GoSee Tip : ‘Familiarity With Things’ – Aenne Biermann, representative of 1930s avant-garde photography, on display at Museum Folkwang Essen and in a monograph by Scheidegger & Spiess
Aenne Biermann (1898–1933) is among the major names of modern photography from the 1920s to the 1930s. In contrast to photographers such as Florence Henri, Germaine Krull or Lucia Moholy, she neither had the privilege of receiving formal artistic training nor was she a guest in the avant-garde salons of larger cities – and although she only photographed over the course of a few years, she succeeded in developing a photographic style which established her within a very short time as a representative of contemporary avant-garde photography.
As an autodidact in photography, she began to document the early stages of her children’s development. From 1926, she embarked on an in-depth exploration of the creative possibilities of the medium. The ‘Neues Sehen’, or New Vision movement, with its intense contemplation of the immediate environment and the subjectivity associated with it was at the core of Aenne Biermann’s photographic work, the focus of which was on plants, objects, people, and everyday situations. By means of clear structures, precise compositions with light and contrast, and narrow image sections, she elicited a certain poetry from the motifs of her personal environment and, as she wrote in 1930, conveyed a “familiarity with things”.
During her lifetime, Aenne Biermann’s photographs were featured in all important exhibitions of the period, including the ground-breaking international exhibition of the Deutscher Werkbund Film und Foto (FiFo) in 1929. Museum Folkwang owns an extensive collection of her photographic works.
The monograph – appearing at Scheidegger & Spiess for the exhibition at Museum Folkwang in Essen – presents the oeuvre of the photographer as an example of modern trends beyond the epicenters of the avant-garde and focuses on the interweaved connections between amateur art and avant-garde photography in the 1920s as well as the self-concept of bourgeois women in relation to artistic production and individual development at that time. Still on display through 1 June, 2020, the exhibition presents 100 works which provide an overview of the short but productive work of the photographer.
The project was conceived by Simone Förster, Curator of the Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, and Thomas Seelig, Head of the Department of Photography at Museum Folkwang Essen.
CREDITS
Photographer Aenne Biermann, Porträt, 1930, Silbergelatineabzug, 23.1 x 17.8 cm, Stiftung Ann und Jürgen Wilde, München
PUBLISHING HOUSE Scheidegger Spiess
EDITORS Simone Förster & Thomas Seelig
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