Hans Watzek (photographer)

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Hans Watzek, 1899

Hans (Johann) Josef Watzek (born December 20, 1848 in Bilin , Bohemia , † May 12, 1903 in Vienna ) was a Viennese art photographer of Pictorialism . Watzek was a co-developer of multi-layer rubber printing , realized the first three-color rubber printing in 1896 and made a decisive contribution to the recognition of photography as a fully-fledged artistic medium of expression.

Life

"Still life"

Hans Watzek, son of German parents, had worked briefly in a xylographic institute before starting his art studies . After Watzek had attended the art academies in Leipzig and Munich from 1865 to 1868, he first worked as a drawing teacher in Bohemia. From 1875 he lived in Vienna and taught freehand drawing and modeling at the Vienna State High School in the 6th district. Between 1888 and 1893 he was also chairman of the Association of Austrian Drawing Teachers and published numerous articles in the "Journal for Drawing and Art Lessons".

He found his access to photography in 1891 at an early exhibition of art photographs, particularly through the atmospheric works of Alfred Maskell. In the same year he made his first attempts with a self-constructed pinhole camera and became a member of the “Club of Amateur Photographers in Vienna” (renamed “Wiener Camera Club” in 1893), of which he was a board member from 1893 until his death.

In this club he came into contact with Hugo Henneberg and Heinrich Kühn . The three art photographers were not only friends, but also worked closely together in their artist association “ Wiener Kleeblatt ” (also: “Wiener Trifolium”) founded in 1897 . They signed their works with a three-leaf clover to give expression to their joint work. Together they experimented in particular in the field of rubber printing: "In countless experiments [...] they improved simple rubber printing and developed combination printing". Her credo was that photography should be taken seriously as an art form of equal value to painting. Characteristic of the works of the shamrock are therefore often a painterly blurring, especially in their atmospheric landscape shots.

The three of Watzek, Henneberg and Kühn regularly went on study trips, including to Lake Constance, Lake Garda, the North Sea or Tyrol, in order to find suitable subjects for their landscape photos.

In contrast to most of the leading figures in the Viennese art photography scene, such as Albert and Nathaniel von Rothschild , but also Henneberg and Kühn, Hans Watzek had only very limited financial means at his disposal to pursue the then very expensive leisure activity of amateur photography.

Since he was dependent on earning his living as a teacher until the end, he was also limited in terms of time in his work as an art photographer. Heinrich Kühn writes in an obituary:

"Watzek, who was the soul, the driving force behind it all [of the Vienna Camera Club], had to make do with ridiculously little and, what was even worse, save time for work in his job. So he usually has, for example could not stick with it when a print was exposed in the frame; and when the break between two lessons expired, he sometimes had to abandon the developed copy - probably with a heavy heart! "

These hurdles did not prevent recognition from his contemporaries. Rather, they persuaded Watzek to use more efficient and cheaper techniques, for example by using bromide silver paper as negative paper.

It was also known that Watzek himself constructed cameras using simple materials such as cardboard, which caused both amusement and admiration among his colleagues: “As far as the valuable utensils are concerned, I can tell you, based on what I know about his devices they are less precious than delicious. [...] it makes me [...] astonish to see results achieved with such awkward means that are admirable. "Heinrich Kühn said about his friend:" From the very simplest he got the very highest ... "

Watzek suffered from a protracted blood vessel disease that was the cause of his early death in 1903. His demise led to the dissolution of the Viennese shamrock, and Hugo Henneberg turned away from photography.

In the twelve years that he was active as a photographer, Hans Watzek only created 65 photographs, most of them unique.

In the January 1906 issue of his photo magazine Camera Work , Alfred Stieglitz showed five pictures by Watzek, including the picture "Sheep"

plant

Photography as an independent art form

"The Lapwing"

Watzek's concern was to help the general public recognize photography as a full-fledged artistic medium.

He saw photography as a creative art form as well as painting. The motif that the photographer would like to depict can be consciously designed, for example, by experimenting with tonal values ​​or lines. A central concept of his conception was the artist's subjective image:

"The truth that the artist strives for does not consist in a projectively precise representation of external objects, but in the reproduction of the subjective visual image obtained by the painter. This visual image is not formed solely from the retinal image obtained by projective means, but comes from the interaction various other moments that are physiological and psychological in nature. In the visual rendering of such a subjective visual image, spatial properties of the depicted object do not stand side by side, but individual features of the appearance are emphasized, others suppressed or eliminated, according to the subjective disposition of the artist In this way a complete whole of the appearance is offered, which only produces the effect aimed at by the artist in the viewer. "

Watzek differentiated between two truths that a photograph can show: As external truth , he called the "representation of the objective [...] truth", that is, the reality actually seen. The inner truth relates to the overall impression of all sensations that the artist experiences when looking at the object to be depicted. Watzek quotes Émile Zola when he says: "The work of art is a piece of nature, seen through a temperament."

