 Corinth, Lovis, 137 “Cornus Nuttallii und Cornus florida,” 112, 113 craftsman, 169 cranes, 82, 84, 90, 96, 182 Crassula (Fuhrmann, ed.), 201n24 crimes, 45 “Cucurbita,” 118 culture. See also Volk films and, 154 Kunstwollen and, 78–79

nature and, 68, 72 Negerplastik and, 131 Neue Sachlichkeit and, 94 outer form and, 187 spiritual principle and, 158 unity and, 79–80, 87–88 Urformen der Kunst and, 128 Cultures of the Earth (Kulturen der Erde), 63, 66, 201n22 cups filled with paint, 200n16 “Cyperus alternifolius,” 75, 76 Dada, 27 daguerreotypes , 2, 16, 20, 173, 191n9 Die Dame (illustrated magazine), 194n4 dancers, 33–35, 34. See also Palucca, Gret David Octavius Hill, der Meister der Photographie (H. Schwartz), 200n12 death masks, 170–181, 219n69 Death Masks (Totenmasken) (Langer), 170, 173 decorative forms, 93, 107, 120, 121, 125, 133, 209n22 “degenerate” types, 159 dehumanization, 28 deindividualization, 173 democracy, 10 Der Kreis (journal), 81 Deutsche Alpen in schönen Bildern (The German Alps in Beautiful Pictures), 103 Das deutsche Lichtbild (annual), 178 Deutsche Plastik, 202n38 Deutscher Wald in schönen Bildern (The German Forest in Beautiful Pictures), 103 Das deutsche Volksgesicht (The Face of the German People) (Lendvai-Dircksen), 164–165, 187 Dexel, Walter, 39

discontinuity, disorder, distraction and fragmentation. See also objectivity of photographs; sequencing, series and continuity; unity color and, 84–85 Dada and, 27 “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” and, 56–58 faces and, 156, 157 “Les Langage de Fleurs” and, 128–129 Malerei Photographie Film and, 37, 38, 53 modernity and, 12–13 Moholy’s theory of perception and, 28 photographic books and, 9 sculpture of Christ and, 90 Urformen der Kunst and, 126, 135 Die Welt ist schön and, 72, 79, 81, 82 divers, 44 Dix, Otto, 107, 137 Dobe, Paul, 105 Döblin, Alfred, 8 Documents (journal), 128 Doesburg, Theo van, 9 dogwood, 124 Doherty, Brigid, 192n13 domestic servant, 169 Drawn or Snapped (Gezeichnet oder Gekinipst) (exhibition), 137 Dr. Mabuse der Spieler (film), 30 de Duve, Thierry, 33, 35, 37 “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” (“Dynamics of the Metropolis”) (Moholy) avant-garde and, 56 Constructivist/Futurist poems and, 198n70 described, 4, 53–54

Page 239 →films and, 4, 53–54, 55–58 Malerei Photographie Film and, 24, 192n13 modern vision and, 56–57 shared images in, 200n15 text and, 53–55, 54 Eastern European photography, 198n56 economic crises, 60 “Einheit der Welt” (World Unity) (Riezler), 94 Einstein, Carl, 129–131, 202n38, 213nn69–70 Eisenstein, Sergei, 154–155, 199n75 Der eiserne Hammer: Das Gute fГјr Alle (The Iron Hammer: The Good for All), 103 the elderly, 164 electric heater, 72 elephant, 57 embodiment, 28–29, 196n38. See also expressions, bodily; human forms engines, 96 Entr’acte (film), 14, 56, 57 “Epimedium Muschianum,” 111, 112 Epiphyllum truncalum, 104 Erbshaft dieser Zeit (Inheritance of this Time) (Bloch), 135 Ernst, Max, 128, 213n63 Eryngium bourgatii, 125 eryngo, 124 Eskildsen, Ute, 216n29 Es kommt der neue Fotograf! (Here Comes the New Photographer!) (GrГ¤ff), 18, 42, 47, 49, 50 Essen, 197n44. See also Das MГјnster in Essen The Eternal Face: A Collection of 112 Death Masks (Das ewige Antlitz: eine Sammlung von 112 Totenmasken), 170 ethics for photographers, 78 “Euphorbia grandicronis,” 200n15

Das ewige Antlitz: eine Sammlung von 112 Totenmasken (The Eternal Face: A Collection of 112 Death Masks), 170 Exoten, Kakteen und Janthur (exhibition), 107 exoticism, 107 experience. See New Vision; training of viewers Expressionism, 78 “expression of life,” 178, 180 expressions, bodily, 153, 155, 175 expressions, facial. See facial expressions eyes. See embodiment “Fabrikarbeiterin,” (Factory Worker), 176 Face and Soul (Gesicht und Seele) (Lersch), 175 The Face of Cities (Das Gesicht der Städt), 66 The Face of our Time (Döblin). See Antlitz der Zeit (The Face of our Time) (Döblin) The Face of the German People (Das deutsche Volksgesicht) (Lendvai-Dircksen), 164–165 faces and portraiture. see also expressions; The Face of our Time (Döblin); The Face of the German People (Lendvai-Dircksen); facial expressions; individuality (identity); Köpfe des Alltags (Lerski); Menschen der Zeit Balázs on, 153 identity and, 175, 178 Menschen am Werk and, 182, 186 nature and, 178, 180 reading, 155–170 text and, 153, 174 training of viewers and, 157–158, 159, 161, 173 Die Welt ist schön and, 88 Fachblättern, 47 facial expressions Arnheim on, 219n69 book format and, 147 inner/outer form and, 175, 178

photographic techniques and, 159, 169, 173, 180 problem of, 219n69 sculpted Christ and, 90 social types and, 157, 186 work and, 186 The Facial Expressions of Man (Das Gesichtausdruck des Menschen ) (Krukenberg), 178 Factory Worker (“Fabrikarbeiterin,”), 176, 180 factory workers, 180, 182–184 Fagus shoe factory, 200n16 farmers, 159, 169 farmer’s son, 147 fashion, 93, 101 feelings, 175 female photographers, 8, 192n16 fern, ostrich, 134 FiFo. see Film und Foto (FiFo) (exhibition) Film Enemy Today, Film Friend Tomorrow (Richter). See Filmgegner von Heute, Filmfreunde von Morgen (Film Enemy Today, Film Friend Tomorrow) (Richter) Filmgegner von Heute, Filmfreunde von Morgen (Film Enemy Today, Film Friend Tomorrow) (Richter), 18, 42, 47, 49, 51, 51, 52, 53 films. See also Dr. Mabuse der Spieler and other films; Eisenstein, Sergei; Film und Foto (FiFo) (exhibition); media avant-garde, 13, 14 Page 240 →Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung and, 9 Berlin in Bildern and, 9 the book and, 15, 16, 147, 155 “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” and, 4, 54, 55–58 Eisenstein on, 154–155 fragmentation and, 12–13 KГ¶pfe des Alltags and, 20, 142–155, 150, 169 Lerski and, 19

