Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Everyday Faces by Helmar Lerski Fotostiftung Schweiz. There can hardly be another name in the international history of photography whose work has been so frequently misunderstood and so controversially evaluated as that of Helmar Lerski (1871-1956). "In every human being there is everything; the question is only what the light falls on". Guided by this conviction, Lerski took portraits that did not primarily strive for likeness but which left scope for the viewer's imagination, thus laying himself open to the criticism of betraying the veracity of the photographic image. Today, Lerski who was born in Strasbourg in 1871 as Israel Schmuklerski and whose hometown was Zurich, is among the international classic photographers in the history of the medium. The Schmuklerski family settled in Zurich in 1876. Helmar's father, a small-time textile dealer, was "the first Polish Jew" to be granted the civil rights of the City of Zurich. In 1888, Lerski abandoned the banking career for which he was designated and immigrated to the USA, where he earned his living as an actor. It was not until 1910, when he was 39, that he became involved with photography through his wife, an actress from a photographer's family. His unusual portraits, which worked with lighting effects, attracted considerable attention in the USA. In 1915 Lerski returned to Europe and started a career in cinematography. For over ten years, he worked as a cameraman, lighting technician and expert on special effects for numerous expressionistic silent films in Berlin, among others Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" (1925/26). At the end of the 1920s, he turned his attention once again to portrait photography and took part in the avant-garde movement that was trying to effect radical changes in the language of the photographic image. At the legendary Werkbund exhibition "Film und Foto" (1929), at which the New Photography made its greatest appearance at first in Stuttgart and subsequently in Zurich, Lerski - who had in the meantime become the best-known portrait photographer of his time - was well represented with 15 photographs. But Lerski's pictures were only partly in line with the maxims of the New Photography, and they questioned the validity of pure objectivity. The distinguishing characteristics of his portraits included a theatrical-expressionistic, sometimes dramatic use of lighting inspired by the silent film. Although his close-up photographs captured the essential features of a face - eyes, nose and mouth -, his primary concern was not individual appearance or superficial likeness but the deeper inner potential: he emphasised the changeability, the different faces of an individual. Lerski, who sympathised with the political left wing, thereby infiltrated the photography of types that was practised (and not infrequently misused for racist purposes) by many of Lerski's contemporaries. In his book " Köpfe des Alltags" (1931), a milestone in the history of photographic books, Lerski clearly expressed his convictions: he showed portraits of anonymous people from the underclass of the Berlin society, presenting them as theatrical figures so that professional titles such as "chamber maid", "beggar" or "textile worker" appeared as arbitrarily applied roles. Thus his photographs may be interpreted as an important opposite standpoint to the work of August Sander, who was at the same time working on his project "Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts" - that large-scale attempt at a social localisation of various representatives of the Weimar society. But Helmar Lerski's attitude was at its most radical in his work entitled "Metamorphosis". This was completed within a few months at the beginning of 1936 in Palestine, to where Lerski and his second wife Anneliese had immigrated in 1932. In "Verwandlungen durch Licht" (this is the second title for this work), Lerski carried his theatrical talent to extremes. With the help of up to 16 mirrors and filters, he directed the natural light of the sun in constant new variations and refractions onto his model, the Bernese-born, at the time out-of-work structural draughtsman and light athlete Leo Uschatz. Thus he achieved, in a series of over 140 close-ups "hundreds of different faces, including that of a hero, a prophet, a peasant, a dying soldier, an old woman and a monk from one single original face" (Siegfried Kracauer). According to Lerski, these pictures were intended to provide proof "that the lens does not have to be objective, that the photographer can, with the help of light, work freely, characterise freely, according to his inner face." Contrary to the conventional idea of the portrait as an expression of human identity, Lerski used the human face as a projection surface for the figures of his imagination. We are only just becoming aware of the modernity of this provocative series of photographs. After the war, Helmar Lerski returned to Zurich with his wife and started working again on film projects. Various attempts at publishing his main work "Metamorphosis" failed - despite the support of renowned art historians such as Konrad Farner who compared Lerski's importance with that of Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen and Paul Strand. Today, the professional world is agreed that Helmar Lerski was among the important innovators of 20th century photography. But in Switzerland, Lerski's home, his name is barely known to the wider public. With the exhibition borrowed from the photographic collection at the Folkwang Museum in Essen, the Fotostiftung Schweiz pays homage to a classical figure of photography who has been most unjustifiably suppressed and forgotten. Everyday Faces by Helmar Lerski. 10 minutes walking distance. ALBERTINA Daily | 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. ALBERTINA MODERN Daily | 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. In order to ensure the safety of all visitors and employees, we ask you to wear FFP2-masks and to keep a distance of two meters to persons from another household. Rules for your Museum Visit. Jahrespartner. Partner. These include essential cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site, as well as others that are used only for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, not all functions of the website may be available. These include essential cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site, as well as others that are used only for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, not all functions of the website may be available. Necessary Functional Statistics Marketing External Media. To load this element, it is required to consent to the following cookie category: . Everyday Faces by Helmar Lerski. Helmar Lerski is another arts figure (there are many) history has not been kind to. Virtually unknown today, he nevertheless deserves a place in the history of photography, especially portraiture, by virtue of his innovative techniques and large-scale projects. Lerski came to the US from Switzerland for an acting career. At the relatively late age of forty (1911) he took up photography. His versatile career included time spent teaching photography at the university level, stints as a movie cameraman (including a credit on Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”), work as a documentary film maker, and major efforts as a portraitist. Most of his career in the 1930s and ‘40s was spent in Palestine undertaking broad, ambitious photographic projects very similar in scope to August Sander’s “Man in the Twentieth Century”. The titles of these series, (“Everyday Faces”, “Jewish Faces” “Arabic Faces”, “Human Hands”) reveal his interests. Lerski wrote that “in every human being there is everything; the question is only what the light falls on.” In Lerski’s case these are more than vague, new-ageish words, as they are an accurate pointer to his working methods in portraiture. Lerski developed an approach to lighting that used various mirrors to focus light on the face of his subject; I have no idea if anyone alive today understands his techniques well enough to replicate them. The result was a much more flexible form of lighting than the standard studio practice of his day or ours. Light falls on the face from multiple directions. He could place highlights and shadows wherever he wanted them, thus adding further dimensions to the sculptural aspects of the human face. This sounds like a recipe for a visual mess if not done well, but Lerski mastered his method to the point that we don’t notice the technique and instead concentrate on the expressive qualities of the resulting portraits. They are what we today would term “dramatic”. Typically the face occupies the full frame. His subjects do not smile. They more often look into space, not the camera. But it is the variations of light intensity on the surface of a face that make a portrait so compelling. Testimony to the effectiveness of his style is a series of almost 200 images of the same man, each lit differently and each a different interpretation of this subject whose identity is a mystery today. Eighteen of these photographs are included in this exhibition, and you will relish studying them. We also see a generous number of portraits of Jews, Arabs, various “everyday” personalities, as well as a selection of photographs of hands, which are overshadowed by the portraits. If you were ever compelled to turn a camera towards a living person, or even if you just enjoy exploring the fascinating variations of the human face, this exhibition is a must, a welcome change of pace from the dead-pan portraiture with flat lighting so popular in art photography today.