Abstract

Photographs are widely used in exhibition contexts. They can serve administrative purposes, illustrate publicity materials and be displayed as exhibits in their own right. By no means the least of their potential uses is as sources for reporting on or calling to mind temporary, site-specific, presentations. This paper will present photography’s many contexts as part of the discourse relating to the practices of the ‘Neues Ausstellen’ during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Among the subjects addressed are the needs and demands of the press of that era, the networks of involved parties and the use of photography in exhibitions, tie-in publications and the reception of the same. One of the paper’s central concerns will be the influence of the said involved parties and their strategies of showing; after all, the photographs used in exhibitions served not just documentary purposes, but were also an important vehicle of self-promotion for both curators and exhibitors.

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Rundbrief Fotografie Issues