Max Jaffé (photographer)
Max Jaffé (born July 27, 1845 in Schwerin , Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin ; died December 14, 1939 in Vienna ) was an Austrian photographer who is best known as a pioneer of color reproduction technology and architectural photography .
Life
Max Jaffé, a great-grandson of Rabbi Mordechai Jaffé and son of the Jewish merchant Selig Joseph Jaffé (1802-1884), grew up with nine siblings. After attending the Gymnasium Fridericianum , he completed a commercial apprenticeship in Breslau and attended the art school in Nuremberg , where he first came into contact with photography . To learn this art, he went to Paris in 1865 and was trained there in the studios of Charles Reutlinger and Nadar until 1868 . After completing his apprenticeship, he worked in the E. Bieber studio in Hamburg from 1868 to 1869 , where he helped set up suitable studio rooms for portrait and sculpture photography.
In 1869 Jaffé moved to Vienna , where he spent the rest of his life. In January 1870 Jaffé was accepted as a member of the Photographic Society in Vienna. The following year he was elected secretary on January 17, 1871. At the meeting on April 4, it was announced that Jaffé had announced in a letter that he intended to stay longer in Hamburg to take over a studio and that he was therefore stepping down from his position. At the meeting on May 2, 1871, Fritz Luckhardt was elected in place of Jaffé . He did not accept the election, so the election was postponed. It is not known which photographic studio Jaffé wanted to take over and why it did not materialize. The date of return to Vienna was probably before the end of the year.
In the first few years he worked for the court photographer Josef Löwy , on whose behalf he made photographs for the World Exhibition in 1873 and the "Carlstadt-Fiumaner Bahn". From 1874 to 1876 Jaffé worked for photographer Emil Rabending before he (together with his five years older brother Moritz) founded a photographic studio that became known for portraits, landscapes and architecture, and that made reproductions. The company later specialized entirely in high-quality color collotype prints; From 1880 onwards, the “Art Institute for Collotype, Autotype and Three-Color Clichés Max Jaffé” was associated with the publishing house. One of the studio's long-term clients was, for example, the Vienna Academy of Sciences , which had reproductions made for its publications (meeting reports and memoranda) at Jaffé from the 1880s onwards.
In 1880 Max Jaffé married (initially only in a civil marriage) his wife Ottmarilla ("Ella") Schilling, with whom he had three sons and a daughter. On December 30, 1890, he was baptized as a Protestant.
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Jaffé found his life's work in the further development of photography, chemigraphy , photolithography and color printing . He was particularly concerned with the authentic reproduction of colors and shades. In order to avoid blurring with long exposure times, he constructed a sprung floor camera . In 1877, together with his brother Moritz, he applied for a patent for the “Jaffétypie” process, which reproduced colored templates in halftones for letterpress printing using a gauze grid . He later developed, among other things, a caustic preparation for planographic printing and, together with August Albert, a photolithographic transfer paper. Jaffé's indoor and outdoor shots of monumental Viennese buildings (including the Army History Museum , the Parliament Building , the Art Hall , the National Library , St. Stephen's Cathedral and numerous industrial buildings), for which he used wide-angle lenses , were famous . He avoided distortion with a process he developed himself, with which he is one of the pioneers of architectural photography. He published his interior and exterior photos of the Heiligenkreuz Abbey as a series of postcards.
From 1888 to 1892 Jaffé taught as a teacher for reproduction technology at the newly founded graphic teaching and research institute in Vienna. From 1890 to 1897 he published seven volumes of the magazine "Die Photographie". After the end of the First World War , he withdrew from the management of his studio, which he left to his son Arthur; In the 1920s and 1930s he set up branches in Budapest and New York , where he later emigrated.
Max Jaffé spent his twilight years in Vienna further developing photographic concepts, such as rotary collotype printing .
Fonts
- About studio construction , in: Photographische Korrespondenz , 1897, 34th year, p. 208 ff.
- The national rebirth of the Jews , H. Steinitz, 1897; Review: Jews in the Visual Arts . In: Photographische Korrespondenz , 1897, 34th year, p. 239 ff.
- About the studio construction , in: Camera Club in Vienna (ed.): Wiener Photographische Blätter , III. Vol., 1896, p. 233 ff.
- Studies on the sensitivity of different colors to light and on the production of inimitable securities , in: Photographische Korrespondenz , 1877, 14th year, p. 30 ff.
- About Atelierconstruction in: Photographische Korrespondenz , 1871, 8th year, p. 56 ff.
literature
- Photographic correspondence. Journal for scientific and applied photography and the entire reproduction technology, Volume 53 (1916), p. 31
- Jaffé Max. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 3, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1965, p. 59.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Photographic Notes , 1871, 7th year, p. 10.
- ↑ Photographische Notizen , 1871, 7th year, p. 48.
- ↑ Photographische Notizen , 1871, 7th year, p. 61.
- ↑ Photographische Notizen , 1871, 7th year, p. 78.
- ↑ Photographische Notizen , 1872, 8th year, p. 184
- ^ Astrid Schweighofer: Religious Seekers in Modernity: Conversions from Judaism to Protestantism in Vienna around 1900 . Berlin / New York 2015, note 2225.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Jaffé, Max |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austrian photographer and reproduction technician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 27, 1845 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Schwerin |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 14, 1939 |
| Place of death | Vienna |