Description
Book SynopsisExamines photo essays from Weimar Germany’s many social crises. Traces photography’s emergence as a new language that German photographers used to intervene in modernity’s key political and philosophical debates: changing notions of nature and culture, national and personal identity, and the viability of parliamentary democracy.
Trade Review“As an introduction to the field and a bold statement of the photo-essay’s central significance, Magilow’s book is a valuable piece of scholarship.”
—Jonathan Long Source
“The Photography of Crisis is the first full account of the photo essay as a ubiquitous presence in Weimar culture and a driving force behind the visual turn in German modernism. Daniel Magilow’s examination of new text-image relations in the illustrated press and the photobook not only complicates traditional accounts of avant-garde photography and modern photojournalism but also allows us to situate the famous photographers August Sander and Albert Renger-Patzsch within the emerging logics of visuality, physiognomy, and shock that would continue to haunt photography throughout the twentieth century. This book is required reading for all photo historians and scholars of modern visual culture.”
—Sabine Hake,Texas Chair of German Literature and Culture, University of Texas at Austin
“[The Photography of Crisis] is a thoughtfully and elegantly argued contribution to Weimar photo history.”
—Sabine T. Kriebel caa.reviews
Table of ContentsContents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Photography of Crisis
1 The New Receptivity and the New Photographer
2 The Illustrated Press and the Photo Essay
3 The Modernist Photobook: The Nature of Nature
4 Photographic Physiognomies: Diagnosing Germanness
5 The Snapshot and the Moment of Decision
Epilogue: Crisis, Photographed
Notes
Bibliography
Index
