Anna Rein-Wuhrmann
Anna Rein-Wuhrmann , b. Wuhrmann (* 1881 ; † 1971 ), was a Swiss mission worker for the Basel Mission , who documented her work and life with the Bamum tribe in Cameroon both photographically and literarily for two years . Anna Wuhrmann's photographs deal artistically with the inhabitants of Bamum Land.
Life
Wuhrmann spent the first seven years of her life with her grandparents in Winterthur . When her parents came back to Switzerland, she attended school in Basel . In 1902 she received her exam in a boarding school for apprenticeship training in French-speaking Switzerland. From 1905 she worked as a teacher until she applied for a position at the Basel Mission in 1910. On September 9, 1911, Wuhrmann went to Douala . In November of the same year she began her work at the girls' school at the mission station in Fumban. In December 1915, when the British invaded, Anna Wuhrmann was held prisoner for months. Then she returned to Switzerland by ship. In 1920 she started a new attempt and went back to Africa to work again in Cameroon for the mission in Fumban, but this time with a French mission society (Cameroon was now under French control). She stayed there for two years. In 1923 Wuhrmann married the teacher, Dr. Purely from Saxony and lived and worked in Germany until after the Second World War , after which she returned to Switzerland. She died in Switzerland in 1971.
Style features of Wuhrmann's portrait photographs
Anna Wuhrmann's portraits of the residents of Bamum-Land are always well lit, and she often uses a low f-number - so there is no depth of field . The cameras used at the time did not allow shorter shutter speeds, so the people are mostly static. These are not random snapshots - the technical framework alone meant that Wuhrmann had to plan their photographs beforehand. You consciously determined the subject, time of day, incidence of light, background, section, etc.
In her portraits, Wuhrmann largely dispenses with theatrical poses. In addition, her models rarely make eye contact with the photographer. This gives the photos a factual and documentary character. The pictorial space in Wuhrmann's portraits is often blurred, although there is a spatiality. This absence of movement and depth of field removes the photo motif from space and time, it appears inaccessible. In her publications she comments on the photos herself and, for example, writes about the portrait of a spinner: “In the agricultural research station there lived a German official who had his heart in the right place and treated the natives as equals. He was keenly interested in everything the Negro could do on his own initiative and was happy about everything the Black could do. A European spinning wheel is also his gift. "
Works
- Fumban, the city on the Schutte - work and harvest in the missionary service in Cameroon. Basler Missionsbuchhandlung, Basel 1948.
- My Bamumoolf in the grasslands of Cameroon. 1925 Mission publisher in Stuttgart.
- Four years in the grasslands of Cameroon , by A. Wuhrmann, 1917 Basler Missionsbuchhandlung in Basel.
literature
Andrea Baumgartner-Makemba: "The King and I" - Anna Wuhrmann - missionary teacher and photographer , 2001, ISBN 978-3-640-12426-8 (e-book); ISBN 978-3-640-36009-3 .
Web links
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| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Rein-Wuhrmann, Anna |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swiss mission worker |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1881 |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1971 |