Malerei Photographie Film and, 7, 21–22, 30, 35, 37, 38, 39 modernity and, 12–13, 56–57 overstimulation and, 13, 56 photographs and, 20, 51, 53 plants and, 115 Richter on, 49 sequencing and, 154–155, 188 silent, 153–155 Soviet, 150 “Stop Reading! Look!” and, 3 text and, 21, 56, 153–154 time and, 51 Filmtechnik, 169 Film und Foto (FiFo) (exhibition) atrium, 41 in Berlin, 214n4 books published with, 17, 18, 22, 42 Eastern European photography and, 198n56 Filmgegner von Heute and, 51, 53 Malerei Photographie Film and, 38–39 Moholy and, 198n51 photo-inflation and, 59 poster for, 40 Richter and, 51 selection of photos and, 39, 41 training viewers and, 38–42 Weimar photographic books and, 53 fishing and fisher people, 88, 90, 201n19 flight, 30, 31

Floating Docks, Felnder Factories A. G. Lübeck (“Schwimmdock. Flender-Werke A.G. Lübeck”), 98 Flower and Fruit in the Life of Trees (Blüte und Frucht im Leben der Bäume), 102–103 “flowering Cactus,” 200n15 flowers, 128–129, 201n24 Folkwang-Auriga Press, 63, 68, 71, 201n22, 202nn32–34 forgers, 186 Die Form (journal), 15, 47, 69, 92, 94, 138, 169–170 formats. See layouts and formats Formen des Lebens: Botanische Lichtbildstudien (Forms of Life: Botanical Photographs) (P. Wolff), 103–105, 208n5, 209n15 forms. See also spirituality and spiritual unity; unity faces and, 186 nature and, 81 universality of, 90, 91, 100, 101 Urformen der Kunst and, 11, 19, 105–108, 115–118 Die Welt ist schön and, 71–92 Forms of Life: Botanical Photographs (Formen des Lebens: Botanische Lichtbildstudien) (P. Wolff), 103–105, 208n5, 209n15 Forms of Plants (Pflanzenformen ) (Meurer), 122 forsythia, 124 Foto-Auge (Photo-Eye) (Roh and Tschichold) cover of, 43–44 Eastern European photography and, 198n56 Film und Foto and, 18 New Vision and, 46 selection of photographs and, 42 sequencing and, 44–45, 47 text and, 46–49, 47 Fotolehrbuch, 47 foxglove, 75

fragmentation. see discontinuity, disorder, distraction and fragmentation Frankfurter Zeitung, 217n42 “Frau eines Chauffeurs” (“Wife of a Chauffeur”), 137, 147, 148, 149, 150, 166, 169 Friedell, Egon, 174 FrГ¶bes, 15 “From Pigment to Light” (Moholy-Nagy), 188 fruit seller, 150 Fuhrmann, Ernst, 63, 67, 68, 201n17, 201n22, 201n24 fuller’s thistle, 134 Funkant, Walter, 44 the future, 1–2, 12, 17, 49, 133, 189 Futurist poems, 198n70 Galerie Nierendorf, 209n23 GantefГјhrer-Trier, Anne, 106, 213n58 Gaudreault, AndrГ©, 16 Genius (journal), 78 GГ©ricault, ThГ©odore, 170, 171 The German Alps in Beautiful Pictures (Deutsche Alpen in schГ¶nen Bildern), 103 The German Forest in Beautiful Pictures (Deutscher Wald in schГ¶nen Bildern), 103 Page 241 →Das Germanische Volksgesicht (Lendvai-Dircksen), 164–165, 187, 218n56 German Wildflowers (Wilde Blumen der Deutschen Flora) (Dobe), 102–103, 105, 136 Germany: The New Photography (Mellor, ed.), 203n48 Das Gesichtausdruck des Menschen (The Facial Expressions of Man) (Krukenberg), 178 Das Gesicht der StГ¤dt (The Face of Cities), 66 Gesicht und Seele (Face and Soul) (Lersch), 175 Geum rivale, 131 Gezeichnet oder Gekinipst (Drawn or Snapped) (exhibition), 137, 214n2 Gitelman, Lisa, 8 Glaser, Kurt, 8, 137–140, 147, 150, 166, 169, 187, 214n4

glass ball, 45 glassware, 72 Goebbels, Joseph, 106 Goethe, Wolfgang von, 108, 125, 213n71 Gräff, Werner, 18, 42. See also Es kommt der neue Fotograf! (Here Comes the New Photographer!) (Gräff) grapes, 75, 78 grave, 116–117 Green Architecture (“Grüne Architektur”) (Breuer), 116–117 grids, 4, 18, 53, 82, 88, 96, 101 Gropius, Walter, 200n16 “Grüne Architektur” (Green Architecture) (Breuer), 116–117 Grusin, Richard, 16 Gunning, Tom, 12–13 Günther Wager Company, 200n16 Gurlitt, Hildebrand, 80 Guttmann, Heinrich, 200n12 habits, 13, 14, 17, 20, 25, 28, 37–38, 178. See also training of viewers Hafenarbeiter (stevedore), 182 Hake, Sabine, 159, 161 halftone printing, 9 Die Halligen, Das Gesicht der Landschaft (Renger-Patzsch), 9, 192n20, 201n17, 201n19 Hamann, Richard, 206n77 hands, praying, 101 Hartlaug, Gustav Friedrich, 206n84 Hartmann, Sadakichi, 214n1 Hauptmann, Gerhart, 161 Haus, Andreas, 106 Haxthausen, Charles, 213n63 Head of a Maori, Leipzig, Grassi-Museum (“Kopf eines Maori, Leipzig, Grassi-Museum”), 88–89, 201n25

