Elizabeth Cronin - From Art Photography to Heimat Photography: The Austrian Landscape in the 1930s

This lecture will examine the shift that occurred in Austrian photography during the 1930s in which photographers slowly turned away from creating soft-focus pictorial views like those of Heinrich Kuehn to making straightforward and clearly focused images. These documentary-like photographs portrayed the landscape and its people in a favorable light, emphasizing the national character of the Austrian Heimat, or homeland.

The lecture will look closely at photographers Adalbert Defner, who studied with Kuehn, and Rudolf Koppitz, who taught photography at the Graphic Institute in Vienna.