Siegfried Kracauer. Photographic Archive
Presentation with editor Maria Zinfert and translator Michael Turnbull
The photography book "Kracauer. Photographic Archive" is a collection of previously unpublished photographic material from the estate of the sociologist, journalist and film theorist Siegfried Kracauer. Portrait, city and landscape photographs give insights into the life of the writer and his wife Elisabeth, known as Lili – a life marked by flight and exile. The photographic portraits of Kracauer from the 1930s on were all taken by his wife, while prints, contact sheets, rolls of film and written material reveal that Kracauer took pictures himself, too. Neither Kracauer nor his wife were professional photographers, yet their photos testify to the aesthetic and technical achievements of their collaborative photographic practice: the eye of the great photography theorist combined with that of the art historian and observant, self-taught photographer Lili Kracauer.
The book’s translator, Michael Turnbull, and it’s editor, Maria Zinfert, introduce this commented, representative selection of photographs from the estates of Siegfried and Lili Kracauer that makes the material available to a wider public for the first time. Among other things, the photographs show Siegfried Kracauer as a practical theoretician of the reproduced image, and they subtly and powerfully underline the role of the Kracauers’ ongoing marital conversation in the development of Siegfried Kracuaer’s published work.
Presentation in english
Maria Zinfert (Hg.)
Siegfried Kracauer. Photographic Archive
Diaphanes 2014