Head of a Snake (“Natterkopf”), 67, 68, 72, 73, 202n32, 203n48 heads, 206n77 Heckert, Virginia, 68–69, 202n35 Der heilige Berg (film), 142 Heise, Carl Georg. See also Norddeutsche Malerei on abstraction, 203n48 background of, 204n56 Kunstwollen and, 71–92 Lübeck photographs and, 201n20 on Neue Sachlichkeit, 93 photographic collection of, 201n21 on Renger’s photographs, 206n77 on spiritualization, 101 on unity, 62 Die Welt ist schön and, 18, 62, 63, 68–70, 71, 101 “Heizer” (Boilerman), 151–152 Hepner, F., 214n4 Hermann, Wolfgang, 39 Herrenwyk (Lübeck), 63 “Heterotrichum macrodum,” 75 Hight, Eleanor, 191n12 Hildebrandt, Hans, 39 Histoire naturelle (Ernst), 128 history. See also natural history death mask books and, 173 Eisenstein on, 154 Meurer on, 120–121 outer form and, 187 perception and, 13

photography and, 18, 90 Urformen der Kunst and, 106, 108, 112, 115, 119, 126, 128–136 HГ¶ch, Hannah, 25–26, 30 horse, 44 horsetail, 116–117, 134 human forms, 88, 90–91, 95, 131, 164 identity. See anonymous subjects; faces and portraiture; individuality; social identities; souls illiteracy. See literacy/illiteracy illustrated press (die Illustrierten) BildbГ¤nde and, 66 books and, 15, 16 “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” and, 53 faces and, 155–156, 155–157, 156 Malerie Photographie Film and, 22, 24–25 Page 242 →photographic books and, 9–10, 12, 117 text and, 54 Images of Plants (Pflanzenbilder) (Meurer), 122, 125–126 Indian balsam, 210n38 individuality (identity). See also anonymous subjects; faces; inner/outer form; souls KГ¶pfe des Alltags and, 165–166, 173, 174–175, 181, 187 Lersch on, 175 portraiture and, 215n1 “Industrial Smoke Stack,” 200n15 industry, 186 inflation, monetary, 60, 166, 200n6 inner/outer form. See also souls Clauss on, 180 facial expressions and, 175, 178 KГ¶pfe des Alltags and, 137, 138, 139, 159, 174–175

Lendvai-Dircksen and, 187 Lotz on, 170 Sachlichkeit and, 94 Urformen der Kunst and, 108, 134 instantaneity, 58 instinct, 10, 12, 25, 28, 30, 33, 37 Jaeger, Roland, 201n29 James, Sarah, 205n74 Japan, 39 Jennings, Michael, 1, 44–45 Jersey City, 32 Jugenstil, 107 “Just Photography” (Simms), 203n48 Kaffe Hag advertisement, 200n16 Kallai, Ernö, 59, 66 Die Kamera — Ausstellung für Fotographie, Druck und Reproducktion (exhibition), 209n16 Kandinsky, Wassily, 107, 134 “Kauper, von unten gesehen. Hochofenwerk, Herrenwyk” (Smokestacks seen from below, Blast Furnace Plant, Herrenwyk), 85 Klee, Paul, 107, 134 Kokoschka, Oskar, 137 Köllwitz, Käthe, 161 Der kölner Dom in 32 Bildern (The Cologne Cathedral in 32 Pictures), 103 Königsbalichtspiele (Stuttgart), 51 Köpfe des Alltags (Lerski). See also Lerski, Helmar anonymous subjects and, 164 audiences and, 158 composition and, 170 death masks and, 170–181 described, 137

faces and, 19–20 films and, 20, 142–155, 150, 169 formats and, 147 identity and, 157, 165–166, 187 individuality and, 173, 181 meaning, photographic, and, 159 objectivity and, 187 price of, 138 reading faces and, 155–170 Rittelmann on, 222n9, 222n11 scholarship and, 214n5 sequencing and, 138, 147, 150–155, 164, 166, 180 social identities and, 137, 142, 161, 165–166, 169–170, 175 souls and, 178 spirituality and, 174–175, 178 techniques and, 180–181 temporal experience and, 20 text and, 8, 187 Volk and, 186 working class and, 154 “Kopf eines Maori, Leipzig, Grassi-Museum” (Head of a Maori, Leipzig, Grassi-Museum), 88–89, 201n25 Köppen, Edlef, 9 Korff, Kurt, 9 Kracauer, Siegfried, 90, 158–159, 217n42 Kraszna-Kraus, Andor, 51 Krauss, Rosalind, 128 Krukenberg, Hermann, 178 Kubicki, Stanislav, 119 Kulturen der Erde (Cultures of the Earth), 63, 66, 201n22

Das Kunstblatt (journal), 41, 80, 138 Kunstwollen, 39, 78–81, 94 Kurt Wolff Verlag, 202n38. See also Wolff, Kurt “Landstreicher aus Schlesien,” (Vagrant from Silesia), 177, 180 Lang, Fritz, 30 Le Langage des Fleurs (The Language of Flowers) (Bataille), 128–129 Langen, Albert, 22, 23 Langer, Richard, 173 Langeweische, Karl Robert, 217n36 larkspur, 124, 134 “LГЎszlГі Moholy-Nagy and Painting Photography Film: A Guide to Narrative Montage” Page 243 →(Nelson), 192n13 The Late Roman Art Industry (SpГ¤trГ¶mische Kunstindustrie), 78 “Laufkran im Hochofenwerk, Herrenwyk” (Traveling Crane in a Blast Furnace Plant, Herrenwyk), 84 layouts and formats. See also columns; sequencing, series and continuity “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” and, 53–54 KГ¶pfe des Alltags and, 147 Malerei Photographie Film and, 24, 33, 34, 57, 58 Pflanzenbilder and, 122 taxonomies, 222n13 Weimar photo-books and, 47 Die Welt ist schГ¶n and, 72, 82, 83 LГ©ger, Fernand, 14 Lendvai-Dircksen, Erna, 164–165, 187, 188, 189, 192n16, 218n56 Leni, Paul, 142 Lenin, Vladimir, 215n21 Lerch, Phillip, 175 Lersch, Heinrich, 186 Lerski, Helmar. See also KГ¶pfe des Alltags background of, 137

