:Introduction to the Online Catalogue

The online catalogue includes more than 2,300 objects associated with art photography at the turn of the last century. It presents some six hundred works from the Kunstbibliothek’s photography collection, along with about 1,700 images in German museums and publications that were tracked down in the 1980s by the photo historian Enno Kaufhold.

References to a total of three hundred magazines, monographs, and exhibition catalogues as well as fifty exhibitions provide information about the contexts in which the photographs were originally presented. The focus here is on contemporaneous publications and exhibitions in the German-speaking realm.

In addition to this, the online catalogue contains over seventy job prints, including, for instance, examples of letterhead, signets, and official papers from the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Amateur-Photographie Hamburg (Society for the Promotion of Amateur Photography), all from the collection of Ernst Juhl. The online catalog makes it possible to ascertain where a specific photograph was published or exhibited, and, conversely, to trace the items displayed in particular exhibitions and publications – thus facilitating, for the first time, comprehensive research into the history of the images, exhibitions, and publications of art photography circa 1900 in the German-speaking realm.

Remarks for Using this Catalogue

This online catalogue contains reproductions in both high-resolution color and in black and white. The color images are reserved for the holdings of the Kunstbibliothek’s photography collections, while the black-and-white images represent objects in other collections as well as those that were printed in publications.

Dates given for the Kunstbibliothek’ own objects are based on investigations undertaken within the framework of the institution’s 2013–14 research project. Information for the other objects is based on the research archive amassed by the photo historian Enno Kaufhold. Details provided for publications and group exhibitions are due in large part to his research as well.

The history of the reception of photography is in most cases presented within the discussion of motifs and only in occasional cases connected to a particular object. It is therefore generally not possible to prove definitively which print was in fact seen in a particular exhibition or served as the original for a specific publication.

The process of assigning pictorial genres and motifs to particular works was undertaken within the framework of the Kunstbibliothek’s research project. The classification system is not conceived as a conclusive compilation. Rather, it is intended to provide some initial degree of orientation for the content of the images.