Mf Kb Nackte Wahrheit PM-Engl 02052013Schr

GENERALDIREKTION Berlin, 2th May 2013 PRESSE – KOMMUNIKATION – SPONSORING PRESS RELEASE Stauffenbergstraße 41 Kunstbibliothek – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin 10785 Berlin Museum für Fotografie, Kaisersaal Jebensstr. 2, 10623 Berlin-Charlottenburg Opening times: Tue-Sun 10-18, Thu 10-20 MECHTILD KRONENBERG ABTEILUNGSLEITERIN „Die nackte Wahrheit und anderes“ − Aktfotografie um 1900 [email protected] „The Naked Truth and More Besides“ – Nude Photography around www.smb.museum 1900 Exhibition ANNE SCHÄFER-JUNKER 3 May 2013 to 25 August 2013 PRESSE Telefon: +49 30 266-42 34 02 An exhibition presented by the Kunstbibliothek – Staatliche Museen zu Telefax: +49 30 266-42 34 09 Berlin kindly supported by the Verein der Freunde des Museums für Foto- [email protected] grafie and the Richard Stury Stiftung www.smb.museum/presse Opening 2 May 2013, 7 pm Speakers Moritz Wullen Direktor der Kunstbibliothek – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Ludger Derenthal Leiter der Sammlung Fotografie, Kunstbibliothek – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin und Kurator der Ausstellung Kristina Lowis Kuratorin der Ausstellung „The Naked Truth and More Besides“ – Nude Photography around 1900 At the dawn of the last century, photographs of nudes could be found eve- rywhere. The exhibition „The Naked Truth and More Besides“ presents the astonishing diversity of photographic depictions of the disrobed human body that existed around this time. It was an age in which the foundations were laid for the development in the public domain of an extremely varied type of image, which, more than any other continues to inform the world in which we live today. Most striking of all, the photographic nude appeared as a reproducible medium – on postcards, cigarette cards, posters, in magazines and in ad- vertising, as inspiration for artists and an incentive for sportsmen, as in- structional material, and as collector’s items. From the vast array of material, it is possible to identify several distinct groups that fall under such headings as: the mass produced, visual pleasures (arcadias, eroticism, and pornography), the body in the eye of science (ethnography, motion- study photography, medicine), the cult of the body (reform movements – especially in German-speaking countries – naturism, and staged nudes from the world of sport and variety shows), and, of course, the nude in the artistic context (art academies and the Pictorialist tradition of fine-art Seite 1/5 GENERALDIREKTION prints). The most important characteristic of the image of naked people PRESSE – KOMMUNIKATION – SPONSORING during this time is the inseparability of nude photographic production and Stauffenbergstraße 41 reproduction. 10785 Berlin The trade or exchange in nude photographs was widespread across the whole of Europe. This is reflected in the exhibition, which not only features MECHTILD KRONENBERG many treasures and rare finds from the Kunstbibliothek’s own Collection ABTEILUNGSLEITERIN of Photography, but also includes important loans from several European [email protected] institutions, ranging from the Bibliothèque nationale de France to the Po- www.smb.museum lice Museum of Lower Saxony. The Exhibition ANNE SCHÄFER-JUNKER PRESSE A Commodity Market – The Machinery of the Nude Telefon: +49 30 266-42 34 02 Since the invention of photography, the unclothed human body has been Telefax: +49 30 266-42 34 09 positioned – sitting, standing and reclining – in front of the camera. Large [email protected] numbers of nude images, avidly pursued by censors, were in circulation www.smb.museum/presse as of the middle of the 19th century. By around 1900 nude photography had broken into the public sphere. Starting in 1880, photographs had be- come easier to produce and reproduce. They began to flood the market in various printed forms: alongside stereoviews, cartes de visite and single prints, nudes could now be found on postcards, trading cards, autograph cards, posters and in magazines, books and films. Nude photographs were promoted, ordered, sold and sent. They were published for a large audience under the guise of artistic or academic activity, and people’s viewing habits, their gaze on the naked body – their own or someone else’s – began to change. In this process it became clear that photography played a significant role in the marketing of the naked body, but also in people’s self-understanding. Today’s arbitrary use of scantily-clad models to advertise goods is but one phenomenon that continues what was emerging with the visual material of the turn of the 20th century. „For Artistic Purposes Only“ – Model Studies and Photographic Acad- emies Nude pictures were reaching the public as „photographs after nature.