Hermann Landshoff

Hermann Landshoff (born March 2, 1905 in Munich - Solln , † 1986 in New York ) was a German-American photographer who also worked as a graphic artist and caricaturist in the early stages . From the 1930s to the 1950s, Landshoff pioneered international fashion photography through the introduction of dynamic compositions and spontaneous recordings of movement and everyday situations and influenced photographers such as Richard Avedon and Irving Penn .

life and work

Childhood and parental home in Munich (1905–1923)

Hermann Landshoff was born as the son of the internationally known musicologist, Bach researcher, composer and conductor Ludwig Landshoff and the court singer Philippine Landshoff (née Wiesengrund) in Munich - Solln . Together with his older sister Ruth (born 1903), he grew up in a wealthy and musically-influenced Jewish family. The artist friends of the Landshoffs came and went in the newly built villa in the Prinz-Ludwigs-Höhe colony in Solln (Pössenbacherstraße 5, then Mendelssohnstraße 12) and from 1923 in the middle-class domicile at Bauerstraße 2 in Schwabing , including the writers Franziska to Reventlow , Ricarda Huch and Christian Morgenstern , members of the Academic-Dramatic Association such as Thomas Mann and Max Reinhardt , authors of the Samuel Fischer publishing house , an uncle of Hermann Landshoff or the editors of the magazine Der neue Merkur. Monthly magazine for intellectual life , Efraim Frisch and Wilhelm Hausenstein .

Studied at the Munich School of Applied Arts and worked as a cartoonist in Munich (1923–1929)

After graduating from the Wilhelmsgymnasium in Munich , Landshoff enrolled at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich in 1923 for the subjects of writing, letterpress, book equipment and commercial graphics. Formative for Landshoff's training as a typographer and book artist until 1926 was his teacher Fritz Helmuth Ehmcke , who worked on his magazine Der Kreis . In terms of design, Landshoff's teacher took a conservative position for the time. In turning away from avant-garde attempts at typeface design and typing, he pleaded for individual print types and a historically grown type culture. These design features can also be found on Landshoff's cover designs for Knorr & Hirth Verlag from 1929 - such as For example, the one for Tim Klein's novel Im Kampf der Zeit with expressionist- moving writing - readable.

In addition to working as a typographer, Landshoff also worked as a freelance illustrator and caricaturist after graduating from the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich . His talent for drawing first became known through the caricatures in Simplicissimus , of which the satirical drawing “Brand Adolf” gained prominence. From 1928 he regularly made caricatures of famous contemporaries for the Süddeutsche Sonntagspost , as well as headline and advertisement designs for various magazines of the Knorr & Hirth publishing house .

His drawing style at the end of the 1920s can be described as reduced and at the same time aptly humorous. Landshoff's virtuosity lay - in addition to the ability to overdraw - above all in the speed and precision in capturing the character traits of the portrayed.

Early days as a photo journalist and fashion photographer in Munich and Paris (1929–1939)

In February 1930, Landshoff made his debut as a photographer in the Münchner Telegramm-Zeitung and Sport-Telegraf with recordings of the world premiere of “Die Kreatur” by Ferdinand Bruckner , after only sporadic drawings by him had appeared in the Süddeutsche Sonntagspost in 1929. Further publications of photographs soon followed in the Süddeutsche Sonntagspost and in the Münchner Telegramm-Zeitung . Looking back, Landshoff described the beginning of his work as a photographer:

“I took my first picture at the age of 24. To this day I have been living and sleeping in my darkroom ever since . As a photographer, I was self-taught from the start . "

- Hermann Landshoff : Landshoff, Hermann, autograph, o. O. 1939/40, p. 283

The professional reorientation and autodidactic approach to the profession of photographer was by no means unusual in the 1920s, the profession of photo reporter , advertising or fashion photographer with the increasing spread of the illustrated mass press offered newcomers a lucrative future. In July 1930 one of his first photo reports about Albert Einstein appeared on his sailing boat in Caputh near Berlin. From then on Landshoff was established as a photographer and published almost exclusively photos in the Münchner Illustrierte Presse , Münchner Telegramm-Zeitung and Sport-Telegraf , as well as the Süddeutsche Sonntagspost .

After the seizure of power by the National Socialists in January 1933, which meant certain financial ruin for many Jewish journalists and press photographers in the course of the synchronization of the media and their exclusion from the Reichsschriftkammer, Landshoff emigrated to Paris from July 8th to 9th, 1933 , where he received his first order for French Vogue in November 1935 . With the recordings of the harpsichordist Wanda Landowska and the Baroness Visconti - mother of the director Lucchino Visconti - the first portraits were made in France and Italy during this time .

