Walter Dick (photographer)
Walter Dick (born June 20, 1914 in Cologne ; † June 29, 1976 there ) was a German photographer and photo reporter. Along with August Sander and Hermann Claasen, Dick was one of the photographers who impressively documented the state of Germany at the end of the Second World War - he took Cologne as an example. In many books and films, his photographs showed the destruction, reconstruction and life of people in the post-war years. Dick left an archive with more than 80,000 negatives from 1945 to 1970. This is managed by Bild & Rahmen Werkladen GmbH in Cologne.
Life and photography
Without a father, who died in France in the First World War in 1915 , Dick grew up in poor conditions in Cologne. In the post-war period he attended an elementary school in Cologne and switched to an unskilled job at the DuMont Schauberg publishing house without a secondary school . His talent for photography was recognized early on, and he embarked on a photojournalistic career with the Kölnische Zeitung's picture service from 1929 to 1935.
Because of the Olympic Games in 1936, Dick moved to Berlin , where he worked as a photojournalist for the Berlin Photo Service from 1936 to 1938 . Here he met Werner Höfer , who played a role in his later life and work again and again. In 1939 Walter Dick took photos for an illustrated book in Libya on behalf of the Italian government , but was then called up for military service in North Africa. From September 1939 he reported on the theaters of war during the Second World War. In September 1944 he married Annaliese Zehl in Belgrade, whom he met while working there.
After his return from English captivity in September 1945, he took pictures of the destroyed Cologne and the population's will to rebuild. At the same time as his colleagues Hermann Claasen , Chargesheimer and Peter Fischer, he made a large number of documentary photos of the war destruction in his hometown for the Cologne news office .
He worked as a freelance photo journalist for Cologne daily newspapers, Neue Illustrierte , Neue Rhein Zeitung and many other specialist and sports newspapers.
Walter Dick had a decisive influence on photojournalism in the Federal Republic of Germany during the reconstruction phase and later. Publications in Spiegel , Stern and Welt underscored the quality of his work. He received several awards, including a. also the international award world press photo 1964 . His book publication on the first German cycling tour in 1949 was followed in 1965 by the illustrated book Time of the Ruins about the destroyed Cologne.
In 1965 Walter Dick drew attention to the years of need with a large photo exhibition in Gürzenich in Cologne with pictures of the post-war years; the second edition of the book Time of the Ruins appeared in the same year. It followed u. a. Exhibitions in the regional association of North Rhine-Westphalia, in the city of Cologne's traffic office and in the Dresdner Bank. Documentation about the Cologne Carnival followed in 1972. At Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln he began working for radio and radio drama as early as 1956; later also for the NRW regional television and the ARD programs as well as for the WDR press office.
For its 100th birthday in 2014, Werkladen Conzen Kunst Service GmbH organized an extensive photo exhibition in Cologne with motifs from 1945 to 1960. The thematic focus was on many previously unpublished photographs of people from this period. After the end of the exhibition, the exhibition can be viewed permanently online at Bilderbuch Köln.
Works
- Works published during his lifetime
- Walter Dick: First German cycling tour , Cologne 1949
- Der Bildjournalist - Werkzeitschrift der Agfa AG: Contributions to photojournalism by EJ Klinsky, Horst Haas, Dieter Hespe, Niels Reuter, Eduard Roth, Hans Truöl and Klaus Kallmorgen as well as a text contribution to sports photography ´Hooray, a goal! ´ by Walter Dick, Leverkusen, booklet 1/1958
- Hans Schmitt-Rost : The picture book of Cologne , photos by Walter Dick, Greven Verlag, Cologne 1960
- Curt Becker: City, you mustn't die , M. DuMont Schauberg, 1970
- Hans Schmitt-Rost, Walter Dick, Heinrich Böll : Time of Ruins , Kiepenheuer & Witschg, Cologne 1965
- Works published posthumously
- the themed service: People on the move , Cologne 1995
- Walter Dick, Dieter Wellershoff: Cologne - City on the move , Kiepenheuer & Witschg, Cologne 2002
- Ulrich Hermanns, Dietrich Maguhn, Frank Warda: Walter Dick: Kölner Menschen 1945–1960 , emons Verlag 2014, ISBN 978-3-95451-050-4
Web links
- Literature by and about Walter Dick in the catalog of the German National Library
- Official website of the Walter Dick Archives
- Selection of 2000 photographs by Walter Dick from the 1950s and 1960s from Cologne
- Detailed listing of published works in the photographer wiki
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Dick, Walter |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German photographer and photo reporter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 20, 1914 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Cologne |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 29, 1976 |
| Place of death | Cologne |