Balázs and, 154, 216n24 experience of, 142–143, 214n1, 216n29 films and, 19 on light, 140 photographs of, 141 on photography, 154 on text, 155 text and, 8 works of, 216n29 Das Letzte Gesicht (The Last Face), 170, 174 Das Lichtbild (exhibition), 197n44 light in photographs death masks and, 170 faces and, 161, 169 Köpfe des Alltags and, 140–142, 147, 153, 166, 169, 170, 174, 180, 181 Malerei Photographie Film and, 35, 38 spirituality and, 174–175 lightning, 35 Lindner, Werner, 208n1 lions, 55–56 literacy/illiteracy, 1–2, 10, 17, 44, 47, 133, 138, 189. See also New Vision (“new optics”); training of viewers literary interpretation, 2, 8 “Little History of Photography” (Benjamin), 61, 134–135, 200n7 logs, 82 Lotz, Wilhelm, 69, 94–95, 97–98, 100, 169–170 Lübeck, 63, 64, 65, 70, 201n20 Lugon, Olivier, 39, 61 Luther, Martin, 170 MA (avant-garde journal), 24

machines. See mass production; mechanization Das Magazin (illustrated magazine), 194n4 magazines. See illustrated press Magilow, Daniel, 1, 2, 47 “maid,” 137 maiden-hair fern, 210n38 Malerei Photographie Film (Painting, Photography, Film) (Moholy). See also “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt”; Moholy-Nagy, László analyses of, 192n13 described, 3–4, 7, 24, 29–32, 195n11 films and, 7, 21–22, 30, 35, 37, 38, 39 Film und Foto and, 38–39 format and layout of, 6, 33, 57, 58 Foto-Auge and, 44 Moholy’s photographs in, 195nn14–15 multisensory experiences and, 37–38 New Vision and, 22–29 new visual literature and, 53–58 perception and, 17–18, 27, 30, 37 price/where purchased, 194n4 purely optical images and, 29–38, 197n43 selection of photos for, 24–27, 39, 195n11 sequencing and, 24, 27, 30, 33–38 text and, 30, 32, 33, 34, 37–38, 130 title of, 191n9 training of viewers and, 21–22, 24, 25, 30, 38 typography and, 22, 24 Die Welt ist schön and, 200n15 Mann, Thomas, 70, 161 Maori face, 88, 88–89

maple shoots, 134 Marion, Philippe, 16 Marxism, 61, 88 mass culture, 25, 188, 217n42. See also audiences and viewers; mass production; photo-inflation “Das Massenerzeugnis” (Lotz), 95 mass production, 87, 93–96, 100–101. See also capitalism; mechanization Mattenklott, Gert, 106 Matthies-Masuren, F., 59, 66 Maurus, Marc, 9 Max Taut: Bauten und PlГ¤ne (Max Taut: Buildings and Plans) (Molzahn), 1, 2–4 Page 244 →Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 215n21 meaning, cinematic, 154–155 meaning, photographic. See also symbols; text; universality of photography Es kommt der neue Fotograf! and, 49 instinctual response and, 37 KГ¶pfe des Alltags and, 154, 159, 169 Kunstwollen and, 79 money and, 60 objectivity of camera and, 90 sequencing and, 16, 154–155, 188 training viewers and, 12 unity and, 91 Die Welt ist schГ¶n and, 89–90 “Mechanism and Expression: the Essence and Value of Photography” (Roh), 44 mechanization. See also mass production art and, 39 embodiment versus, 28, 29 of images, 96 KГ¶pfe des Alltags and, 139

multisensory experiences and, 38 photographs of, 45 photo printing and, 53 Die Welt ist schön and, 68 media, 8, 9, 10, 14–20, 21, 49. See also the book; films; illustrated press (die Illustrierten); modern vision memory, 27–28, 29, 30, 38, 196n30. See also history; instinct Menschen am Werk (Retzlaff), 182–186, 188, 189 Menschen der Zeit (People of Our Time), 158, 161, 162–164, 217n36, 218n49 Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (People of the Twentieth Century) (Sander), 159, 163 Meurer, Moritz, 120–122, 124, 125, 133, 209n22 minaret, 117 minds, 27, 28 mirrored spheres, 35–36 mirrors, 142 Möbius, Martin, 103 modernity and the modern city. See also capitalism; discontinuity, disorder, distraction and fragmentation; stimulation, overthe book and, 22 compendium of, 66 critiques of, 205n65 cultural unity and, 79–80 “Dyamik der Gross-Stadt” and, 55 economic crises and, 60 films and, 12–13, 56–57 format and, 53 Foto-Auge and, 45 Kunstwollen and, 79–80 Malerei Photographie Film and, 22, 38 Meurer and, 120 photographic books of plants and, 105

photography and, 16 photo-inflation and, 18–19 physiognomy and, 181 spirituality and, 159, 173–174, 174–175 time and, 19, 133–134 unity and, 18–19, 78, 91 Urformen der Kunst and, 106, 108, 115, 119, 133–134, 135 visual experience of, 13 Die Welt ist schön and, 70, 92, 101 modernity thesis, 12–13 modern vision. See also the book; films; inner/outer form; media; modernity; New Vision (“new optics”); objectivity; perception; perspective; photography; sequencing; text; training of viewers; Weimar photographic books defined, 12–13 “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” and, 56–57 films and, 56 photography and, 16, 17, 20 Weimar photographic books and, 2, 3–4, 7–8, 10, 12, 13–14, 188–189 Moholy, Lucia (Schultz), 24, 195nn13–14 Moholy-Nagy, Hattula, 195n16 Moholy-Nagy, László. See also Malerei Photographie Film; perception death of, 195n17 Einstein and, 213n69 Film und Foto and, 198n51 Foto-Auge and, 44 on future of literacy, 1, 21 modern vision and, 188–189 new media and, 15 New Vision and, 197n44 on old media, 14

on painting, 191n9 photograph collection of, 195n17 photographs by in Malerei, 24, 45, 195nn14–15 on photography, 196n26 on series, 188 Stuttgart exhibition and, 198n51 on tactility, 197n43 Molzahn, Johannes, 1, 2, 14, 191n10. See also Buchkinema (book-cinema); Max Taut: Bauten und PlГ¤ne; “Stop Reading! Look!” Page 245 →money, 60 monkshood, 124, 134 montage, 9 “montage of attractions,” 199n75 monument, 19 More than One: Photographs in Sequence (Smith), 215n18 motorcyclists, 33, 34, 35 mouth, 45, 46 mud, pool of, 72 multisensory effects, 37–38, 197n43 mummified head, 88 Munich, 197n44 Das MГјnster in Essen (The Cathedral of Essen) (Wilhelm-KГ¤stner), 93 Murphy, Dudley, 14 Museum Folkwang, 197n44 Museum for Art and Cultural History (LГјbeck), 201n21 Museum of Decorative Art (Berlin), 106 museums, 68, 71 musicians, 159 “Musterzimmer im Fagus-Werk Benscheidt in Alfeld,” (Show Room in Fagus Factory Benscheidt in Alfeld), 100

