- c/o Aberystwyth University
School of Art
Buarth Mawr
Aberystwyth
United Kingdom
SY23 1NG
http://www.photoradical.info/
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Chris Webster
Aberystwyth University, School of Art, Faculty Member
- Fine Art Photography, History of photography, Visual Studies, Art, Art History, History, and 36 morePolitical Science, Anthropology, Magic and the Occult (Anthropology Of Religion), Esotericism (Anthropology), Western Esotericism (Anthropology), Occultism, Physiognomy, Monism, National Socialism, Nationalism, National Identity, Nazi Germany, Hitler, Popular Culture, Evil, Myth, Memory, Cultural History, Intellectual History, The Holocaust, The Third Reich, The Ideology of National Socialism and the Circulation of National Socialist Ideas In Europe, German Nationalism, Irish Nationalism, Nazism, Fascism, Germany, Weimar, Mythology, Symbolism, Ritual, Propaganda, Antisemitism, Memory Studies, Völkisch movement, and völkischer Nationalismusedit
- I studied photography and photo-history as an undergraduate and postgraduate in South Africa and Wales. As a creative photographer I have had many national and international exh... moreI studied photography and photo-history as an undergraduate and postgraduate in South Africa and Wales. As a creative photographer I have had many national and international exhibitions and have also exhibited alongside artists such as Chuck Close, Sally Mann and Dan Estabrook. In photo-history I am engaged with research on areas relating to aesthetics, politics, and esotericism on photographic practices. My current research is focussed on the work of 'völkisch' German and Dutch photographers of the 1930s and 1940s. I am currently the editor of the book 'Photography in the Third Reich: Art, Physiognomy and Propaganda' (Bloomsbury, 2019). I am also writing a book 'A Radical Tradition' (2019). This book (to accompany a touring exhibition of the same name that I am curating) will examine how, developing on from the paradigms developed in the Weimar period, specific aspects of German 'völkisch' photography were used as a tool for an increasingly identitarian, anti-globalist, ideological position. This work was constructed and presented, through a mixture of photographic aesthetics, physiognomy and a visual representation of Radical Traditionalism, in order to help popularise an ideological image of the German peasant. Furthermore, this ‘revolt against the modern’ is also interesting in relation to the contemporary situation as the modern world becomes ever more neo-liberalist and globalist.edit
This lucid and comprehensive collection of essays by an international group of scholars constitutes a photo-historical survey of select photographers who embraced National Socialism during the Third Reich. These photographers developed... more
This lucid and comprehensive collection of essays by an international group of scholars constitutes a photo-historical survey of select photographers who embraced National Socialism during the Third Reich. These photographers developed and implemented physiognomic and ethnographic photography, and, through a Selbstgleichschaltung (a self-co-ordination with the regime), continued to practice as photographers throughout the twelve years of the Third Reich.
The volume explores, through photographic reproductions and accompanying analysis, diverse aspects of photography during the Third Reich, ranging from the influence of Modernism, the qualitative effect of propaganda photography, and the utilisation of technology such as colour film, to the photograph as ideological metaphor. With an emphasis on the idealised representation of the German body and the role of physiognomy within this representation, the book examines how select photographers created and developed a visual myth of the ‘master race’ and its antitheses under the auspices of the Nationalist Socialist state. Photography in the Third Reich approaches its historical source photographs as material culture, examining their production, construction and proliferation. This detailed and informative text will be a valuable resource not only to historians studying the Third Reich, but to scholars and students of film, history of art, politics, media studies, cultural studies and holocaust studies.
Published by OpenBookPublishers
The volume explores, through photographic reproductions and accompanying analysis, diverse aspects of photography during the Third Reich, ranging from the influence of Modernism, the qualitative effect of propaganda photography, and the utilisation of technology such as colour film, to the photograph as ideological metaphor. With an emphasis on the idealised representation of the German body and the role of physiognomy within this representation, the book examines how select photographers created and developed a visual myth of the ‘master race’ and its antitheses under the auspices of the Nationalist Socialist state. Photography in the Third Reich approaches its historical source photographs as material culture, examining their production, construction and proliferation. This detailed and informative text will be a valuable resource not only to historians studying the Third Reich, but to scholars and students of film, history of art, politics, media studies, cultural studies and holocaust studies.
