Fotoform was an avant-garde photography group founded in 1949 by six young German photographers,
Siegfried Lauterwasser,
Peter Keetman
Peter Keetman (April 27, 1916 – March 8, 2005) was a German photographer.
Life and career
Peter Keetman was born in 1916 in Elberfeld. He was part of a very wealthy family and his father Alfred Keetman was bank director of the banking hous ...
,
Wolfgang Reisewitz,
Toni Schneiders,
Otto Steinert and
Ludwig Windstoßer
Ludwig may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Ludwig (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters
* Ludwig (surname), including a list of people
* Ludwig von Koopa, a character in Mario (the game)
Arts and entertai ...
.
Emergence
After WW2, the photographers of the 1920s and 1930s were inactive or at the end of their careers but for a few, including Carl Strüwe,
Heinz Hajek- Halke,
Martha Hoepffner,
Herbert List, and Adolf Lazi who organised the first comprehensive post-war exhibit, ''Die Photographie 1948'', held in a still partially destroyed public building in Stuttgart. He gave classes which enabled a group of young photographers to learn and exchange ideas. Peter Keetman, Ludwig Windstosser, Wolfgang Reisewitz and Siegfried Lauterwasser had exhibited in the show, and in 1949 were joined by Toni Schneiders and Otto Steinert and together they established the fotoform group. A shared and passionate interest in a new and unconventional photography suited to their time, required no written manifesto.
Otto Steinert was a natural leader who was to become director of the photography programme at the Staatliche Werkkunstschule in
Saarbrücken
Saarbrücken (; Rhenish Franconian: ''Sabrigge'' ; ; ; ; ) is the capital and largest List of cities and towns in Germany, city of the state of Saarland, Germany. Saarbrücken has 181,959 inhabitants and is Saarland's administrative, commerci ...
(1954–59) and at the
Folkwangschule
The Folkwang University of the Arts is a university for music, theater, dance, design, and academic studies, located in four German cities of North Rhine-Westphalia. Since 1927, its traditional main location has been in the former Werden Abbey in ...
in
Essen
Essen () is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and Dortmund, as well as ...
(1959–78), and who was also the founder and curator of the photography collection at the
Museum Folkwang
Museum Folkwang is a major collection of 19th- and 20th-century art in Essen, Germany. The museum was established in 1922 by merging the Essener Kunstmuseum, which was founded in 1906, and the private Folkwang Museum of the collector and patr ...
and a founder of
Photokina
Photokina is a trade fair held in Europe for the photographic and imaging industries. It is the world's largest such trade fair. The first Photokina was held in Cologne, Germany, in 1950, and since 1966 it has been held biennially in Septemb ...
. It was he who suggested the title fotoform, the name to be purposely be written in lowercase letters, as Steinert did for the ''subjektive fotografie'' exhibition title.
Ethos
fotoform was a secession from mainstream, realist post-war photography in West Germany, driven by a desire to reconnect to photographic tendencies of the 1920s and early 1930s, and thus to draw attention to the creative possibilities of photography which had been extinguished by the propagandistic
Nazi cultural policy. Otto Steinert asserted that “a new photographic style is one of the demands of our times,” but also consciously resurrected
Bauhaus
The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the , was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined Decorative arts, crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., ...
principles, as exemplified in his X-ray-like
photogram
A photogram is a Photography, photographic image made without a camera by placing objects directly onto the surface of a light-sensitive material such as photographic paper and then exposing it to light.
The usual result is a negative shadow im ...
''Strenges Ballet, Hommage à Oskar Schlemmer'' of 1949/1950. The group's name is a clear reference to its adherence to
formalism, obtained through unusual framings or viewpoints, subverting technical aspects of focus and exposure or by manipulation of darkroom processes, while their commitment to '
''subjektive photography is a departure from 'objectivity', and a new direction toward personal expression; as Steinert explained; “subjective photography means humanised, individualised photography and implies the handling of a camera in order to win from the single object the views expressive of its character.” Subjective meant free, personal, non-functional practice.
The radical artist
Chargesheimer (pseudonym of Karl-Heinz Hargesheimer) having studied graphics and photography at the Cologne Werkschulen (1942–43) and at the Bavarian State Institute for Photography in Munich (1943–44), and pursuing his interest in theatre from 1947 as a freelance photographer for various playhouses in Germany, encountered fotoform and in 1950 participated in their “photo-kino” exhibition in Cologne and also in their legendary exhibitions of “subjektive fotografie” in 1952 and 1954. In 1953
Heinz Hajek-Halke and Christer Christian (the pseudonym of the Swedish photographer
Christer Strömholm
Ture Christer Strömholm (22 July 1918 – 11 January 2002), also known by the pseudonym Christer Christian, was a Swedish photographer and educator. He is known for his intimate black and white street photography portrait series, particularly hi ...