Muthesius, Hermann, 93–94, 101 “Natterkopf” (Head of a Snake), 67, 68, 72, 73, 202n32, 203n48 natural history. See history; Urformen der Kunst (Originary Forms of Art) (Blossfeldt) nature abstraction and, 19 art and, 118, 119, 120–121 culture versus, 68, 72 faces and, 178, 180 forms and, 107–108 human types and, 88, 164 objectivity and, 78 serial composition and, 96 Die Welt ist schön and, 81, 82 Nature’s Garden of Miracles: New Documentary Images of Beautiful Forms of Plants (Wundergarten der Nature: neue Bilddokumente der schöner Pflanzenformen) (Blossfeldt), 209n21 Naturphilosophie, 108 Nazism, 105–106, 135–136, 159, 164, 187, 221n93. see also Third Reich Negerplastik (African Sculpture) (Einstein), 129–131, 130, 202n38 Nelson, Andrea, 192n13 Neue Sachlichkeit (“New Objectivity”) commercial nature of, 205n74 described, 92–93 Formen des Lebens and, 103–105 mass production and, 100–101 “Neues von Blumen” and, 133 objectivity and, 121 painting and, 206n84 Renger and, 201n23 seeing and reading and, 16 sequence and, 98

Urformen der Kunst and, 105–106, 120 Die Welt ist schön and, 96–97 Wilde Blumen and, 105 Neue Sachlichkeit: Deutsche Malerie seit dem Expressionismus (Hartlaub), 206n84 “Neues von Blumen” (“Something New from Flowers”) (Benjamin), 133–134 “Die neue visuelle Realität” (Bergius), 192n13 Neu Zeeland, 201n25 New Guinea, 107 New Objectivity. See Neue Sachlichkeit new optics. See New Vision; training of viewers newspapers. See illustrated press Newton, Isaac, 170 “New Typography” (Moholy), 21 New Vision (“new optics”). See also literacy/illiteracy; modern vision; Neue Sachlichkeit (“New Objectivity”); new visual literature; training of viewers book format and, 21–22 Buchkinema and, 3 Film und Foto and, 38 Foto-Auge and, 46 Malerei Photographie Film and, 4, 22–29, 38 Moholy’s theories and, 197n44 photography and, 16 The New Vision (Moholy), 197n44 new visual literature, 53–58 Nierendorf, Karl on Blossfeldt, 125 Ernst and, 213n63 financial problems of, 209n23 publishing house of, 208n1 Urformen der Kunst and, 8, 19, 107–108, 112, 115, 131, 134

Wasmuth and, 209n22 Nigella, 212n53 nonsimultaneity (Ungleichzeitigkeit), 135–136 Norddeutsche Malerei (Heise), 202n38 novelty, 135 the Now, 135 Page 246 →objectivity of photographs (reality) (truth). See also discontinuity, disorder, distraction and fragmentation; Neue Sachlichkeit (“New Objectivity”); Sachlichkeit Antlitz der Zeit and, 161, 163 films and, 56 KГ¶pfe des Alltags and, 169, 174–175, 187 Kunstwollen and, 80–81 light and, 35 Malerei Photography Film and, 35–37 Meurer and, 121 Moholy on, 28–29, 196n26 photograph of Christ sculpted and, 90 Stotz and, 41 time and, 35 Urformen der Kunst and, 102, 115, 119, 128 Weimar photographic books compared, 139 Die Welt ist schГ¶n and, 70, 78, 79, 81, 90–91 the occult, 174 On the Psychology of Vision (“Zur Psychologie des Sehens”) (Lendvai-Dircksen), 187 On the Souls and Faces of Races and People (Clauss), 221n93 optical images, purely. See “purely optical images” Orbis Terrarum: Die LГ¤nder der Erde im Bild, 66, 208n1 Orbis Urbium, 66 Orchideen (Fuhrmann, ed.), 201n24, 201n17, 201n24 orchids, 201n24

order. See discontinuity, disorder, distraction and fragmentation; sequencing, series and continuity; unity Originary Forms of Art (Blossfeldt). See Urformen der Kunst (Originary Forms of Art) (Blossfeldt) ostrich fern, 134 Otten, Karl, 119 Ouija board, 30 paint cups, 200n16 Painting, Photography, Film (Moholy). See Malerei Photographie Film (Moholy) painting and photography. See also art Albers on, 15 composition and, 47 Heise on, 69 Köpfe des Alltags and, 137, 139, 147, 150 Kunstwollen and, 80 Moholy on, 2, 188, 196n26 Neue Sachlichkeit and, 92–93, 206n84 Roh on, 46 pairs of photographs, 45 Palucca, Gret, 25–26, 33, 34 Panofsky, Erwin, 202n38 Paris, 30, 31, 45, 67 Part of a Fifteenth-Century Pietà , St. Mary’s Church in Zwickau (“Teilstück einer Pietà des 15. Jahrhunderts. Marienkirche in Zwickau,”), 90–91 Passagen-Werk (Benjamin), 133 people, 88. See also faces; human forms People of Our Time (Menschen der Zeit), 158, 161, 162–164, 217n36, 218n49 People of the Twentieth Century (Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts) (Sanders), 159 perception. See also instinct; modern vision; perspective; “purely optical images”; sequencing; training of viewers conventional, 30, 37 “Dyamik der Gross-Stadt” and, 56

historical change and, 13 Malerei Photographie Film and, 17–18, 27, 30, 37–38 Moholy on, 17–18, 27–28, 37–38 perspective, 30, 32, 82 Die PerГјcke (film), 142 Petry, Walther, 80–81, 118–119 Pflanzenbilder (Images of Plants) (Meurer), 122, 123, 125–126, 212n53 Pflanzenformen (Forms of Plants) (Meurer), 122 Phacelia tanacetifolia, 125 phonograph record, 36, 195n14 photobook industry, 62–71 Photograms, 24, 29, 30, 38, 198n51 photographic collections, 63, 66, 124, 202n32 “Photographie,” 196n26 Photographie der Gegenwart (exhibition), 197n44 Photographs of British Algae (Atkins), 208n2 photography. See also media; modernity and the modern city; painting and photography; photo-inflation; production and reproduction; time and temporal experience; Weimar photographic books conventional, 45 history of, 17, 30, 39 “Photography, Typography, and the Modernization of Reading” (Doherty), 192n13 Photography and Abstraction” (Baker), 200n7 “Photography and Botany” (exhibition), 106 The Photography of Albert Renger-Patzsch (exhibition), 214n4 Page 247 →photo-inflation, 18–19, 59–62, 66, 69–70, 71, 139, 163 physiognomic theories, 19, 216n31, 220n84. See also faces physiognomic theories and, 178 Picabia, Francis, 14 pictorialism, 139 Pinder, Wilhelm, 202n38

