Ernst Hugo Brehme

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Ernst Hugo Brehme , stage name Hugo Brehme (born December 3, 1882 in Eisenach , † June 13, 1954 in Mexico City ) was a German and Mexican photographer.

Life

Hugo Brehme: Piñatas
Hugo Brehme: Picnic

Hugo Brehme was the son of the shoemaker Theodor Albert Brehme and his wife Anna Elise Brehme, geb. Anne Elise Wick. In 1898 Brehme completed a photographic training in Erfurt . He was particularly interested in Africa . From 1900 to 1901 he took part in several expeditions to Togo , Cameroon , German South West Africa and German East Africa . A malaria illness forced him to return to Germany .

From 1905 to 1907 Hugo Brehme traveled to Mexico , a country that never left him. In 1906 he published his first Mexican photographs in the magazine El Mundo Ilustrado . On August 10, 1908, he married Auguste Karoline Hartmann and shortly afterwards moved with her to Mexico City. In 1914, an attempt by the Brehme couple to emigrate to the USA failed because their savings had been stolen immediately before they left and they were therefore unable to raise the required bail. In the same year, their son Arno Hugo Brehme was born, and Hugo Brehme opened his photo studio Fotografía Artística Hugo Brehme in Mexico City , which very soon became one of the most sought-after in the capital, also thanks to the support of the Lübeck-born businessman and patron Rodolfo Groth . The income from his photo studio enabled Brehme to travel all over the country. His pictures have been published in numerous books, above all in México pintoresco (1923) and in Mexico: Architecture, Landscape, Folk Life (1925). Brehme also sold his photos to tourists as postcards.

In 1923 Brehme undertook a trip to Germany lasting several months. In 1930 a fire broke out in the studio, which destroyed a large part of the photo collections stored there. On September 1, 1951, Brehme received Mexican citizenship.

Hugo Brehme died in his adopted home. He was buried in the German Cemetery in Mexico City.

Work and awards

Since the mid-1920s, Brehme was considered the most important Mexico photographer of his time. His photographs are part of the modern age . In his pictures he captured the typical life of the Mexican people, as well as landscapes and architectural buildings, but also important personalities of the Mexican Revolution. He has "repeatedly photographed the Indian population and as one of the first photographers ... created an arsenal of images of their way of life carried by empathy and respect". He never made a recording without the consent of photographed - an attitude that was when Indigenous z. Sometimes the way objects were photographed was anything but self-evident. His role model and his ethics as a photographer shaped another great Mexican photographer, Manuel Álvarez Bravo .

In 1929 Brehme was awarded the Grand Prize at the Ibero-American Exhibition in Seville . In 1931, Brehme won the renowned Concurso Tolteca photography competition sponsored by the Cemento Portland company .

Estate and exhibitions

Approx. 400 photos from Brehme's estate are in the Berlin Ibero-American Institute (IAI). In 2014, the IAI presented a selection of photos from the years of the Mexican Revolution in the exhibition Hugo Brehme and the Mexican Revolution, supplemented by loans from Mexican collections.

Books with pictures of Brehmes

(in order of appearance)

  • Hugo Brehme: México pintoresco - Picturesque Mexico. Self-published, Mexico City 1923
  • Hugo Brehme: Mexico: architecture, landscape, folk life. Orbis terrarum series , Wasmuth, Berlin 1925
  • Geo A. Schmidt: Mexico. Dietrich Reimer, Berlin 1921, 2nd ext. Edition 1925. With 23 images and 1 map - Reprint of the 1st edition: Nabu Press 2011, ISBN 1271285835
  • Karl von Schumacher : Mexico. Landscape and people, in Atlantis , October 10, 1929, pp. 577-639 of the Jg., Ernst Wasmuth, Berlin, pp. 607-612
  • Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Obras Públicas (ed.): Los caminos de México - The Roads of Mexico . Comision Nacional de Caminos, Mexico City 1931.
  • Rodolfo Groth: Gold, Indians, Mennonites. Fates in the northwestern Sierra Madre of Mexico . Self-published, distribution Lübecker Nachrichten , Lübeck 1960
  • Walter Schmiedehaus: Mexico. The Aztec Empire on the threshold of the future. Goldmann, Munich 1960
  • Erika Billeter: Photography Latin America 1860–1993. Canto a la realidad . Benteli, Bern 1994. ISBN 3-7165-0941-8
  • Michael Nungesser , Ed .: Hugo Brehme: Photographer - fotógrafo; Mexico between revolution and romanticism - México entre revolución y romanticismo . Catalog for the exhibition at the Ibero-American Institute 2004 and the Thuringian Museum (Eisenach) 2005. Willmuth Arenhövel, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-922912-60-5 . With bio and bibliography
  • Susan Toomey Frost (ed.): Timeless Mexico. The photographs of Hugo Brehme . University of Texas Press, Austin 2011. ISBN 978-0-292-72878-3

Web links

Commons : Hugo Brehme  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ a b Los Fotógrafos: Hugo Brehme , accessed on May 6, 2014.
  2. ^ A b c Erika Billeter: Photography Latin America 1860-1993. Canto a la realidad . Benteli Verlag, Bern 1994. p. 25.
  3. ^ Hugo Brehme and the Mexican Revolution , accessed on May 5, 2014. The bilingual exhibition catalog of the same name, co-editor on the German side DAAD , first Mexico 2009, ISBN 9786079537104 , is out of print. The volume is partly identical in picture and text to the edition of Nungesser 2005. The German National Library shows the tables of contents of both volumes on its server.
  4. ↑ Four b / w panels as art print (gravure); 3 fig. In the text. Back cover: full-page picture, author Brehme, with pyramid in the background, palm trees in the foreground, as an advertisement for his Mexico book from 1925
  5. ↑ In it numerous photos by Brehme
  6. ↑ therein 60 z. Partly full-page photos; six illustrations and the dust jacket photos front / back are from Brehme
  7. ↑ 6 pictures of Brehmes, numerous by other authors. Noteworthy is v. a. his picture of the formation of the Paricutín volcano , p. 18
  8. ↑ In it p. 25 and p. 114–123: The beautiful folklore of Hugo Brehme
  9. ↑ In it: Elena Poniatowska : On the way with Hugo Brehme - Viajando con Hugo Brehme , pp. 80–115. The volume is partially identical in picture and text to the 2009 edition of the DAAD, see above note
  10. ↑ Some quotes about his work, u. a. by Enzensberger and Susan Sontag
personal data
SURNAME Brehme, Ernst Hugo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brehme, Hugo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German and Mexican photographer
DATE OF BIRTH December 3, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Eisenach
DATE OF DEATH June 13, 1954
Place of death Mexico city