Barely a century ago, the invention of photojournalism turned the press landscape upside down. A new exhibition at Berlin's German Historical Museum reimagines a photographic revolution.
Image: Ullstein Bild
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Berlin exhibition celebrates early press photography
Barely a century ago, the invention of photojournalism turned the press landscape upside down. A new exhibition at Berlin's German Historical Museum reimagines a photographic revolution.
Image: Ullstein
Summer at the Wannsee lake, 1910
"Pack the swimsuit, take your little sister," sung Cornelia Froboess in 1951, "There's nothing like heading out to Wannsee!" The lake near Berlin had been a popular bathing spot for families for decades, as captured here in 1910 by photopgrapher Conrad Hünich.
Image: Ullstein
Gunmen at the Reichstag, 1919
Civil war gripped Berlin as a general strike paralyzes the capital and armed groups move through the streets a century ago. During the Spartacist uprising of January 1919, the photographer Walter Gircke aimed his lens on government soldiers who took a position on the Brandenburg Gate next to the Reichstag. A few days later, revolutionaries Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were murdered.
Image: Ullstein Bild
Couple in a canoe, 1929
Martin Munkácsi photographed this couple in a canoe in 1929. The image was published in the now-defunct "Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung," a mass distribution magazine published on Thursdays and sold for pocket change. In addition to artistic drawings, the publication's trademark was spectacular photos. Munkácsi, a Jewish Hungarian, would soon leave for the US to become a fashion photographer.
Image: Ullstein Bild
Women running hurdles, 1912
This scene of women jumping over wooden, straw-filled hurdles from 1912 was expertly captured by photojournalist Robert Sennecke. Soon after, Sennecke reported on World War I before becoming a well-known press photographer. He founded a photo agency that supplied the German and international press. Sennecke's specialty, however, remained sports photography.
Image: Ullstein
German soldiers in Libya, 1941
The war photographer Erich Borchert died soon after taking this image of German soldiers dug into a trench during the German advance on the British-occupied Libyan city of Tobruk in 1941. Borchert never made it out of the city that had become a military target due to its deep-sea harbor.
Image: Ullstein Bild
Captured crocodile, 1906
Otto Haeckel and his brother Georg are among the most renowned pioneers of press photography in Germany. Otto Haeckel produced some 1,000 photos of a month-long study trip by members of the Reichstag to areas of East Africa then colonized by Germany. This image shows a member of the expedition examining a captured crocodile in 1906.
Image: Ullstein Bild
The Golden Twenties, 1928
Taken at the liberated height of the Weimar Republic in 1928, this image sees actress Hertha Schroeter at a costume party with saxophone, glittery dress and nylon stockings. Appearing in the "Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung," such shots would have been unimaginable not long after when the Nazis labeled jazz "degenerate music." The Nazis also didn't want to see strong women on stage.
Image: ullstein bild
Hitler propaganda, 1935
Max Ehlert, an official war photographer under the Nazis, took this typical propaganda image of Adolf Hitler being cheered and adored by the masses in 1935. The photo was taken at the Reich Harvest Thanksgiving Festival in Bückeberg, a Nazi festival and propaganda tool that celebrated the German peasantry but mostly served to strengthen the image of Hitler's connection to agricultural workers.
Image: ullstein bild
Prussian army canteen, 1898
Prussian army soldiers sit or stand while chatting over a beer in a barracks canteen. The photographer Waldemar Titzenthaler captured the scene in 1898 before working for the magazine "Die Dame," a pioneering illustrated magazine pitched at modern women that was published by Ullstein Verlag. His subjects were no longer soldiers, but famous actors, singers, directors and architects.
Image: Ullstein Bild
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A new exhibition at Berlin's German Historical Museum titled "The Invention of Press Photography: From the Ullstein Collection 1894-1945," shows how photography first appeared in newspapers and magazines at the turn of the 20th century - and rapidly boosted circulation.
Featuring defining examples of an emerging art form that are held in the image archives of the Ullstein publishing house, the exhibition particularly draws on the weekly news magazine, "Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung," published by Ullstein from 1892 to 1945.
With a circulation of nearly two million copies at one time, it was Germany's most successful magazine. This was largely due to the images it displayed from renowned press photographers and picture agencies, photos that drew in readers from across the social spectrum.
Early press photograph capturing a rare moment in 1912Image: Ullstein
More generally, the exhibition shows how press photography represented a historical turning point in the development of the press in Germany and beyond - and was also front and center of documenting the coming turbulent times.
"Photography changed the press landscape and thus our perception of reality," wrote the German Historical Museum of the exhibition.
The "Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung," in particular, "stood for the birth of a new medium, the illustrated magazine, and the way it dealt with photography, which influenced people's viewing habits and engaged the visual longings of its readers."
Featuring works by noted photographers such as Georg and Otto Haeckel, Philipp Kester, Martin Munkacsi, Yva, Max Ehlert and Regina Relang, "The Invention of Press Photography" runs from June 23 through October 31 in Berlin.
