Donna West Brett – författare

This edited collection explores the complex ways in which photography is used and interpreted: as a record of evidence, as a form of communication, as a means of social and political provocation, as a mode of surveillance, as a narrative of the self, and as an art form. What makes photographic images unsettling and how do the re-uses and interpretations of photographic images unsettle the self-evident reality of the visual field? Taking up these themes, this book examines the role of photography as a revelatory medium underscored by its complex association with history, memory, experience and identity.

This edited collection explores the complex ways in which photography is used and interpreted: as a record of evidence, as a form of communication, as a means of social and political provocation, as a mode of surveillance, as a narrative of the self, and as an art form. What makes photographic images unsettling and how do the re-uses and interpretations of photographic images unsettle the self-evident reality of the visual field? Taking up these themes, this book examines the role of photography as a revelatory medium underscored by its complex association with history, memory, experience and identity.

As a recording device, photography plays a unique role in how we remember places and events that happened there. This includes recording events as they happen, or recording places where something occurred before the photograph was taken, commonly referred to as aftermath photography. This book presents a theoretical and historical analysis of German photography of place after 1945. It analyses how major historical ruptures in twentieth-century Germany and associated places of trauma, memory and history affected the visual field and the circumstances of looking. These ruptures are used to generate a new reading of postwar German photography of place. The analysis includes original research on world-renowned German photographers such as Thomas Struth, Thomas Demand, Michael Schmidt, Boris Becker and Thomas Ruff as well as photographers largely unknown in the Anglophone world.

As a recording device, photography plays a unique role in how we remember places and events that happened there. This includes recording events as they happen, or recording places where something occurred before the photograph was taken, commonly referred to as aftermath photography. This book presents a theoretical and historical analysis of German photography of place after 1945. It analyses how major historical ruptures in twentieth-century Germany and associated places of trauma, memory and history affected the visual field and the circumstances of looking. These ruptures are used to generate a new reading of postwar German photography of place. The analysis includes original research on world-renowned German photographers such as Thomas Struth, Thomas Demand, Michael Schmidt, Boris Becker and Thomas Ruff as well as photographers largely unknown in the Anglophone world.

How did German aesthetic values change during the Weimar Republic and after its immediate collapse at the beginning of the National Socialist period? Contrary to conventional narratives that depict modernist aesthetics as static, shaping principles of modern art and design, this volume argues for their complexity and ever-shifting nature.Illuminating the vital exchanges that occurred across multiple art forms during a period of unmatched cultural activity, this multi-disciplinary volume explores the cultural transition between Weimar- and National Socialist-era Germany and offers a fresh perspective on the fate of modernism during a time of censorship and social stigma. Featuring essays on architecture, painting, photography, film, sculpture, cabaret, typography, and commercial design, the volume explores competing and comparable themes across German art from 1919-1945 and addresses how modern approaches like New Vision coexisted with more traditional and established artistic modes.Such visual complexity is evident from the volume’s eclectic coverage: these include ‘sexology’ and eroticism, visual grammar in typography and architecture, the reception of Weimar art in the National Socialist period, and the formation and transformation of queer and Jewish identities. The volume encompasses subjects as different as shadow in the animated films of Lotte Reininger, filmic adaptations of Heinrich Zille’s social commentary in the 1920s, the photography of László Moholy-Nagy, and depictions of female sexuality in Magnus Hirschfeld’s oeuvre. By bridging multiple artistic fields, this highly interdisciplinary work provides a fresh perspective on the ever-changing art and aesthetic principles of early-20th-century Germany.