Faces: The Power of the Human Visage

Helmar Lerski and Portrait Photography between the Wars. The radical re-invention of portrait photography in the Weimar Republic

Starting with Helmar Lerski’s outstanding photo series "Metamorphosis through Light" from 1935/36, the magnificent volume "Faces – The Power of the Human Visage" presents portraits from the era of the Weimar Republic. The photographs taken by the photographers of the 1920s and 1930s achieved a radical renewal of portrait photography.

Portrait photos traditionally served to depict the personality of an individual. The photographers of the interwar years saw the face as material to be presented in accordance with their own ideas. Through the photograph of a face they explored aesthetic considerations as well as the political changes that took place during the Weimar Republic. Modernist experiments, the relationship between individual and type, feminist roles and political ideologies collided and hence expanded the concept of portrait photography.

Artists:

Gertrud Arndt, Marta Astfalck-Vietz, Irene Bayer, Aenne Biermann, Erwin Blumenfeld, Max Burchartz, Suse Byk, Paul Citroen, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Andreas Feininger, Werner David Feist, Trude Fleischmann, Jozef Glogowski, Paul Edmund Hahn, Lotte Jacobi, Grit Kallin-Fischer, Edmund Kesting,  Rudolf Koppitz, Kurt Kranz, Anneliese Kretschmer, Germaine Krull, Erna Lendvai-Dircksen, Helmar Lerski, László Moholy-Nagy, Lucia Moholy, Oskar Nerlinger, Erich Retzlaff, Hans Richter, Leni Riefenstahl, Franz Roh, Werner Rohde, Ilse Salberg, August Sander, Franz Xaver Setzer, Robert Siodmak, Anton Stankowski, Edgar G. Ulmer, Umbo, Robert Wiene, Willy Zielke