) joined the group. The photographers of fotoform were concerned with the ''formed single image'' and only photographs which had been accepted by all members of the group were validated as fotoform photography.
Style
This group of young photographers, founded in 1949 by Peter Keetman, Otto Steinert, and Ludwig Windstosser was the nucleus of modernism in that country and especially what was called in ‘subjective photography’ to contrast with the ‘new objectivity’ of the pre-war period. Though it focused on abstraction, design, and close observation, it also fostered new approaches to photo-documentary imagery. By concentrating on details, by cropping, by using sharp contrasts and by choosing extreme perspectives the photographers of the fotoform group concentrated on the graphical properties of black and white photography, often taking their experiments so far as to create almost abstract images. Their artistic strategies included
photomontage
Photomontage is the process and the result of making a composite photograph by cutting, gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more photographs into a new image. Sometimes the resulting composite image is photographed so that the final imag ...
,
photogram
A photogram is a Photography, photographic image made without a camera by placing objects directly onto the surface of a light-sensitive material such as photographic paper and then exposing it to light.
The usual result is a negative shadow im ...
s,
solarisation
The Sabatier effect, also known as pseudo-solarization (or pseudo-solarisation) and erroneously referred to as the Sabattier effect, is a phenomenon in photography in which the image recorded on a Negative (photography), negative or on a photo ...
, negative printing and
luminogram
A luminogram is an image, usually made with an artistic purpose, created by exposure of photosensitive materials to light without the intervention of an object.
Technique
The luminogram is a variation on the photogram, made in the darkroom direct ...
s among others.
Prominence
In 1950, the fotoform group had its first spectacular appearance at the Photokina (then called Photo-Kino). Already in 1951, fotoform member Otto Steinert included works by all fotoform photographers in his exhibition ''subjektive fotografie'' in Saarbrücken, Germany. Under this title the German avant-garde photography of the 1950s reconnected to international trends in international photography.
Exhibitions
* ''fotoform'', Photo-Kino Ausstellung, Cologne, Germany 1950
* ''fotoform'', Circolo fotografico Milanese, Milan, Italy 1950
* ''10e Internationale tentonstelling van fotokunst'', Focus Salon, Amsterdam, Netherlands 1950
* ''III. Internationale Kunstphoto Ausstellung'', Österreichischer Lichtbildnerbund, Salzburg, Austria 1950
* ''fotoform'', Amerikahaus, Darmstadt, Germany 1950
* ''fotoform'', Werkkunstschule, Wuppertal, Germany 1950
* ''fotoform'', Photokina, Cologne, Germany 1951
* ''subjektive fotografie'', Staatliche Schule für Kunst und Handwerk, Saarbrücken, Germany 1951 and other locations
* ''Segunda Exposicao mundial de arte fotografica'', Rio de Janeiro, Brasil 1951
* ''Unione Fotografico. Mostra della Fotografia Europea'', palazzo di Brera, Milan, Italy 1951
* ''Weltausstellung der Photographie'', Kunstmuseum Luzern, Luzern, Austria 1952
* ''subjektive fotografie 2'', Photokina, Cologne, Germany 1953 and other locations
* ''subjektive fotografie 3'', Photokina, Cologne, Germany 1958 and other locations
Bibliography
* Ute Eskildsen (Ed.): ''Subjektive Fotografie – Bilder der 50er Jahre'', Folkwang Verlag, Essen 1984
*
F. C. Gundlach (Ed.): ''fotoform / Peter Keetman'', Nishen, Berlin 1988
* ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) (Ed.): ''subjektive fotografie. Der deutsche Beitrag 1948 - 1963'', Stuttgart 1989
* Rainer K. Wick (Ed.): ''Das Neue Sehen. Von der Fotografie am Bauhaus zur Subjektiven Fotografie'', Munich 1991
* Ulrich Domröse (Ed.): ''Positionen künstlerischer Photographie in Deutschland seit 1945'', Cologne 1997
* Karl Steinorth: ''Wie kam es zur Gründung der Gruppe fotoform?'', in: ''PhotoPresse'' No 24 1999
*
Gottfried Jäger
Gottfried Jäger (born 13 May 1937 in Magdeburg) is a German photographer, photo-theorist and former university teacher.
Biography
Gottfried Jäger, son of photographer Ernst Jäger (1913-1998), learned the craft of photography in the years 1954 ...
: ''Die Kunst der abstrakten Fotografie'', Stuttgart 2002
* Karl Steinorth: ''The pioneers of fotoform'', in: ''Photoresearcher'' No 7 2004
References
{{reflist
German artist groups and collectives
German photography organisations
Avant-garde art