In keeping with the Vienna Secession , Watzek also pleaded for an art that is less based on academic rules than on originality, individuality and the “truth of nature”.

Mood landscapes

"At the Donau"

As with the other two members of the Wiener Kleeblatt, atmospheric landscape shots were an important part of Watzek's repertoire. He described his early work as "mood sketches". In the foreword to the thesis of the art photographer Hans Watzek (1848–1903) Inge Maria Kimeswenger writes:

"Watzek's delicate, fragrant reproduction of his landscape photos was unique at the time. His aim was to create a work of art even from a relatively banal section of nature by carefully handling the print, and to use this image to express a certain mood and atmosphere and to convey this to the viewer. "

According to Watzek, this could be achieved primarily through the various gradations of tone values (gray levels), which in turn were subordinate to an overall tone. Depending on how light or dark it was, this resulted in a cheerful or gloomy overall mood for the picture: “[This] affects the viewer of a picture before he gets to know the representational aspect in detail. The mood gives the picture harmony and seclusion, it is the characteristic on the whole. "

Such mood landscapes today are strongly reminiscent of the paintings of the mood impressionists . It can be assumed that Watzek was able to establish close contacts with them during his studies at the Munich Art Academy.

Major achievements

"Sheep"

Hans Watzek did pioneering work in some areas of artistic photography.

Around 1894 he used simple spectacle lenses instead of complex lenses and thus coined the term monocle lens. The use of such lenses resulted in a painterly blurring of the picture.

The technique of multi-layer rubber printing developed together with Henneberg and Kühn was groundbreaking. For a better, more complete reproduction of the tonal values ​​of a negative by means of the rubber print, the negative is transferred to the print, i.e. the positive image, several times with differently lightly mixed colors. The first layer is done with a very light color and is used to reproduce the lights. This is followed by further layers, which are created with increasingly dark colors and shorter exposure times, thus representing the mid-tones and shadows. At that time, a negative was often transferred to the positive in three layers of color, but occasionally also in more than three stages.

The production of three-color rubber prints by means of multiple exposure was just as groundbreaking around 1896:

"Using color filters, he created three separation negatives, each of which contained the blue, red and green components of the motif after the additive color mixture. During the printing process, he colored the (positive) prints belonging to the separations in the subtractive opposing colors. Watzek chose because of the separation filter that require a longer exposure time than a simple still life as a motif. […] He made sure that the objects contained the purest possible shades of color, such as green, blue and red.The three coatings of the rubber print were placed on a coarsely structured carrier first yellow, then red and finally blue pigment added. This gave the picture the character of a pastel or oil painting. "

However, the process was so laborious that it could hardly be copied.

Publications and exhibitions

Between 1892 and 1899 Watzek published numerous articles on photographic techniques, in particular on the subject of rubber printing:

  • 1892 “About photographic recordings with the monocle” in: Photographische Rundschau, Vol. 4, pp. 113–116.
  • 1894 "On the technique of artistic photography" in: Wiener photische Blätter, Vol. 2, pp. 21–24.
  • 1897 “The colored rubber print” in: Wiener photische Blätter, pp. 102–103.
  • 1899 “About the preparation of paper for rubber printing” in: Photographisches Centralblatt, pp. 7–8.

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Pictures of Watzek's works were also printed in the “Photographische Rundschau” (1892), the “Wiener photischen Blätter” (1894), the “Photographischen Centralblatt” and the New York magazine “ Camera Work ”.

Watzek's work was also shown in the following exhibitions (selection):

  • 1893: "Exhibition of amateur photographers" in Salzburg, exhibitions in the "London Salon" and in Tokyo
  • 1895: Exhibitions in London, Paris and Amsterdam, as well as at the exhibition of the "Society for the Promotion of Amateur Photography" in Hamburg
  • 1898: "First Secession Exhibition of Artistic Photographs" in Munich
  • 1899: First "traveling exhibition of artistic photographs"
  • 1900: First “clover leaf exhibition” in Berlin
  • 1902: 13th exhibition of the Vienna Secession
  • 1903: 9th Hagenbund exhibition in Vienna

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Original work by Hans Watzek

Some of Watzek's works are accessible in the following museums:

  • State museums, Prussian cultural heritage (art library), Berlin.
  • State art collections, Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden.
  • Folkwang Museum, Essen.
  • Museum for Arts and Crafts, Hamburg.
  • Agfa Photo Historama in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne.
  • Goldfinch Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
  • Higher Federal Graphical Training and Research Institute, Vienna.