Planck, Max, 161, 162 planks, 82 police office, 44 politics, 187, 188, 189, 222n10 polypody, 124 “Portier” (Porter), 140–141, 150, 153 portraiture. See faces and portraiture postwar photographers and artists, 188 potter, 47–48, 47–49, 48 Praktische Berlinerin (magazine), 155–157, 156 Präludien für Klavier und Farblicht von Alexander László, Opl 10, 2. Gelb (Prelude for Piano and Colored Light by Alexander László, Op. 10, 2. Yellow), 37–38 praying hands, 90 “Preface to Albert Renger-Patzsch, Die Welt ist schön,” 203n48 Prelude for Piano and Colored Light by Alexander László, Op. 10, 2. Yellow (Präludien für Klavier und Farblicht von Alexander László, Opl 10, 2. Gelb), 37–38 primitivism, 107, 131 “Das Problem des Stiles” (Simmel), 207n90 production and reproduction, 29–38, 45, 100, 101. See also mass production “Produktion Reproduktion,” 195n11 Protective Grills and Exhaust Pipes of a Steel Planer (“Schutzgitter und Exhaustoren einer Stahlhobelmaschine”), 99 publishing houses, 62–71 “purely optical images” (“purely visual media”), 27–38, 153, 154, 197n43 quality versus quantity, 68, 161, 163, 164, 218n53 racialized types, 88, 105, 221n93 railroad tracks/workers, 82, 182 reality. See objectivity of photographs reality, heightened, 32 Recht, Camille, 200n12 “Reinemachefrau” (Cleaning Woman ), 142, 144, 146, 160, 161, 170, 180–181

religious experience, 90–91 Renger-Patzsch, Albert. See also Die Halligen, Das Gesicht der Landschaft (Renger-Patzsch); Die Welt ist schön (Renger-Patzsch) exhibitions of, 214n4 Folkwang-Auriga Press and, 63, 68, 71, 202nn32–34 mass production photos of, 95 Das Münster in Essen and, 93 Neue Sachlichkeit and, 201n23 objectivity and, 139 photobook industry and, 62–71 on photo-inflation, 59 publishing houses and, 68 Roh and, 46 Die Welt der Pflanzen and, 103 Wilde Blumen and, 105 “Reporter,” 170, 171, 179 reproductive versus productive photography, 29–38, 93, 158, 213n70 retouching, 125 Retzlaff, Erich, 182–186, 188, 189. See also Menschen am Werk revolutionary worker, 169 Richter, Hans, 18, 42, 51. See also Filmgegner von Heute, Filmfreunde von Morgen Riegl, Aloïs, 13, 39, 78–79, 134, 204n57 Riezler, Walter, 51, 94, 100–101 Rittelmann, Leesa, 106, 222n9, 222n11 Rodchenko, Alexander, 150, 215n1 Rodin, 19 Roh, Franz, 18, 39, 42, 44, 128. See also Foto-Auge (Photo-Eye) (Roh and Tschichold) Roman masks, 170 Rudolf, Charlotte, 25–26, 33, 34 Russian workers, 45

Ruttmann, Walther, 9 Sachlichkeit. See also Neue Sachlichkeit architecture and, 92, 207n101 Blossfeldt and, 125 fashion and, 101 mass production and, 93–94, 95 Simmel and, 207n90 Die Welt ist schГ¶n and, 101 saleswoman, 166 Salvia glutinosa, 212n53 Sander, August, 8, 138, 159–160, 200n12, 202n38. See also Antlitz der Zeit (The Face of Our Time) (DГ¶blin) saxifrage, 134 “Saxifrage aizoon,” 109, 112, 134 scanning, 38 Page 248 →SchaubГјcher, 66 Schelling, F. W. J., 108 SchmГ¶lders, Claudia, 170, 173 Schultz (Moholy), Lucia, 24, 195n13 “Schutzgitter und Exhaustoren einer Stahlhobelmaschine” (Protective Grills and Exhaust Pipes of a Steel Planer), 99 Schwartz, Frederic, 93, 220n84 Schwarz, Heinrich, 70, 80, 200n12, 204n62, 207n90 Schwarz, Rudolf, 201n17 “Schwimmdock. Flender-Werke A.G. LГјbeck” (Floating Docks, Felnder Factories A. G. LГјbeck), 98 science and scientists, 75, 78, 81, 128. See also natural history sculpture, 170, 181, 206n77 seamstress, 166 Semper, Gottfried, 204n57 “Sempervivium tabulaeforme,” 72, 74 sensory organs. See embodiment

sequencing, series and continuity. See also discontinuity, disorder, distraction and fragmentation; history; layouts; layouts and formats Antlitz der Zeit and, 159, 163 close-ups and, 154 Eisenstein on, 154–155 films and, 154–155, 188 Foto-Auge and, 42, 44–45, 47 identity and, 150, 157, 158, 163–164 Köpfe des Alltags and, 8, 138, 147, 150–155, 164, 166, 180 Lendvai-Dirchsen and, 187 Malerei Photographie Film and, 24, 27, 30, 33–38, 130 mass production and, 94–95, 101 Menschen der Zeit and, 163–164 Moholy-Nagy on, 188 Negerplastik and, 131 Neue Sachlichkeit and, 96, 98 Pflanzenbilder and, 122 photographic meaning and, 188 Sander and, 163 Simmel on, 207n90 simultaneity versus, 56 temporal experience and, 147, 215n18 texts versus, 16 training of viewers and, 98 Urformen der Kunst and, 8, 108, 112, 115, 118–119, 126, 131–132, 133, 212n57, 213n58 Urformen der Kunst and, 128–129, 134 Die Welt ist schön and, 62, 72, 75, 83, 88, 89–90, 92, 98, 101 sheep, 201n19 ships, 44 shoehorns, 73

