‘Photo‐Inflation’: Image Profusion in German Photography, 1925–1945

Abstract

This article examines ways in which the question of image profusion occupied photography circles in interwar Germany, analysing in particular decisions to reject, glorify, or tame photography's evident abundance. While art photography around 1900 sought to legitimate its standing through rarity, during the late 1920s the New Objectivity and New Vision movements instead trumpeted quantity as the basis of their aesthetic claims. Their success quickly prompted a wave of criticism summed up by the term ‘photo‐inflation’: a deregulated ‘wastefulness’ in imagery that threatened in the longer run man's very critical and perceptual faculties. In the wake of this articulation of threat, work in series became one possible way to domesticate image profusion, to accept its inevitability while giving it a framework. Pushing further, the creation of archives, especially in collective undertakings, seemed to regulate the problem. Defended first by the left as a means to overcome capitalist structures of competition, this discourse of collective effort was soon co‐opted by the National Socialists. In the process, a rhetoric of common effort became reconciled with an emphasis on elites and hierarchical formations – for example, in juried competitions or expert advice columns – in which ‘great photographers’ were made into ‘guides’ for the limitless mass of amateurs.

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