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'Foto' at National Gallery of Art
Photography on the barricades:
Between left and right in Hitler's shadow
ANDREW MANGRAVITE
From its inception, photography was seen as the pre-eminent method of documenting everyday life. Places and things not deemed worthy of preservation as sketches or paintings could be recorded on a photographic plate. People who couldn’t afford to engage even an itinerant artist for a formal portrait could go to a fair and pose for tintypes taken. The documentary value of a photograph is a strong argument for its lasting worth. If it fails the test as art, it can always fall back on its historical value.
Hand in hand with the documentary value of a photograph is its built-in accusatory stare. A photograph of a hovel unfit for habitation in which people nonetheless reside becomes a strong argument for urban renewal and goes a long way toward refuting a landlord’s claim that everything is fine. A photograph of a dead soldier on a battlefield says more about the cost of war than pages of high-sounding rhetoric.
Now, suppose you take an image of young boys— students, probably— learning to march in formation, and add to it a bizarre image of a line of ten or so skeletons, then add to that an image of Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, looking baggy and old in his helmet and uniform. This is exactly what John Heartfield did in “Fathers and Sons,” one of the photo-montages featured in the exhibit at the National Gallery called “Foto.”
Hindenburg as demi-god of death
Clearly, Heartfield and his colleagues in this exhibit of between-the-wars Modernist photography utilize their images to frame complex arguments. There are any numbers of subtexts here— that the old will coerce the young, that everything progresses from youth to age to death, that these earnest young men trying so hard to be good soldiers are actually in training to be corpses, that the great national hero Hindenburg is actually a demi-god of death presiding over the extinction of the nation’s youth. So many meanings to take from a simple juxtaposition of three images!
Not every work in “Foto” is as politically engaged as the Heartfield piece. Many are just humorous, and a few of the more blatantly artistic images come from photographers who allied themselves with the Surrealist Movement.
“Foto” also points up the evolving split in sensibilities between the Left and the Right in Central Europe. For every Heartfield there was a Rudolf Koppitz or a Wilhelm Angerer, advocates of “Homeland Photography,” featuring beautiful retouched mountain landscapes (all traces of footprints carefully removed) and hearty-looking frauleins engaging in healthy outdoor work, or even healthier leisure activities like skiing and mountain climbing. If the angry, irreverent jibing of “Fathers and Sons” was mothers’-milk to the Left, the Hitler Youth were clearly weaned on those pristine mountain slopes and beaming gals on the cover of Ski Heil! magazine.
A vanished world comes alive again
In the end, an exhibit like “Foto” serves two worthy causes. It allows many talented men and women who never quite ascended to the top rank among artists to be revisited and reviewed; and it serves as an entertaining and moving history lesson. A vanished world comes alive again with its ephemeral and now largely forgotten political, sports and cultural luminaries. We see firsthand just how heartfelt and deep the divisions within this society really were.
In the end whether you are more moved by El Lissitzky’s constructionist utopias (presided over by a forceful Lenin) or Paul Citroen’s apolitical collage landscape “Metropolis” will be a matter of personal taste and political conviction. But it’s worth noting in passing that most of the works in “Foto” weren’t designed to grace the limited edition bijoux for the elite. They were published in newspapers and beautiful but popularly priced illustrated journals, some of which are also on display. “Foto” is a show that allows photography to drop its impartial “just the facts” stance, grab a few loose cobblestones and ascend to the barricades in Europe’s evolving war of ideas. It’s an exhibition that’s well worth seeing.
Between left and right in Hitler's shadow
ANDREW MANGRAVITE
From its inception, photography was seen as the pre-eminent method of documenting everyday life. Places and things not deemed worthy of preservation as sketches or paintings could be recorded on a photographic plate. People who couldn’t afford to engage even an itinerant artist for a formal portrait could go to a fair and pose for tintypes taken. The documentary value of a photograph is a strong argument for its lasting worth. If it fails the test as art, it can always fall back on its historical value.
Hand in hand with the documentary value of a photograph is its built-in accusatory stare. A photograph of a hovel unfit for habitation in which people nonetheless reside becomes a strong argument for urban renewal and goes a long way toward refuting a landlord’s claim that everything is fine. A photograph of a dead soldier on a battlefield says more about the cost of war than pages of high-sounding rhetoric.
Now, suppose you take an image of young boys— students, probably— learning to march in formation, and add to it a bizarre image of a line of ten or so skeletons, then add to that an image of Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, looking baggy and old in his helmet and uniform. This is exactly what John Heartfield did in “Fathers and Sons,” one of the photo-montages featured in the exhibit at the National Gallery called “Foto.”
Hindenburg as demi-god of death
Clearly, Heartfield and his colleagues in this exhibit of between-the-wars Modernist photography utilize their images to frame complex arguments. There are any numbers of subtexts here— that the old will coerce the young, that everything progresses from youth to age to death, that these earnest young men trying so hard to be good soldiers are actually in training to be corpses, that the great national hero Hindenburg is actually a demi-god of death presiding over the extinction of the nation’s youth. So many meanings to take from a simple juxtaposition of three images!
Not every work in “Foto” is as politically engaged as the Heartfield piece. Many are just humorous, and a few of the more blatantly artistic images come from photographers who allied themselves with the Surrealist Movement.
“Foto” also points up the evolving split in sensibilities between the Left and the Right in Central Europe. For every Heartfield there was a Rudolf Koppitz or a Wilhelm Angerer, advocates of “Homeland Photography,” featuring beautiful retouched mountain landscapes (all traces of footprints carefully removed) and hearty-looking frauleins engaging in healthy outdoor work, or even healthier leisure activities like skiing and mountain climbing. If the angry, irreverent jibing of “Fathers and Sons” was mothers’-milk to the Left, the Hitler Youth were clearly weaned on those pristine mountain slopes and beaming gals on the cover of Ski Heil! magazine.
A vanished world comes alive again
In the end, an exhibit like “Foto” serves two worthy causes. It allows many talented men and women who never quite ascended to the top rank among artists to be revisited and reviewed; and it serves as an entertaining and moving history lesson. A vanished world comes alive again with its ephemeral and now largely forgotten political, sports and cultural luminaries. We see firsthand just how heartfelt and deep the divisions within this society really were.
In the end whether you are more moved by El Lissitzky’s constructionist utopias (presided over by a forceful Lenin) or Paul Citroen’s apolitical collage landscape “Metropolis” will be a matter of personal taste and political conviction. But it’s worth noting in passing that most of the works in “Foto” weren’t designed to grace the limited edition bijoux for the elite. They were published in newspapers and beautiful but popularly priced illustrated journals, some of which are also on display. “Foto” is a show that allows photography to drop its impartial “just the facts” stance, grab a few loose cobblestones and ascend to the barricades in Europe’s evolving war of ideas. It’s an exhibition that’s well worth seeing.
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