Quotes

“He never talked about pictures or experiments that he wanted to make, just as ideas and suggestions were not meant for him. How often did he say that the only thing that matters is to really do something. "

- Heinrich Kühn : about Hans Watzek, 1928

“'It works like that' - was his famous catchphrase. Always with the simplest means and apparently naive, he tackled and solved the most difficult, 'actually' impossible tasks. [...] There were no difficulties for him. "

- Heinrich Kühn : about Hans Watzek, 1923

“His [Watzek] greatest act was the introduction of the spectacle lens, the simple lens as a taking lens. But one should not believe that he came to the experiment in a momentary impulse: Before that he had published a paper on physiological optics! After detailed studies he sought to bring the character of the photographic recording closer to that of the optical retinal image. "

- Heinrich Kühn : about Hans Watzek, 1928

“'Artistic photographs', he writes in a letter,' are artifacts to be taken seriously. For the beholder, the way in which a work of art is produced is of secondary importance, but for us it is not. In the best case scenario, our pictures are to be equated with artistic drawings. Our long-lasting efforts almost seem to be directed towards an experiment by which it is shown that an artistic achievement is possible in a very cumbersome way by 'mechanical' means. '"

- Fritz Matthies-Masuren : about Hans Watzek, 1899

“Even with the strongest glare-down and careful consideration of the focus difference, a monocle photograph will not show such a sharp drawing as an image produced under the same conditions with a photographic lens. The particular attraction of monocle shots lies in this low sharpness of the drawing, corresponding to the natural vision and artistic tradition. "

- Hans Watzek : 1893

literature

  • Auer, Anna: The Wiener Trifolium. Hans Watzek, Heinrich Kühn and Hugo Henneberg. In: Julie Lawson, Ray McKenzie and AD Morrison-Low (Eds.):  Photography 1900. The Edinburgh Symposium , Edinburgh 1993.
  • Buschbeck, Alfred: The trifolium of the Vienna Camera Club: Hans Watzek. Hugo Henneberg. Heinrich Kühn. In: Die Kunst in der Photographie , Vol. 2, 1898, pp. 17–24.
  • Hübscher, Manon: Hans Watzek. In: Francis Ribemont and Patrick Daum (eds.): Impressionist Camera: Pictorial Photography in Europe 1888–1918, New York 2006, p. 311.
  • Kimeswenger, Inge Maria: The art photographer Hans Watzek (1848–1903) , Vienna 1994. (Diploma thesis for obtaining the master’s degree in philosophy, Faculty of Humanities at the University of Vienna.)
  • Kühn, Heinrich: memories of Hans Watzek. In: Photographische Rundschau , Vol. 60, 1923, pp. 85–90.
  • Kühn, Heinrich: The memory of Hans Watzek. In: Photographische Rundschau and Mitteilungen , Vol. 65, 1928, pp. 211–213.
  • Matthies-Masuren, Fritz: Hans Watzek . In: Photographisches Centralblatt , Vol. 9, 1903 pp. 161-164.
  • Matthies-Masuren, Fritz: rubber prints by Hugo Henneberg - Vienna, Heinrich Kühn - Innsbruck, and Hans Watzek - Vienna , Halle an der Saale 1903.
  • Matthies-Masuren, Fritz: Hugo Henneberg - Heinrich Kühn - Hans Watzek . In: Camera Work , Vol. 13, New York 1906, pp. 21-41.
  • Speer, Hermann: The Vienna School. Hugo Henneberg - Heinrich Kühn - Hans Watzek , exhibition catalog Museum Folkwang, Essen 1964, pp. 19–21.
  • Watzek, Hans:  About the artistic in photography . In: Wiener photische Blätter , Vol. 8, 1895, pp. 161–163.
  • Watzek, Hans: About photographic recordings with the monocle or the lighting lens. In: Photographische Rundschau , Vol. 1, 1893, pp. 11–15.
  • Watzek, Hans: bromide silver paper as negative paper. In: Wiener Photographische Blätter , 1895, p. 214.
  • Weiermair, Peter: Photography as Art 1879-1979 , exhibition catalog Linz / Graz / Vienna, 1979, p. 114.