After the French Vogue failed to receive orders from August 1936, Landshoff worked as a photographer for the Paris fashion magazine femina from the summer of 1938 to January 1939 . The fashion photos and the portraits of the time bear witness to an intensive collaboration between Landshoff and the models. While he mostly staged the recordings for Vogue in the studio with expressionist lighting, he almost exclusively took photos outdoors for femina . Landshoff created dynamic compositions through views from below or diagonal cuts in squares in Paris, in parks and in other public places.

The photographs of the Paris period, which he took mostly with a Rolleiflex and infrared film , are also characterized by a low-contrast, dark black tone range. Landshoff managed the most impressive fashion series in the Paris Zoo . These unconventional snapshots for Vogue , for which his photographer friend Regina Relang also worked as a model, can be compared with fashion photos taken two decades later, such as Dovima with Elephants by Richard Avedon .

Worked as a fashion photographer in New York (1942–1960)

With Landshoff's emigration to New York , his photographic activity in the field of fashion photography should by no means come to a standstill, on the contrary: in his new home country Landshoff was to be extremely successful as a fashion photographer for the journals Harper's Bazaar , Junior Bazaar , Mademoiselle and Mademoiselle College. Almost a year after his arrival in New York, in the spring of 1942, Landshoff was hired as a portrait and fashion photographer for the most influential fashion journal of his time, Harper's Bazaar . His recordings were first published in April 1942 and Landshoff fashion recordings appeared in almost every issue by 1946.

His success as a fashion photographer during these years was due to his unique photographic style, which was especially admired and promoted by the then art director of Harper's Bazaar , Alexey Brodovitch . Brodovitch's innovative design had made the magazine the most important address for young, independent and experimental photography since his engagement as art director in 1934. Numerous well-known photographers, such as Erwin Blumenfeld or Martin Munkácsi , had already worked for the journal - photographers whose work certainly did not leave Landshoff unaffected. In particular, the snapshot - aesthetics of the Hungarian photographer Martin Munkácsi impressed Landshoff much. Inspired by Brodovitch, Landshoff developed this further by combining it with a stylistic device of his benevolent sponsor: the reproduction of fuzzy motion sequences. In the 1930s, accompanied Brodovitch with his camera the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev and a series of experimental stage and dance photographs whose distinctive stylistic device that created silhouetted was playing dynamic movements. Landshoff took up precisely this characteristic in his recordings and combined it with the momentary and vitality of Hungary.

In this way, Landshoff created spontaneous and cheerful fashion photos in the style of street photography , which conveyed an optimistic and modern image of women that the post-war American emulated and with which she could identify. These seemingly coincidental, instantaneous recordings were also a perfect fit for the Journal Junior Bazaar . Junior Bazaar was founded in 1945 by Brodovitch and his assistant, photographer Lillian Bassman, as a sister magazine to Harper's Bazaar and was primarily aimed at the young generation of teenage girls . After this age group was not of interest for a long time, especially for fashion journals, an extraordinary change can be seen in this regard in the post-war period. The young, happy teenager came more and more to the fore - the fashion industry discovered a completely new target group. Landshoff's recordings for Junior Bazaar show young, fun-loving college students on bicycles, roller-skates or doing other leisure or sports activities. The statics and elegance of fashion photography from previous years had completely disappeared in these shots.

In 1947, Landshoff switched to the fashion magazine Mademoiselle , which, like Vogue, belonged to Condé Nast Verlag . Here, too, Landshoff had found a sponsor and lover of his photographs: Bradbury Thompson, art director of the fashion journal since 1945. In addition to his still youthful-fresh fashion photos, Landshoff increasingly occupied himself with color photography. Many of the color shots for Mademoiselle and Mademoiselle College - similar to Junior Bazaar, a magazine primarily aimed at teenagers , college students and young working women - were taken during trips abroad the photographer undertook on behalf of the magazine in the 1950s . In view of the increasing desire to travel in the 1950s, these dreamy, exotic shots fully met the desires of the American readership. A total of 700 recordings were published by Landshoff in the two journals by 1960, and his recordings have certainly not only shaped the appearance of Mademoiselle College in particular , but also one or two college students.

Artist portraits in the USA

The comprehensive series of artist portraits that Landshoff produced in New York from the 1940s began with photographs of the European exiles who had a decisive influence on the rich cultural scene in New York during and after the Second World War . He portrayed, for example, Helene Thimig , the Austrian actress and wife of Max Reinhardt , the painter Julius W. Schülein from Munich, the Berlin artist Eugen Spiro and the Austrian illustrator and graphic artist Wilhelm Thöny . All of them had escaped from Europe to New York as Jews, as did the Berlin art historian and founder of the Jewish cultural association, Max Osborn , whom the Landshoff family knew better from Berlin and Paris. Landshoff's portrait of Osborn was taken in the Wildenstein Gallery , which was an important platform for Landshoff's activities. His portraits of the actors Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester , Luther Adler and Beatrice Straight were also created there.

