(Eng)
This photographic series consist of buildings built during the national socialist era in Dusseldorf and photographed with my great grandfather’s lens mounted on a modern large format (8x10 inch) camera. Five years ago I inherited a camera set originally belonging to my great grandfather, Enzo Takahashi, who bought it in America around 1920. He emigrated to California at the end of the 19th century as a migrant worker. Around this time, especially in America, an art movement, “Photo-pictorialism” (ca 1880s – 1940s) began among photographers who wanted to lift photography’s status to a “fine art” by making photographs similar to impressionist paintings. These photographs were often blurred or out of focus, evoking “impressionistic” emotions and atmosphere. The photographers employed different materials, ingredients and techniques in order to achieve this effect, such as the soft-focus lens. My great grandfather's lens is a soft-focus lens made around 1910. The more opened the aperture is, the less sharp the fringe of the image becomes, leaving only the centre sharp, unlike modern lenses made today. In Germany, during the national socialist era, only certain styles of art were considered suitable by the National Socialist Party. Impressionism was not one of them. The buildings in my photographs were often repaired and retouched after the WWII, and perhaps not the whole structures retain their original character. Although National Socialism and Photopictorialism may sound like an odd combination, they existed at the same time.