LORE KRUGER – A SUITCASE FULL OF PICTURES
2015-01-26Lore Krüger’s photographs are strongly influenced by the “New Seeing,” a movement that emerged within the Bauhaus context, but also by other artistic movements such as Cubism, Dadaism, and Surrealism. She was among the Paris artists who sought to expand the visual language of photography from a purely reproductive to a productive medium. In Paris, Lore Krüger studied with the great photographer and Bauhaus graduate Florence Henri, and it was there that she acquired her photographic skills and developed her free, experimental approach to the medium. She conducted darkroom experiments with the techniques of montage, the photogram, and multiple exposure. She soon moved away from the pure, aesthetic studio photography of her teacher and turned her attention toward real life on the street. This led to her series “Gitans” on the pilgrimage site Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and to sociological reportage photography on provincial life, workers, and the bourgeoisie in France.
Not muse or model but artist: Lore Krüger is representative of the new emancipated women of the avant-garde of the 1930s and 40s. As a photographer, she ranks among the pioneering women artists of her time, including Sonia Delaunay, Hannah Höch, Florence Henri, and Claude Cahun. Her politicization through events in Germany and her experiences in exile contributed further to her development. She engaged in intense discussion with the intellectuals of the time—Anna Seghers, László Radványi, Walter Benjamin, and Alfred Kantorowicz. And in New York, she was actively involved in the founding of the anti-fascist exile newspaper “The German American,” which published the work of numerous famous writers.
Opposite – Portrait, 1938
Exhibition runs through to April 10th, 2015
C/O Berlin Foundation
Amerika Haus
Hardenbergstr 22-24
10623 Berlin
