Jakob August Lorent

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lorent in oriental costume around 1860
One of his most famous recordings: the Sphinx

Jakob August Lorent (born December 12, 1813 in Charleston (South Carolina) , USA ; † July 9, 1884 in Meran , South Tyrol ) was a German-American scientist, world traveler and pioneer of architectural photography .

Life

Lorent came to Mannheim to live with his wealthy foster father as a child . He studied and received his doctorate at the University of Heidelberg to the Dr. phil. As a wealthy private citizen , he traveled through Egypt and Asia Minor as early as 1842 . From 1865 to 1869 he was traveling in Württemberg . Before his permanent settlement in Merano (1873), Lorent lived in Venice and had visited the classic cultural sites of all travelers to the Orient : Andalusia , Algeria , Egypt and Nubia , Palestine , Greece and Sicily .

Photography in Tyrol

With a trained eye, he aimed his plate camera at the many cultural monuments of the Adige Valley in the 1870s .

As early as the June days of the year 1854, Lorent entered himself in the visitor's book of Schloss Tirol for the first time and noted, not without self-irony: Dr. and photographer, both original . After extensive study trips and intensive photographic activities, Lorent returned to Merano two decades later, where he - like many of his contemporaries - settled for health reasons and lived until his death. He set up a photo laboratory and took forays into and around Merano with his camera. Around one hundred photographic motifs from all over South Tyrol have come down to us from this creative phase. Some of the most beautiful are views of Tyrol Castle.

Immediately after their second arrival in Merano, Lorent and his wife Kathinka again left their signature in the visitor book. It is possible that those pictures were taken during this time that became fundamental to the way in which many of his photographer colleagues approached Tyrol Castle in the following years. The photographer, who had already photographed palaces and castles in the Württemberg region, had to be particularly fond of the castle ruins, which were still in ruins at the time . With his precisely composed recordings, he recorded the last phase before the first major renovation work on Tyrol Castle under the monument protector David Schönherr .

Awards

Exhibitions

  • First General German Industrial Exhibition , Munich 1854
  • Paris World's Fair, 1855
  • Photo exhibitions in Brussels and Edinburgh, 1856
  • Photo exhibition of the photos of Greece and Egypt in the Mannheimer Kunstverein , 1861
  • Photo exhibitions in Paris and Brussels, 1861
  • London World's Fair, 1862
  • Photo exhibitions in Amsterdam and Mannheim, 1862
  • Photo exhibitions in Paris and Berlin, 1865
  • International Photographic Exhibition, Vienna 1881
  • The Mannheimer Kunstverein showed again in 1984 Lorent's large-format, at the time famous photographs of Mediterranean countries and Egypt, but the works of the Jerusalem trip from 1864, which were owned by the Reiss-Engelhorn museums, had never been seen before and were the only surviving prints worldwide other photos most recently shown at the Mannheim International Photography Forum from July 23 to January 28, 2007 in the exhibition "To the Holy Land, Pilgrimage Sites and Landscapes in the Orient - Photographs from the 19th Century".
  • On the 120th anniversary of Lorent's death in 2004, Florian Pichler put together an exhibition at the Kunsthaus Meran with Lorent's motifs, especially from Meran and the surrounding area.

Works (selection)

  • Migrations in the Orient during the years 1842-1843 , Loeffler Verlag, Mannheim 1845
  • Monuments of the Middle Ages in the Kingdom of Württemberg. Shown photographically with explanatory texts. 2 volumes. Hofgrefe, Mannheim 1866–1867

literature

  • Evidence in the state bibliography of Baden-Württemberg
  • Jakob August Lorent. Egypt, Alhambra, Tlemsen, Algiers. Travel pictures from the beginnings of photography , compiled by Wulf Schirmer , Werner Schnuchel and Franz Waller; with a biographical-photohistorical appendix by Franz Waller, Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1985, ISBN 3-8053-0817-5 .
  • Franz Waller: Jakob August Lorent and his Gmünder Photographien from 1868. In: Einhorn-Jahrbuch Schwäbisch Gmünd 27, 2000, pp. 125–140.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On the stay in Sicily in 1865 now Emanuele Bennici: Di ritorno dall 'Oriente: Jacob August Lorent in Sicilia , Palermo 2017 with a list of the monuments and sample images photographed by Lorent.
  2. ↑ Photographische Korrespondenz , 12th year 1875, p. 80

Web links

Commons : Jakob August Lorent  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Jakob August Lorent  - Sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Lorent, Jakob August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German scientist, world traveler and architectural photographer
DATE OF BIRTH December 12, 1813
PLACE OF BIRTH Charleston (South Carolina) , USA
DATE OF DEATH July 9, 1884
Place of death Meran , South Tyrol