Shoe Irons for Industrial Production, Fagus-Factory Benscheidt in Alfeld (“Bügeleisen für Schuhfabrikation. Fagus-Werk Benscheidt in Alfeld”), 82, 86, 90 shoe molds, 96 Show Room in Fagus Factory Benscheidt in Alfeld (“Musterzimmer im Fagus-Werk Benscheidt in Alfeld”), 100 Der sichtbare Mensch (The Visible Man) (Balázs), 153 Sieker, Hugo, 81, 119 Silphium laciniatum, 118 Simmel, Georg, 207n90, 213n71 Simms, Matthew, 61 simultaneity, 53, 56–57, 135–136, 199n72 skin, 142 Smith, Joel, 215n18 Smith, T’ai, 197n43 smokestacks, 73, 82, 85, 90, 96, 200n15 social identities (types). See also anonymous subjects; faces; individuality (identity) Antlitz der Zeit and, 161 books of plants and, 103 Das deutsche Volksgesicht and, 164–165 expression and, 178 faces and, 178 history and, 135, 173 industrial workers and, 186 Köpfe des Alltags and, 137, 165–166, 169–170, 175 Menschen am Werk and, 182, 186 Praktische Berlinerin and, 155, 157 racialized, 88, 105, 221n93 sequencing and, 163–164 training of viewers and, 12, 157 Weimar Republic and, 158, 181

Die Welt ist schГ¶n and, 88 socks, cotton, 82 Somali child, 88 “Something New from Flowers” (“Neues von Blumen”) (Benjamin), 133–134 souls, 138–141, 142, 173–175, 178, 180–181. See also individuality (identity); inner/outer form; spirituality and spiritual unity Soviets, 150, 196n38 space, 35–36, 53–54. See also simultaneity Page 249 →SpГ¤trГ¶mische Kunstindustrie (The Late Roman Art Industry), 78 The Speaker, 45, 46 spirals, 72, 101 spiral staircase, 72 spirituality and spiritual unity. See also inner/outer form; souls; unity; Urbild; Urformen abstraction and, 79 culture and, 158–159 death masks and, 173–174 Heise on, 101 industrial commodities and, 92, 94, 100 KГ¶pfe des Alltags and, 137, 139–140, 142, 178 Kunstwollen and, 78–81 Neue Sachlichkeit and, 94, 100, 101 Nierendorf on, 115 Urform and, 108 Urformen der Kunst and, 115, 119 Die Welt ist schГ¶n and, 79, 81, 84, 87, 88, 91, 92, 101 Staatliche Kunstbibliothek (Berlin), 41, 64, 214n4 stars, 35, 36 steam engine, 72 steel plant, 82 “Stenotypistin” (Stenographer), 166, 167–168, 169

stevedore (Hafenarbeiter), 182 Stieglitz, Alfred, 30 Stilfragen (Riegl), 134 stimulation, overthe book and, 15 films and, 13, 56 Kunstwollen and, 80 Malerei Photographie Film and, 7, 27, 38 training of viewers and, 10, 12 Die Welt ist schön and, 91–92 St. Katherine’s Church (Lübeck), 63 St. Mary’s Church (Lübeck), 64, 65 stock market crash of 1929, 60 Stone, Sasha, 9, 49, 192n20 “Stop Reading! Look!” (Molzahn), 1, 3, 5, 191n1 Stotz, Gustav, 41 St. Paul’s Cathedral, 32 street-sweeper, 169 Stuttgart exhibition, 51, 59, 198n51 Surrealism, 128–129, 131 Swanson, Gloria, 30 symbols, 73–74, 79, 89, 90, 103, 112, 119, 129, 175 tactility, 197n43 Tcholsky, Kurt, 70 technologies, 10, 102 “Teilstück einer Pietà des 15. Jahrhunderts. Marienkirche in Zwickau,” (Part of a Fifteenth-Century Pietà , St. Mary’s Church in Zwickau), 90–91 text and captions (verbal language) Balázs on, 153 Benjamin on, 17

Das deutsche Volksgesicht and, 164–165 “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” and, 53–55, 54 faces and, 153, 174, 178 Filmgegner von Heute and, 51 films and, 21, 56, 153–154 Foto-Auge and, 44, 46–49, 47 Köpfe des Alltags and, 137, 187 Lerski on, 155 Malerei Photographie Film and, 30, 32, 33, 34, 37–38, 130 Menschen am Werk and, 182 multilingual, 44 Negerplastik and, 129–131 Pflanzenbilder and, 122 photographic meaning and, 8, 17, 49 photography and, 1–2, 4, 7–8, 21, 44, 47, 51, 56, 84, 97, 103 time and, 33 training viewers and, 12, 32, 47 Urformen der Kunst and, 106, 115, 117, 119, 125–126, 129, 131 Die Welt ist schön and, 71, 91 Thinker (Rodin), 19 Third Reich, 20, 182, 188, 222n11. See also Nazism tiger, 54, 55, 56 time and temporal experience. See also history; sequencing; simultaneity avant-garde and, 199n72 Benjamin on, 133–134, 213n71 “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” and, 53, 58 faces and, 20 films and, 51 history and, 135

KГ¶pfe des Alltags and, 142–143, 147, 150, 180–181 Malerei Photographie Film and, 33, 35–36, 57 photography and, 33–35 SchaubГјcher and, 66 Urformen der Kunst and, 106 TГ¶nnies, Ferdinand, 205n65 totem pole, 117, 134 Totenmasken (Death Masks) (Langer), 170, 173 townscapes, 82 traffic, 35, 36 Page 250 →training of viewers. See also audiences; Film und Foto (FiFo) (exhibition); habits; modern vision; new optics; perception; “purely optical images”; text and captions (verbal language) composition of photographs and, 37 embodiment and, 28–29, 196n38 Es kommt der neue Fotograf! and, 49, 51 faces and, 157–158, 159, 161, 173 Filmgegner von Heute and, 49, 51 Film und Foto and, 41–42 KГ¶pfe des Alltags and, 157–158 Kunstwollen and, 81 Malerei Photographie Film and, 21–22, 24, 25, 30, 38 Meurer and, 121 modern vision and, 11–14, 21–22 Moholy on, 39 Negerplastik and, 131 Neue Sachlichkeit and, 94, 98 overstimulation and, 38 perception and, 10–12, 11 Pflanzenbilder and, 122 text and, 12, 32, 47

