The idea of photography in Germany evokes everything from the pioneering modernist pictures of the Weimar era to the colossal digital prints that define art photography today. But it also recalls horrifying documents of wartime atrocities and the relentless surveillance of East German citizens. Photography and Germany broadens these perceptions by examining the medium’s multi-faceted relationship with Germany’s turbulent cultural, political, and social history while rethinking the notion of German photography with fresh insights on its historical context. Andrés Mario Zervigón covers this history from the region’s pre-photographic experiments with light-sensitive chemicals to today’s tension between analog and digital technologies. Rather than simply providing a survey of German photography, however, he focuses on how the medium, as a product of the modern age, has intervened in a fraught project of national imagining, often to productive ends but sometimes to catastrophic results. Richly illustrated with numerous previously unpublished images, Photography and Germany is the first single-authored history of photography in Germany ever published, one that deepens our broader understanding of how photography cultivates notions of a nation and its inhabitants.

"Born in Berlin in 1891, John Heartfield grew up in Germany during the formative years of the main modern movements: Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, each of which contributed recognisably to the photomontages for which he would become famous. Sharply critical of the Weimar Republic in which he flourished, in Germany his work was banned for the duration of Hitler's Third Reich. In London, where he lived as an anti-Fascist exile throughout the Second World War, he remained an outsider till after his return to East Germany in 1950, It is only since the 1970s that he has become a European, if not a world figure."--Cover

Working in Germany between the two world wars, John Heartfield (born Helmut Herzfeld, 1891–1968) developed an innovative method of appropriating and reusing photographs to powerful political effect. As a pioneer of modern photomontage, he sliced up mass media photos with his iconic scissors and then reassembled the fragments into compositions that utterly transformed the meaning of the originals. In John Heartfield and the Agitated Image, Andrés Mario Zervigón explores this crucial period in the life and work of a brilliant, radical artist whose desire to disclose the truth obscured by the mainstream press and imperial propaganda made him a de facto prosecutor of Germany’s visual culture. Zervigón charts the evolution of Heartfield’s photomontage from an act of antiwar resistance into a formalized and widely disseminated political art in the Weimar Republic. Appearing on everything from campaign posters to book covers, the photomonteur’s notorious pictures challenged well-worn assumption and correspondingly walked a dangerous tightrope over the political, social, and cultural cauldron that was interwar Germany. Zervigón explains how Heartfield’s engagement with montage arose from a broadly-shared dissatisfaction with photography’s capacity to represent the modern world. The result was likely the most important combination of avant-garde art and politics in the twentieth century. A rare look at Heartfield’s early and middle years as an artist and designer, this book provides a new understanding of photography’s role at this critical juncture in history.

This lucid and comprehensive collection of essays by an international group of scholars constitutes a photo-historical survey of select photographers who embraced National Socialism during the Third Reich. These photographers developed and implemented physiognomic and ethnographic photography, and, through a Selbstgleichschaltung (a self-co-ordination with the regime), continued to practice as photographers throughout the twelve years of the Third Reich. The volume explores, through photographic reproductions and accompanying analysis, diverse aspects of photography during the Third Reich, ranging from the influence of Modernism, the qualitative effect of propaganda photography, and the utilisation of technology such as colour film, to the photograph as ideological metaphor. With an emphasis on the idealised representation of the German body and the role of physiognomy within this representation, the book examines how select photographers created and developed a visual myth of the ‘master race’ and its antitheses under the auspices of the Nationalist Socialist state. Photography in the Third Reich approaches its historical source photographs as material culture, examining their production, construction and proliferation. This detailed and informative text will be a valuable resource not only to historians studying the Third Reich, but to scholars and students of film, history of art, politics, media studies, cultural studies and holocaust studies.

The political collages of John Heartfield (1891-1968) have earned him a reputation as one of the most innovative graphic artists of the Weimar Republic. His photomontages and book covers based on collages which had their origins in Berlin's Dada scene were directed against Fascism and made him internationally famous. Their explosive power has lost none of its impact. Heartfield was a sharp and uncompromising observer who subverted the documentary character of the press photograph. He employed his art as political propaganda, and fought against war and Fascism with gripping pictures and trenchant humour. This catalogue will include not only the working materials which reveal Heartfield's method but also his trick films, work for the theatre and book design. The original art-works and documents all derive from his personal estate in Berlin. Statements by contemporary artists formulate positions and pose questions, which Heartfield's work raises in the age of fake news. Exhibition: Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany (21.03. - 21.06.2020) / Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, The Netherlands (27.09.2020 - 03.01.2021) / Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (27.06. - 26.09.2021).