Photographis
The Fotografis Collection is a collection founded by Bank Austria in 1976 of over 1000 photographs from the pioneering days of photography in the 19th century. It contains specimens in the style of pictorialism and straight photography through to experimental positions of the avant-garde and contemporary contributions.
The collection focuses on the classic examples of the medium of photography: documentation, the black and white color scheme and the familiar 35mm format . The works from the 19th century illustrate the original task of photography to depict reality directly, more authentically than painting had ever achieved. In this function, the new medium now takes over the predominance. Historical travel photographs of distant places, exotic locations and classic portraits are examples of this.
The collection
The earliest photographs in the collection date from the 1840s by William Henry Fox Talbot , the "inventor of photography", David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson . When the photographers used painterly effects in the Impressionist manner around 1900 , the two media converged: Julia Margaret Cameron , Edward Steichen and Heinrich Kühn represent pictorialism within the collection.
In the 1920s, Paul Strand and Edward Weston introduced a new chapter in art photography under the heading of straight photography , the intrinsic value of photography was now the focus: the precise recording of reality in razor-sharp light and dark. At the same time, the avant-garde artists, especially the Dadaists and Constructivists, are radically expanding the possibilities of photography: works by Man Ray , Alexander Michailowitsch Rodtschenko , Raoul Hausmann and László Moholy-Nagy are highlights of the collection. Reportage and social documentary recordings from Weegee to Diane Arbus play an eminent role in the photographic history of the 20th century.
In 2009 the collection was given on permanent loan to the Photography Collection at the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg.
literature
- Klaus Albrecht Schröder: PHOTOGRAPHY. Masterpieces of International Photography . Vienna 1986
- Ingried Brugger (Ed.): FOTOGRAFIS collection reloaded . Jung und Jung, Vienna 2008