The process of creating a portrait involves much more than the dialogue between the photographer and his model. A rich fund of visual experience shared by portrait subjects, authors, and viewers casts self-presentation and photographic interpretation into pre-existing molds. Yet individuality and spontaneity gained significant ground in the years following the fin de siècle, while efforts to escape from dictatorial rule in the late 1930s led to even greater concern with individual people. Thus portraits document the changing image of middle-class society in Germany and Austria while demonstrating at the same time the rise of photography as an independent artistic force. Gradually, the refined salon portraits of such artists as Nikola Perscheid, Rudolf Dührkoop, and the Atelier d'Ora gave way to the crystalline elegance of heads and faces by Trude Fleischmann, Lotte Jacobi, and Hugo Erfurth. Umbo's extreme close-ups, Helmar Lerski's light-modeling, and László Moholy-Nagy's experiments radically altered the human image in entirely unexpected ways. (English edition ISBN 978-3-7757-1564-5) Additional artists featured (selection): Josef Albers, Antios (Anton Josef Trcka), Gertrude Arndt, Aenne Biermann, Steffi Brandl, Raoul Hausmann, Lotte Jacobi, Edmund Kesting, Heinrich Kühn, Lucia Moholy, August Sander, Cami Stone Exhibition schedule: Neue Galerie New York, March 11-June 12, 2005 · Albertina, Vienna, July 5-October 16, 2005
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