Ludwig Windstosser

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ludwig Windstosser (born January 19, 1921 in Munich , † June 3, 1983 in Stuttgart ) was a German photographer and photo artist of the West German post-war period . The co-founder of the BFF professional association Freelance photographers and film designer was active in the fifties and sixties primarily as an industrial photographer for the mining industry in the Ruhr area . As a member of the avant-garde group fotoform , he made a significant contribution to a new imagery of the post-war avant-garde photo art .

life and work

Ludwig Windstosser was born in Munich as the son of Käthe and the sales representative Otto Windstosser. Around 1937 he graduated from a secondary school in Berlin and was an apprentice mechanic at Robert Bosch GmbH in Stuttgart from 1937 to 1940 . In 1940 he passed the entrance exam to the State Engineering School in Esslingen . In the same year he was called up for military service. At the time, the family had their residence at Christophstrasse 6 in Stuttgart. After his draft, Windstosser was used as an artilleryman . From 1942 to 1944 he served as a soldier and later as a gunner on the Eastern Front in Russia . Here he was already practicing as an amateur photographer . In 1944 Windstosser was wounded in the war and after his release from the hospital he attended courses as a technical draftsman at Bosch. Here he also met his future wife Ingrid Lischke (1922–2015), who was also a technical draftsman at Bosch. In 1945 Windstosser was called up again for military service, this time to Silesia .

After the Second World War , Windstosser began an apprenticeship as a photographer with Adolf Lazi in Stuttgart. During his training he also got to know some of the photographers with whom he founded the fotoform group in 1949 . In addition to Windstosser, this consisted of Peter Keetman , Siegfried Lauterwasser , Wolfgang Reisewitz , Toni Schneiders and Otto Steinert . Two years after it was founded, Heinz Hajek-Halke and Christer Strömholm also joined the company. Following on from the photographic tendencies of the 1920s and early 1930s, the group developed criteria for progressive forms of expression in photography. Your pictures were circulated by post: If the work was rated positively by all group members, it was given the rating "fotoform" and could be shown at the joint exhibitions. The subjective photography movement initiated by Steinert was a further attempt to establish the new design methods internationally. Windstosser was only briefly involved in this. He resigned from the group in 1952. The activities of fotoform also ebbed significantly after 1953.

From 1948, Windstosser worked primarily as a freelance industrial photographer. Steep perspectives, unusual image sections and strong contrasts can be found alongside elaborately arranged production scenes in the advertising photographs that he realized on behalf of various companies - from steel production to the pharmaceutical industry to the textile industry . Experimental shots with industrial motifs complete his portfolio. Especially at the time of the West German economic miracle , the industrial sector had a strong interest in representation. As a trained mechanic and draftsman, Windstosser had a keen eye for technical details and worked on behalf of over 150 West German and international companies. He portrayed the mining company Ruhrkohle AG , which played a key role in the upswing of the West German economy. In particular, such large orders in the coal and steel industry allowed gusts of wind a high standard of living. From 1957 to 1959 he was able to have the planning and construction of the "Villa Windstosser" at Neue Weinsteige 80 in Stuttgart carried out by architect Max Bächer and garden architect Hans Luz . In 1964 the property also had its own laboratory building, in which color photographs could also be developed.

The need for new forms of expression in the post-war period was - in addition to the artistically ambitious attempts of the fotoform group - also answered by the many new photo books . Right at the beginning of his career, Windstosser devoted himself to the photographic illustration of numerous city portraits and illustrated books . These captured the prevailing zeitgeist beyond the industrial landscapes it captured. Windstosser described the work on the illustrated books as "lucrative relaxation" and as an opportunity to broaden your own photographic horizons.

Windstosser's city publications are primarily devoted to the Baden-Württemberg region , especially his adopted home Stuttgart. The diversity of the city is shown in various portraits. Stuttgart im Bild is particularly ambitious due to the clever juxtaposition of image pairs. The illustrated book Berlin partly partly is a portrait of West Berlin that reflects the tension between reconstruction and progress and the demand for normalcy and security. Opposites are illustrated on the one hand by speaking pairs of pictures, but above all by composition and cleverly staged dualisms in the photographs.

