Vorwärts! (Go Forward!)

[hockeyhenker]

spastie

[xXAthmosXx]

Also ich finde das ja komplett blödsinnig XP

[slash667]

This was hardly Leipzig at all, but Potsdam, Sansoucci, and the New Palais!

[sophievogt]

You're quite right. Wassmann spent considerable time in Potsdam and was quite intrigued with the era of Frederick the Great. There are also a large number of images here from Naumburg, Weimar, Quedlinburg and Wittenburg. Only a handful are from his native Leipzig.

[Radameez]

Well then there is that...

[hirambc]

Muy interesantes las fotos de Wassmann. Deberian ver las de Alvarez Bravo.

[Radameez]

Subject wise I'd agree but Atget used a wooden bellows camera which made his PAris photos feel somewhat surreal or alomst - dare I say it - staged. Wassmann seems to prefer the stark devoid of human interaction

[sophievogt]

You've struck on the subject of much debate in academic circles. Personally, I'm not sure if Wassmann consciously preferred a less humanistic approach, so much as he simple hadn't yet developed his modernist aesthetic to this level. Remember, both Atget, and Manuel Alvarez Bravo, who the next writer mentions, came a full generation later.

[Radameez]

Very cool. Was this all from Leipzig?

[sophievogt]

Wassmann travelled extensively throughout eastern Germany in the 1890s, both privately and in his role as sewerage engineer. Despite, or perhaps because of the rise of the industrial landscape, Wassmann favoured towns left largely untouched by the modern world, much as Eugene Atget would in later years in and around Paris. Towns and villages Wassmann felt a close affinity with include Potsdam, Naumburg, Weimar, Quedlinburg and Wittenburg, as well as his native Leipzig.