In addition, the New York-standing exile living Belarusian sculptor Ossip Zadkine with the Wildenstein Gallery in close connection. Landshoff was able to visit Zadkine repeatedly in his New York studio and portray the artist at work in the midst of his sculptures .

In 1940 Landshoff reacted with a lack of understanding and rejection of the manifestations and manifestations of contemporary painting and sculpture, but his negative judgment seems to have changed in New York. This is evidenced not least by his frequently published recordings of the surrealist group in Peggy Guggenheim's New York residence .

In addition to the famous group portraits, Landshoff took numerous portraits of artists such as Frederick (Friedrich) Kiesler and Jean Hélion , who moved around the Art of This Century and Peggy Guggenheim gallery . The recordings represent a unique testimony to an artistic upheaval in New York, which developed further in the predominant directions of painting of Abstract Expressionism and later Pop Art . Landshoff reacted to these new tendencies within the visual arts as a photographer with curiosity and interest, if one visualises his photos of the studio of Ellsworth Kelly , the portraits of the sculptors Chryssa , Louise Nevelson or Eva Hesse .

Portraits of Photographers in the USA (1942–1961)

Landshoff was not only a recognized fashion photographer who was always looking for innovations . We also owe Landshoff a unique cycle of around 70 photographer portraits that were created between 1942 and 1961 in New York, among other places. This cycle, including many colleagues from Harper's Bazaar and Vogue , is unique in the history of photography. In addition to the famous and established old masters Walker Evans , Paul Strand , Alfred Stieglitz , Ansel Adams , Berenice Abbott , Margaret Bourke-White and Weegee , the young photographers Robert Frank , Irving Penn and Richard Avedon von Landshoff , who are still at the beginning of their careers, are also in extraordinary portraits.

The first portrait in the series shows the above-mentioned American photographer Berenice Abbott, who Landshoff took on the occasion of the meeting of the Surrealists in Peggy Guggenheim 's townhouse . She was a member of The Photo League , whose left-wing political objectives and ideas were more or less openly sympathetic to many photographers of the time, including Paul Strand, Weegee, Ansel Adams, Lisette Model , Ruth Orkin , Marion Palfí and Edward Weston .

The Photo League was formed in the 1930s with the intention of capturing the living conditions of the American working class in the most realistic images possible in times of economic depression . Since truthful, i.e. authentic documentation also made the dark sides and social grievances within urban society visible, numerous members of the Photo League were accused of anti-American and communist activities during the years of the reactionary McCarthy era . Before the Photo League was forced to finally disband as a result of these allegations, there was an impressive demonstration of its concerns in an exhibition This is The Photo League in 1948, in which the members took part with photos. In the same year, the vast majority of Landshoff's photographer portraits was created. Whether he wanted to show solidarity with his colleagues at the height of the public intimidation of the Photo League cannot be determined due to a lack of documents and statements.

But Landshoff may also have other intentions that motivated this cycle. No less striking is the high proportion of Jewish photographers among those portrayed who had to leave Europe as a result of political and anti-Semitic persecution. The emigrants who had to start a new life in New York include Erwin Blumenfeld , Martin Munkácsi , André Kertész , Lisette Model , Roman Vishniac , Alfred Eisenstaedt , Fritz Goro and the young Andreas Feininger . Without a doubt, the cycle exclusively includes photographers whose work Landshoff admired or at least valued.

Scientists portraits in Europe and the USA

In addition to a large number of contemporary artists, photographers, actors and other creative minds, Landshoff also portrayed numerous contemporary scientists - above all Albert Einstein . Already in the pre-war period there was a friendly relationship between Landshoff and Einstein, which was to revive and intensify in America. In particular, Einstein's new residence in Princeton (New Jersey) seems to have been Landshoff's preferred location for the portraits that show the otherwise camera-shy physicist in his home and familiar surroundings, far from any public staging. Between 1946 and 1950, the physicist's study alone was the scene of several recording sessions, which finally ended in a portfolio of 12 portrait photographs with an edition of six. The pictures also included Landshoff's famous Einstein portrait, which captured the scientist from a close-up view and served as a template for an American 15-cent postage stamp in 1979 on the occasion of Einstein's centenary.

In addition to Albert Einstein, Landshoff also maintained close contact with the physicist Rolf Landshoff, who was a relative of Landshoff. In addition to these two, Landshoff also portrayed numerous atomic physicists, especially in the 1940s and 50s, almost all of them Jewish emigrants who were active in the field of atomic physics either on German or American soil . Mention should be made of Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967), Arno Brasch (1910–1963) or Leó Szilárd (1898–1964) - friends and colleagues of Einstein and Rolf Landshoff. In 1939 Szilárd, like Einstein, alarmed by the atomic attempts by Otto Hahn and Fritz Straßmann in Berlin, was one of the initiators of a petition to the American President Roosevelt to press ahead with the construction of a nuclear weapon .