From August 1982 onwards, numerous hospital stays marked Windstosser's everyday life; his son Peter Windstosser (1953–2010) took on a number of commissions during this time. On June 3, 1983, Ludwig Windstosser died of cancer in Stuttgart.

Exhibitions (selection)

Awards

  • 1951: 3rd prize in the first major international photo competition organized by Camera magazine
  • 1964: Honorary plaque from the Central Association of the German Photography Trade for the annual show ( photo 64 )
  • 1964: best overall performance at the picture exhibition of German professional photographers in Stuttgart

Publications

  • E. Merck AG: From the Merck'schen Engel pharmacy to a large pharmaceutical and chemical company 1668–1968 / [Ed. occasion d. 300 years ago the takeover of d. Engel Pharmacy in Darmstadt by Friedrich Jacob Merck on Aug. 26, 1668. Text: Fritz Ebner u. Leopold Lerch. Photo: Ludwig Windstosser] . Ed .: E. Merck Aktiengesellschaft. Darmstadt 1968.
  • Mahle KG (Ed.): Working at limits: 50 years of Mahle . Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1970.
  • Ludwig Windstosser, Thilo Koch: Berlin partly partly . Book guild Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main 1972, ISBN 978-3-7632-1613-0 .
  • Ludwig Windstosser, Peer-Uli Faerber: Stuttgart in the picture . Rüber, Stuttgart 1974.

Writings and interviews

  • Roman Freitag: About a photographer: Ludwig Windstosser . In: Photo magazine . tape 4 , no. 8 , August 1952, p. 36 .
  • Bernd Lohse: Ludwig Windstosser. Good old industrial photography - where has it gone? In: Photo magazine . tape 34 , no. 1 , January 1982, p. 40-47 .
  • Photographers who make a career. Ludwig Windstosser Industry. "The recording is raw material for me" [Interview with Ludwig Windstosser] . In: Photo magazine . tape 21 , no. 1 , January 1969, p. 18-21 .
  • Ludwig Windstosser: Thoughts on an exhibition . In: Camera . tape 28 , no. 9 , 1949, pp. 286-288 .
  • Ludwig Windstosser: Sharp or Fuzzy? In: Photo mirror . No. February 17 , 1949, p. 4-5 .
  • Ludwig Windstosser: Ten against ninety . In: Photo magazine . tape 1 , no. September 9 , 1949, p. 15 .
  • Ludwig Windstosser: industrial images with Hasselblad . In: Hasselblad . December 1980, p. 6 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Exhibition in the LWL-Industriemuseum Schiffshebewerk Henrichenburg. Retrieved November 27, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Stefanie Regina Dietzel, Lara Höfchen, Jette Panzer for the Museum of Photography , State Museums in Berlin (ed.): Ludwig Windstosser. Postwar Modern Photography . Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-7356-0625-9 , pp. 89 .
  3. ↑ "Shaped World - A Photographic Lifetime Achievement" the Museum Folkwang shows Peter Keetman. Retrieved November 27, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Amber Sayah: Max Bächer died: The architect as a writer. In: Stuttgarter Zeitung. December 13, 2011, accessed November 27, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Photographers who make a career. Ludwig Windstosser Industry. "The recording is raw material for me" [Interview with Ludwig Windstosser] . In: Photo magazine . tape 21 , no. 1 , January 1969, p. 18 .
  6. ↑ Stefanie Regina Dietzel, Lara Höfchen, Jette Panzer for the Museum of Photography , State Museums in Berlin (ed.): Ludwig Windstosser. Postwar Modern Photography . Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-7356-0625-9 , pp. 89-91 .
personal data
SURNAME Gust of wind, Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photographer
DATE OF BIRTH January 19, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH June 3, 1983
Place of death Stuttgart