Urformen der Kunst and, 112, 115–116, 117 Die Welt ist schön and, 70, 71, 83 train signals, images of, 54 Traveling Crane in a Blast Furnace Plant, Herrenwyk (“Laufkran im Hochofenwerk, Herrenwyk”), 84 “Trollius europaeus,” 110, 112 “Tropische Orchis,” 201n17 truth. see objectivity of photographs Tschichold, Jan, 18, 42, 44. See also Foto-Auge (Photo-Eye) (Roh and Tschichold) Turvey, Malcolm, 13, 14, 56–57 typography, 22, 24 “Typophoto,” 195n11 typophotos, 53, 56 Uhu (periodical), 10, 10–11, 116–117 umbrella plant, 75 Ungleichzeitigkeit (nonsimultaneity), 135–136 unity. See also abstraction; form; spirituality and spiritual unity; universality of photography culture and, 79–80, 87–88 Kunstwollen and, 81 mass production and, 94 modern world and, 91 photographic meaning and, 91 physiognomy and, 138 Urformen der Kunst and, 115 Weimar Republic and, 13 Die Welt ist schön and, 18, 60, 68, 78–84, 87–88, 91, 92, 100–101 universality of photography. See also unity versus breadth, 70 Die Welt ist schön and, 72, 101 form and, 90, 91, 100, 101

Moholy on, 21 text and, 44, 49 Urformen der Kunst and, 131 Unsere Zeit in 77 Frauenbildnisen, 218n53 Urbild, 158 Urformen, 120–121, 122, 124, 125, 126, 133–134 Urformen der Kunst (Originary Forms of Art) (Blossfeldt) Benjamin on, 61, 133–135, 200n12, 213n71 Bloch on, 135–136 the book and, 117 coherence and, 13 decorative arts and, 120 described, 8, 102 editions of, 209n15, 209n21 form and, 105–108, 115–118 forms of history and, 128–136 “Grüne Architektur” and, 116–117 history and, 19, 106, 108, 112, 115, 119, 126, 128–136 layout of, 108, 112 modernity and, 115 Pflanzenbilder and, 122 price and sales of, 102, 107 primitivism and, 131 reviews of, 118–119 selection of photographs and, 124–125 sequencing and, 108, 112, 118–119, 122–126, 131–132, 133, 212n57, 213n58 Surrealism and, 128–129 text and, 106, 115, 117, 119, 125–126, 129, 131 time and, 133–134

Urpflanze, 108, 125 Uschatz, Leo, 216n29 utopianism, 14, 17 Vagrant from Silesia (“Landstreicher aus Schlesien”), 177, 180 vagueness, 154 “varied world,” 73–74 Verbena canadensis, 117 Vergleichende Formenlehre des Ornamentes und der Pflanze (Comparative Instruction of the Forms of Ornament and Plants) (Meurer), 120–121 Page 251 →Vertov, Dziga, 196n38 viewers. See audiences and viewers; training of viewers violence, 44 The Visible Man (Der sichtbare Mensch) (BalГЎzs), 153 Volk, 186, 187 Von Material zu Architektur (New Vision) (Moholy), 197n44 Das Wachsfigurenkabinnett (film), 142 Wagener, Richard, 170 Warburg, Aby, 204n56 wash women, 169 Wasmuth, Ernst, 102, 209n22 Wasmuth Press, 208n1 Wasmuths Montasheft fГјr Baukunst, 208n1 water, 44 waterslide, 49 Wedderkop, Hermann von, 91–92 Wedephol, Paul, 107 Wegener, Paul, 161 Wegweisung der technik (Schwarz), 201n17 Weimar photographic books. See also the book; composition of photographs; faces and portraiture; layouts and formats; modern vision; text and captions (verbal language); training of viewers; Die Welt ist schГ¶n (RengerPatzsch) and other books

after Weimar, 182–190 celebrity culture and, 161–164 facing, 137–181 Film und Foto and, 53 how to read, 1–20 modern vision and, 2, 3–4, 7–8, 10, 12, 13–14, 188–189 older forms and, 9 Third Reich and, 188 Weimar Republic death masks and, 170, 171, 173 faces and, 20, 157, 158, 170 Foto-Auge and, 44 history and, 133 inflation and, 60, 166, 200n6 isolation and, 201n29 photographs and, 2 physiognomy and, 138 social identities and, 158, 181 Third Reich and, 188, 222n11 unity and, 13 Weinbergweg, 82 Die Welt der Pflanze (The World of Plants) (Fuhrmann), 63, 103, 201n17, 201n22, 201n24 Die Welt ist schön (Renger-Patzsch). See also Renger-Patzsch, Albert abstraction and, 18–19, 20, 69, 72, 75, 79, 81, 83, 87, 91, 96–97, 200n7, 201n24, 203n48 art versus commercial context and, 68–70 Benjamin on, 200n12 capitalism and, 69, 101 coherence and, 13 critics of, 61–62

described, 62–63, 66–67, 71, 73, 74 form and, 115–116 grids and, 101 Kunstwollen and, 71–92 layouts and, 72, 82, 83 Malerei Photographie Film and, 200n15 mass production and, 96, 101 Neue Sachlichkeit and, 96–97 photo-inflation and, 18–19, 60–62, 69–70, 71 price of, 69 Renger’s career and, 202n35 Roh and, 46 Sachlichkeit and, 92–101, 96 selection of photographs and, 71, 90, 200n16 sequencing and, 62, 72, 75, 83, 88, 89–90, 92, 98 text and, 91 titles considered for, 92 unity and, 18, 60, 68, 78–84, 87–88, 91, 92, 100–101 Weltspiegel (magazine), 22 Werkbund, 100. See also Sachlichkeit Westheim, Paul, 214n2 Weston, Edward, 45 “Wife of a Chauffeur” (“Frau eines Chauffeurs”), 137, 147, 148, 149, 150, 166, 169 Wilde Blumen der Deutschen Flora (German Wildflowers) (Dobe), 102–103, 105, 136 wild heliotrope, 131 Wilhelm-Kästner, Kurt, 92–93 wiring, electrical, 96 Wolff, Kurt, 8, 69, 70, 71, 202n38 Wolff, Paul, 103, 104, 208n5. See also Forms of Life: Botanical Photographs

WГ¶lfin, Heinrich, 13 women, 155–156, 155–157, 156 working class, 150, 154, 159, 161, 182, 194n4 “The Work of Art in the Age of its Mechanical Reproducibility” (Benjamin), 90 The World of Plants (Die Welt der Pflanzen) (Fuhrmann), 63, 103, 201n17, 201n22, 201n24 Page 252 →World Unity (“Einheit der Welt”) (Riezler), 94 Wundergarten der Nature: neue Bilddokumente der schГ¶ner Pflanzenformen (Nature’s Garden of Miracles: New Documentary Images of Beautiful Forms of Plants) (Blossfeldt), 209n21 yarrow, 124 young merchant, 169 zeppelin, 30, 31 “Zur Psychologie des Sehens” (On the Psychology of Vision) (Lendvai-Dircksen), 187 Zwinger steps (Dresden), 83