“ In the process, the artistic content or the intended use of the photographs was always emphasized. If we were to judge by the quantity of materials said to be produced solely for artists, then the largest professional group around 1900 would have been composed of them. „For artistic purposes only“ was the password to uncensored production of nude photography. For many artists, photographic depictions actually did replace calling in live models. Art academies created a reference collection with nude studies. In many cases, works of painting or sculpture can be directly traced back to a particular photograph. Taken in classrooms that tended toward sobriety, most of the poses were borrowed from the art-historical cannon. Countless Venus and Apollo figures, cherubs, Atlases, Horatii, Graces and boys in the classical style populate the portfolios of the period. A practice of child nudes developed in the slipstream of the photographic academies. Ostensibly, these were created to show the angelic innocence of children of all ages. Photographers also documented classes in studios and at academies. Thus we see photographs of entire student groups with their nude model, and there are also fine examples of the triad of artist, model and work. Seite 2/5 GENERALDIREKTION (Visual) Yearnings – Ideals from Arcadia PRESSE – KOMMUNIKATION – SPONSORING The unclothed body was first and foremost an object of erotic associa- Stauffenbergstraße 41 tions, and they were rendered by photography in more or less subtle 10785 Berlin ways. While a large audience enjoyed the Arcadian idylls of Sicily without coming into a conflict with the law, there was likely an even larger public buying the goods „under the table“ or only „per order,“ potentially becom- MECHTILD KRONENBERG ing guilty of immorality. ABTEILUNGSLEITERIN [email protected] Under Wilhelm II, male friendships were cherished as pillars of the sys- www.smb.museum tem. Homosexuality, by contrast, was the subject of heated debate, its reception mixed. With this in mind, the vast array of potentially homoerotic photographs that were produced is revealing. ANNE SCHÄFER-JUNKER PRESSE Wilhelm von Gloeden counts among the best-known practitioners of a Telefon: +49 30 266-42 34 02 kind of nude photography that gave voice to longings for an idyll that was Telefax: +49 30 266-42 34 09 generally Mediterranean or classical in nature. His photographs enjoyed [email protected] tremendous commercial success around 1900. Numerous fellow photog- www.smb.museum/presse raphers, most of them anonymous, began to photograph young and old satyrs, Ephebes, Apollos and shepherd boys and girls, staging the journey to Arcadia for the camera. Their images were published in such places as the first homoerotic magazine Der Eigene alongside poems, prose and essays. At the same time, these nude photographs were added to ethno- graphic collections (for example as Sicilian folklore), were discussed in the medical context and were used by (body) reformers to communicate an ideal. Vividly Immoral – Censored and Pornographic Photography Since the invention of photography, photographs have been produced that are erotic or pornographic in nature. Crude or more sophisticated fash- ions, fantasies, means of distribution and censorship changed depending on the period. Around 1900, censorship in Germany generally went hand in hand with the so-called Lex Heinze , a newly added paragraph that for- bade public exhibition of material classified as immoral. When enforced, the censorship effort resulted in the impounding by police of thousands of images from individual distribution businesses and studios. But in the face of the new, ever-growing production of nude photographs, the aim of gain- ing the upper hand over the flood of images was destined to fail. Material from private collections is rare today but it would have been found in a large number of ordinary households. Aficionados put together albums in which they showed their predilections using a combination of photographs, drawings or caricatures, and sometimes writing. Even the police kept an exemplary inventory of nude photography which they col- lected in albums. In Germany there remains only the album from the Po- lice Museum of Lower Saxony, whose large format, elaborately stamped leather binding, and careful arrangement of the diverse material make it clear just how significant nude photography was to the guardians of the law, too. „The photographic plate is the retina of scholars“ – The Nude Body in Sci- ence A great number of scientific fields made use of photography in their sys- tematic mapping out of the visible world. The naked body was measured, compared and assessed. Norms were defined and aberrations shown. The new, photographically mediated consciousness of physical constitu- Seite

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