Wilhelm Burger (photographer)

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Spitsbergen 1872
Burgers business card

Wilhelm J. Burger (born March 15, 1844 in Vienna ; † March 7, 1920 ibid) was an Austrian photographer who mainly worked as a landscape photographer .

Life

Wilhelm Burger received his training as a painter at the art academies in Vienna and Munich. Later he was a student of Constantin von Ettingshausen and taught photography at the University of Vienna from 1864 to 1866 . In 1865 he joined the Photographic Society in Vienna. From 1868 to 1870 Burger was on the commercial scientific expedition to East Asia. The pictures he took on these occasions are considered to be particularly fine examples of working with tannin drying plates . In 1871 Burger became a kk Hof photographer.

In 1872 he sailed with Count Wilczek on the "Isbjörn" to the islands near Novaya Zemlya , where he met the S / X Admiral Tegetthoff , the ship of the polar expedition. From this meeting he made a series of stereoscopic images showing life on board and the individual expedition participants. Burger also used his home-made tannin drying plates back then. But he also already worked with the collodion process and with paper negatives. Unlike the tannin drying plates, these were still usable ten days after preparation.

Count Wilczek also took photos on this expedition. In 1881 Burger was already using gelatine emulsion plates on his expedition to Lycia and Caria . The invention of the dry plate made it possible for amateurs to take photos on expeditions.

In 1882, Burger advocated the use of drying plates on scientific expeditions. For the equipment he recommended, he referred to his fifteen years of practice. In the Photische Correspondenz that year he wrote in detail about it, recommended the handy format 15 × 21 cm and calculated the necessary weight of the equipment. He estimated an intake at one kilogram. He assumed two hundred plates to be taken along with the associated utensils. Either three horses or a camel and a horse were necessary for the transport.

Around 1900, Burger photographed Kreuzenstein Castle for Count Wilczek and used three hundred individual flashes for a night shot of the castle. In 1905 he became imperial councilor.

criticism

A series of images from Thailand, which for years was ascribed to Burger, later turned out to be the work of the Thai court photographer Francis Chit in Thai a. a. Khunsunthonsathitlak . In the book by Donko, Wilhelm M .: "In the footsteps of Austria's navy in Siam (Thailand)", published in 2012, the author proves on pp. 144–162 that the majority of Wilhelm Burger's Siamese photographs from 1869 are actually from Francis Chit comes from. With regard to Japan, Akiyoshi, Tani and Pantzer, Peter have in the article "Wilhelm Burger's Photographs of Japan: New Attributions of his Glass Negative Collection in the Austrian National Library." in the magazine "Photo Researcher No. 15/2011" proved that a considerable part of the Japan photographs from 1869 were not taken by Wilhelm Burger. The background of his China photographs from the East Asia expedition in 1869 has not yet been examined in more detail in this light.

literature

  • The robbed shadow: a world tour in the mirror of ethnographic photography , Thomas Theye, Münchner Stadtmuseum, CJ Bucher, 1989, p. 56

New work:

  • Akiyoshi, Tani / Pantzer, Peter: “Wilhelm Burger's Photographs of Japan: New Attributions of his Glass Negative Collection in the Austrian National Library.” In: "Photo Researcher No. 15/2011", published by the European Society for the History of Photography (ESHPh)
  • Donko, Wilhelm M .: "In the footsteps of Austria's navy in Siam (Thailand)", Berlin 2012 (pp. 144–162)

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Burger  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gert Rosenberg: Wilhelm Burger a world traveler and researcher with the camera 1844-1920 , Brandstätter, 1984 page 14
  2. ↑ http://www.rama9art.org/artisan/2001/april/panoramic/index.html
personal data
SURNAME Burger, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Burger, Wilhelm J.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian photographer
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1844
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 1920
Place of death Vienna