In conclusion to my previous column, I had undertaken to present the German practitioners who, in the early twentieth century, developed and illustrated nude photography in their country, a country that would soon become a pioneer of naturism. Among the most active, presented in many publications, let us retain photographers such as Otto Schmidt [Ill. 2], Ernst Schneider [Ill. 3/4], E. Büchler [Ill. 5] who, although sometimes heavy-handed or naive, nevertheless showed genuine talent; and, of course, of greater renown, Wilhelm (Guglielmo) Plüschow [Ill. 6-8], Italian by adoption, and Hermann von Jan [Ill. 9-14] (whose work Philippe Lutz, a great connoisseur of it, presented to you at my request a little over two years ago). Belonging to the next generation, the published nude work of Lotte Herrlich [Ill. 17-18] is abundant and appreciated, like that of Alice Bloch, creator of a method of natural gymnastics, whose impressive photographs [Ill. 19-20] have unfortunately remained anonymous. And appearances of buttocks in these compilations were not rare, and were often of very high quality in terms of composition, pose, and light [Ill. 4, 7, 10, 14, 20]. In this respect, and to conclude, the nude work of Germaine Krull, of international reputation, thanks notably to Calavas, the Paris publisher who issued her Études de nu [Ill. 21-22], quite overtly initiated an undeniable upheaval in the aesthetic practiced for a quarter of a century.
In any case, the numerous and beautiful German compilations of the period the bibliography of which can be reconstructed from my illustration captions, often presented in the form of portfolios of plates or exclusively illustrated volumes, and always materially very carefully produced and of high printing quality, sometimes even quite luxurious (Klemm & Beckmann in Stuttgart, Singer in Berlin [Ill. 1], Schumann in Leipzig) – bearing witness to a culture deeply attached to the visual reproduction of bodies in the nude, abound in very beautiful backsides, as if the absence of direct confrontation with the model’s gaze granted the eye fixed behind the lens far greater freedom and heightened concentration.
With the intention of limiting the number of my reproductions, today I shall confine myself to illustrating these German photographers and publishers; a presentation that I shall complete in a few days – with an accompanying text reduced to the essentials – with a selection of the most seductive backsides, desirably shapely, photographed in Europe during the postwar years. An initiative intended in part to demonstrate that, in the second half of the century, Günter Rössler, Josef Breitenbach, and Günter Blum were practitioners of black-and-white photography who were more passionate than stuck into black and white, the Germans undeniably persisted in figuring among the most remarkable representatives of nude photography. But this very personal selection, which was not made exclusively from among my preferences (since if Lucien Clergue occupies a place of choice there, André de Diénès, John Everard and Fernand Michaud do not), also aims to bring back into the spotlight the creations of artists seldom present in publishing such as Martin Munkacsi and Nell Dorr, as well as to share with you discoveries that have recently seduced me (Atze, Fabrizio Ferri, Hervé Lewis…), intentionally chosen so as to compose a cosmopolitan contemporary anthology of the derriere. I shall return to it in a few days.
Alain-René Hardy
L’ivre de nus
[email protected]