Web links

Commons : Hans Watzek  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Baier: Source representations for the history of photography . 2nd edition, Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-921375-60-6 , p. 534f.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Baier: Source representations for the history of photography . 2nd edition, Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-921375-60-6 , p. 534
  3. ↑ cf. Inge Maria Kimeswenger: The art photographer Hans Watzek (1848–1903), Vienna 1994 p. 13f.
  4. ↑ cf. Manon Hübscher: Hans Watzek. In: Francis Ribemont and Patrick Daum (Eds.): Impressionist Camera. Pictorial Photography in Europe 1888–1918, New York 2006, p. 311.
  5. ↑ cf. Inge Maria Kimeswenger: The art photographer Hans Watzek (1848–1903), Vienna 1994 p. 43.
  6. ↑ Ibid. P. 36f.
  7. ^ Heinrich Kühn: Memories of Hans Watzek. In: Photographische Rundschau, Vol. 60, 1923, pp. 85–90, here: pp. 86f.
  8. ↑ cf. Hans Watzek: bromide silver paper as negative paper. In: Wiener Photographische Blätter, 1895, p. 214.
  9. ↑ anon. [Fritz Matthies-Masuren]: Hans Watzek - Vienna. In: Photographisches Centralblatt, Vol. 5, 1899 pp. 2–7, here: p. 2.
  10. ↑ quoted from Wolfgang Baier: Source representations for the history of photography . 2nd edition, Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-921375-60-6 , p. 534
  11. ↑ cf. Heinrich Kühn: Memories of Hans Watzek. In: Photographische Rundschau, Vol. 60, 1923, pp. 85–90, here: p. 89.
  12. ↑ Wolfgang Baier: Source representations for the history of photography . 2nd edition, Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-921375-60-6 , p. 535
  13. ^ Hans Watzek: About the artistic in photography. In: Wiener photische Blätter, Vol. 8, 1895, pp. 161–163, here: p. 162.
  14. ↑ Ibid.
  15. ↑ Ibid.
  16. ↑ cf. Monika Faber and Astrid Mahler (eds.): Heinrich Kühn. The perfect photography, Ostfildern 2010, p. 36f.
  17. ↑ Inge Maria Kimeswenger: The art photographer Hans Watzek (1848-1903), Vienna 1994, p c.
  18. ^ Hans Watzek: About the artistic in photography. In: Wiener photische Blätter, Vol. 8, 1895, pp. 161–163, here: p. 163.
  19. ↑ Monika Faber and Astrid Mahler (eds.): Heinrich Kühn. The perfect photography, Ostfildern 2010, p. 36.
  20. ↑ Wolfgang Baier: Source representations for the history of photography . 2nd edition, Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-921375-60-6 , p. 536
  21. ^ Walter Koschatzky: The art of photography. Technology, history, masterpieces . dtv, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-7010-0386-6 , p. 134
  22. ↑ Inge Maria Kimeswenger: The art photographer Hans Watzek (1848-1903), Vienna 1994, p 42nd
  23. ↑ cf. Ibid. S. XX.
  24. ↑ cf. Ibid. Pp. 13-15.
  25. ↑ cf. Ibid. S. XXX.
  26. ^ Heinrich Kühn: The memory of Hans Watzek. In: Photographische Rundschau und Mitteilungen, Vol. 65, 1928, pp. 211-213, here: p. 211.
  27. ^ Heinrich Kühn: Memories of Hans Watzek. In: Photographische Rundschau, Vol. 60, 1923, pp. 85-90, here: p. 90.
  28. ^ Heinrich Kühn: The memory of Hans Watzek. In: Photographische Rundschau und Mitteilungen, Vol. 65, 1928, pp. 211-213, here: pp. 211f.
  29. ↑ anon. Fritz Matthies-Masuren : Hans Watzek - Vienna. In: Photographisches Centralblatt, Vol. 5, 1899 pp. 2-7, here: p. 5.
  30. ↑ Hans Watzek: About photographic recordings with the monocle or the lighting lens. In: Photographische Rundschau, Vol. 1, 1893, pp. 11-15, here: p. 12.
personal data
SURNAME Watzek, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Watzek, Johann Josef (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian art photographer
DATE OF BIRTH December 20, 1848
PLACE OF BIRTH Bilin , Bohemia
DATE OF DEATH May 12, 1903
Place of death Vienna