Das Deutsche Lichtbild and the Militarization of German Photography

The author examines the 12-year run of Das Deutsche Lichtbild
(1927-1939), posing questions about the changes in German
photography and about corresponding changes in German society.
The author analyzes the editing and sequencing of the annuals
rather than their individual photographs. How did this
publication and the images in it function as purveyors of the
ideological complex called Nazism? The author argues that Nazi
photography was not simple a regression from and debasement of
earlier work but that the later issues of Das Deutsche Lichtbild
display a Nazi photography with its own peculiar - and
particularly horrifying - imagery, style, and development. The
author hopes to reveal with greater specifity the means and ends
of the Nazi patronage and ideology and to 'delineate Nazi art as
a medling of modernisms and premodernisms'. The author's
conclusion: 'The evolution of Das Deutsche Lichtbild confirms
the incorporation of the Neue Sachlichkeit with its
"glorification of technology" into the Nazi aesthetic and the
Nazi ideology. An imagery of warfare emerged, an imagery that
for its propagandistic effects relied on the deep-seated
nationalism and militarism of its audience. In these images
industry and technology were rendered fully German only as
elements of a racist war machine'.


Citaten:
Huyssen, A.: The Vamp and the Machine (New German Critique n.24-25 1981-82)
Benjamin, W.: A Short History of Photography (Screen v.13 n.1 1972)
Lemagny, J.C. / Rouille, A.: Histoire de la Photographie (1986)
Phillips, C.: Photography in the Modern Era (1989)
Mellor, D. (ed): Germany / The New Photography 1927-1933 (1978)
Buchloh, B.: From Faktura to Photography (in: October First Decade 1987)
Miller Lane, B.: Architecture and Politics in Germany 1918-1945 (1985)
Peukert, D.: Inside Nazi Germany (1987)
Friedländer, S.: Reflections of Nazism (1982)
Cohen, A.: The Tremendum (1981)
Solomon-Godeau, A.: The Armed Vision Disarmed (Afterimage 1983 XI/6)
Stokoe, B.: Renger-Patzsch (in: Mellor, 1978)
Watney, S.: Making Strange (in: Thinking Photography 1982)
Herf, J.: Reactionary Modernism (1984)
Sekula, A.: The Traffic in Images (Art Journal 1981, 1, Spring)
Theweleit, K.: Male Fantasies (1987,1989)
Lang, F.: Metropolis (in: After the Great Divide, 1986)
Broszat, M.: The Hitler State (1981)
Rabinach, A.: The Aesthetics of Production (in: International Fascism, 1979)