Faculty of Arts Events Calendar
German Studies Research Seminar: ‘The Photographic Book in the Weimar Republic: Response and Intervention’
15 January 2014, 4pm, Humanities Building, Room: H202
Professor Jonathan Long (University of Durham)
‘The Photographic Book in the Weimar Republic: Response and Intervention’
Jonathan Long is Professor of German at Durham University. He has worked extensively on twentieth-century German and Austrian literature, publishing on Thomas Bernhard, Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Monika Maron, Gerhard Fritsch, Hans Lebert, Dieter Kühn, and W.G. Sebald. His current research focuses on the photographic book in the Weimar Republic. The profound social and political upheavals of Weimar are well-documented, as is the response to these upheavals in the cultural sphere. The photographic book, made possible in part by technical improvements in printing and image reproduction, was a significant cultural form by means of which Weimar photographers, artists, writers, and editors sought to address the problems facing Weimar society. While many producers of photographic books are canonical figures in Weimar cultural history (Moholy-Nagy, Kurt Tucholksy, Ernst Jünger, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Erich Mendelssohn, and August Sander, to name just a few), the genre has itself received little scholarly attention, but provides uniquely illuminating insights into the culture and politics of inter-war Germany.