The leadership of this decisive initiative, which went down in history as the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos (New Mexico) , was the responsibility of the Jewish nuclear scientist Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) , who was also of German origin. Although Oppenheimer forced the development of the first atomic bomb , like Szilárd he decidedly refused to use it in Hiroshima and Nagasaki . His critical stance and his opposition to the further development of a hydrogen bomb brought Oppenheimer into great distress in the McCarthy era and he finally lost his leading position of trust in the government's nuclear programs in 1954. Landshoff's portrait series was created during this period of upheaval and shows the scientist in the vicinity of his workplace, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, as a person of integrity who acts confidently in front of the camera, free of technocratic traits or personal vanity. In addition, Landshoff took numerous portraits of scientists from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (New Jersey) in the 1970s and early 1980s . Furthermore, by deciphering Gödel's shorthand, he made a significant contribution to the indexing of Kurt Gödel's estate , which is in the Firestone Library of Princeton University.

Landshoff's photographic interest also applied to scientists in other areas, including portraits of the archaeologist Margarete Bieber and the child psychoanalyst Berta Bornstein (1896–1971).

Significance and reception of the photographic work

Landshoff's importance for (fashion) photography

Landshoff is undoubtedly one of the last great unknowns in the history of photography in the 20th century, whose work has been unjustifiably largely forgotten, especially in Germany. This has to do with the fact that Landshoff was not a promoter of his own work during his lifetime. His name is mentioned in the relevant anthologies on fashion and portrait photography, but it was not until the exhibition Appearances - Fashion Photography since 1945 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, curated by Martin Harrison , that Landshoff's importance as a renewer of visual language in fashion photography after 1945 was recognized. His formative influence on the young photographer Richard Avedon is explicitly mentioned here. Landshoff's work is probably not mentioned in other anthologies on photography in Paris before 1940 and on American photography in the post-war period, because his works are rarely represented in public collections.

Landshoff's rediscovery and the donation of the estate to the Munich City Museum

Landshoff had destroyed all duplicates , slides and negatives while still alive and made a binding selection of his work. Landshoff offered this legacy as a gift to several American museums. In 1975 his archive was initially housed in the Neuberger Museum in New York State and was transferred to the New York Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in 1995 at the instigation of Nobles H. Lowe, a long-time friend and estate administrator of Hermann and Ursula Landshoff. transferred. As a result of a conceptual restructuring of the FIT, the photography collection of the Munich City Museum finally succeeded in bringing Hermann Landshoff's entire photographic estate to Germany. Since Easter 2012 there have been 3,600 original prints from the period from 1927 to 1970 as well as numerous contemporary documents in the collection. The bundle of photographic recordings and historical documents was given to the museum by a descendant of the family, the publisher Andreas Landshoff, as a donation for scientific research.

Retrospective

In the exhibition Hermann Landshoff - A Retrospective. Photographs 1930–1970 from the photography collection of the Munich City Museum, the archive of the photographer Landshoff was presented for the first time in 2013 in a selection of around 250 photographs.

literature

• Pohlmann, Ulrich / Landshoff, Andreas (ed.): Hermann Landshoff - A retrospective. Photographs 1930–1970 [exh. Cat. Munich, City Museum, Photography Collection, November 29, 2013 to April 21, 2014], Munich: Schirmer / Mosel, 2013. ISBN 978-3-8296-0652-3 (book trade edition)
• Dunkel, Franziska: Hermann Landshoff - career breaks of a photographer , in: Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts (ed.), To wrongly forget. Artists in Munich in the 19th and 20th centuries (Small Library of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Vol. 3), Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008, pp. 105–123.
• Harrison, Martin (Ed.): Appearances - Modephotography since 1945 [Ger. Version of the exhibition cat. London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1991], Munich / Paris: Schirmer / Mosel, 1992. [Engl. Version: Appearances - Fashion Photography Since 1945, London: Cape, 1991]

Web links

• Literature by and about Hermann Landshoff in the bibliographic database WorldCat
• Exhibition in the Munich City Museum (Nov. 2013 – Apr. 2014)
• Bayerischer Rundfunk: Return of a forgotten Munich photographer ( Memento from December 31, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
• Hermann Landshoff in the Deutsche Fotothek

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Exhibition in the Munich City Museum (Nov. 2013 – Apr. 2014)
2. ^ Kurt Gödel: Collected Works . Ed .: Solomon Feferman et al. tape V . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2003, ISBN 978-0-19-968962-0 , pp. 473 .
3. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from February 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ http://www.br.de/radio/bayern2/sendung/land-und- Menschen/hermann-landshoff-muenchner-fotograf- knopf102.html ( Memento from December 31, 2013 in the Internet Archive )