These photographs were mounted on card for ease of use, which has largely protected them right up to the present day. Any damage (tears and blemishes) to the preserved photographic templates is mainly confined to the edges, while the images themselves are unscathed. These templates continued to be used as everyday teaching aids until the end of the 1930s. They were kept in the institution’s libraries to be borrowed by the studios. New acquisitions were added to the collection, while some images suffered from wear and tear and were discarded. The collection fell out of use in the 1930s, but fortunately was not lost. Indeed, it is providential that the photographs remained virtually unused for several decades – they show some signs of wear from their former lives, but largely remain in good or very good condition.
The value of what were once common items has risen substantially with their increasing rarity. In the days when the photographs were used as templates, all that mattered was the subject depicted. No attention was paid the photographer or any aesthetic qualities – they were seen purely as teaching aids. Now the place of photography within the visual arts has changed dramatically. Photography is an art form in its own right and the names of prominent photographers are deemed worthy of attention.
The most common subjects in these images include art reproductions, landscapes, nature studies (water, clouds, trees, plants, rocks, etc.), architecture, still lifes (fruit, glass, etc.), portraits, genre scenes/tableaux vivants, nudes, animal studies, and depictions of historical scenes and the Orient. The template studies, known in France as “études d’après nature”, were created by well-known European and American photographers such as Fratelli Alinari, Ottomar Anschütz, Karl Blossfeldt, Adolphe Braun, Eugène Cuvelier, Georg Maria Eckert, Constant Famin, Wilhelm von Gloeden, Albert Renger Patzsch, Jakob August Lorent, Gustave le Gray, James Robertson, Henry Peach Robinson, F. Albert Schwartz, Giorgio Sommer or Carleton Watkins.
An exhibition organized by the Münchner Stadtmuseum in cooperation with the Universität der Künste Berlin and the Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
This exhibition was developed as part of the Münchner Stadtmuseum’s Photography Collection and will be shown in Munich and Berlin. It will move to the Berlin Museum of Photography in August 2020 at the personal request of the museum’s director, Ludger Derenthal.
Generous funding from the “Vernetzen – Erschließen – Forschen. Allianz für universitäre Sammlungen” program of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), to the Berlin University of Arts archives has enabled the entire contents of this extensive collection to be fully inventoried and digitally scanned, and photographers and photographic techniques to be identified. It will soon be possible to view the entire collection and its inventory online. The project partners are the Münchner Stadtmuseum and the Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin.
A comprehensive exhibition publication edited by Ulrich Pohlmann, Dietmar Schenk and Anastasia Dittmann in cooperation with Daria Bona and Sophie-Charlotte Opitz has been published by Snoeck Verlag, Cologne. It features 350 illustrations on 400 pages with essays by Ludger Derenthal, Monika Faber, Antje Kalcher, Mei-Hau Kunzi, Hubert Locher, Kristina Lowis, Paul Mellenthin, Sabina Mlodzianowski, Angela Nikolai, Helena Perez Gallardo, Dorothea Peters, Herbert Rott, Bernd Stiegler, Herta Wolf along with the editors. Available in the museum for € 39.80.
Curator of the exhibition: Dr Ulrich Pohlmann, Photography Collection