Published by OpenBookPublishers
ERICH RETZLAFF (1899-1993) is a name almost forgotten in the history of photography, yet, in the early twentieth century, Retzlaff was a prolific and celebrated photographer with several major volumes of his photographs published between... more
ERICH RETZLAFF (1899-1993) is a name almost forgotten in the history of photography, yet, in the early twentieth century, Retzlaff was a prolific and celebrated photographer with several major volumes of his photographs published between the two world wars. In addition to his black and white studies of German workers, landscapes and peasants, Retzlaff was one of the first photographers to use the revolutionary 'Agfacolor Neu' colour film introduced in Germany in October 1936. Focusing on his photographic output from the turbulent years between the nadir of the Weimar republic and the downfall of the Third Reich, this book (to accompany the exhibition of the same name) examines Retzlaff’s work as part of a visual discourse that emerged from an intellectual milieu deeply affected by the (occult) parascience of physiognomy. Ideological as his work was, Retzlaff's photographs are significant as cultural artifacts from a pivotal era of social, political, and economic change in German history. Along with Christopher Webster van Tonder’s text the catalogue contains an introduction by Rolf Sachsse, and an essay by Wolfgang Brückle.
Research Interests:
Erich Retzlaff (1899-1993) travelled extensively inside and outside the borders of the Third Reich during the late 1930s and 1940s. Using innovative colour photography and his technical and aesthetic ability, Retzlaff set out to create a... more
Erich Retzlaff (1899-1993) travelled extensively inside and outside the borders of the Third Reich during the late 1930s and 1940s. Using innovative colour photography and his technical and aesthetic ability, Retzlaff set out to create a geographic physiognomy, a visual manifestation of Germanic autarky in both the Reich itself and also Germany’s pan-regions. His work was reproduced in ‘coffee table’ books as well as journals, magazines and propaganda publications. This paper examines Retzlaff's travel photography in the Balkans during the 1940s.
Research Interests:
As a form of representation of external reality the photograph in its colonial context played a powerful role in helping to establish concepts of order and interpretations of an alien environment. This essay is focused on the... more
As a form of representation of external reality the photograph in its colonial context played a powerful role in helping to establish concepts of order and interpretations of an alien environment. This essay is focused on the carte-de-visite and cabinet portrait photographs from Cape Town, taken by four photographers - Wilhelm Hermann (1841 - 1916), David McKenzie Selkirk (1829 - 1904) and his partner William Lawrence (1835 - 1905) and Samuel Baylis Barnard (1841 - 1916). These photographers produced commercial portraits and also shared work for Dr Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek (1827 - 1875). Bleek, a Berlin born, philologist and student of the indigenous southern African peoples, commissioned anthropometric type images to be made of prisoners from the Breakwater gaol in Cape Town.
Research Interests:
In 1878 a correspondence was begun between Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) and Thomas Hall Caine (1853-1931) regarding the sale of the painting ‘Dante’s dream at the time of the death of Beatrice’ to the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.... more
In 1878 a correspondence was begun between Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) and Thomas Hall Caine (1853-1931) regarding the sale of the painting ‘Dante’s dream at the time of the death of Beatrice’ to the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. The sale of this painting is chiefly interesting in that much of the correspondence between Rossetti and Caine, during the period late 1880 to autumn 1881, is largely unresearched and these letters (part of the Hall Caine bequest, and housed at the Manx National Heritage Library, Douglas, Isle of Man) contain details of the process of this sale.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Exhibition of work from 64 artists from UK, Ireland, Australia, Argentina, Jordan, France and Spain. The Exhibition incorporated examples of different forms or lithography including stone, aluminium and zinc plate, photoplate and... more
Exhibition of work from 64 artists from UK, Ireland, Australia, Argentina, Jordan, France and Spain. The Exhibition incorporated examples of different forms or lithography including stone, aluminium and zinc plate, photoplate and waterless lithography. An accompanying catalogue (ISBN 978 1 899095 25 4) and website were produced for these exhibitions. numberexhibits: 96 A touring exhibition (including the prestigious Bankside Gallery in London)with accompanying catalgoue of lithographic artworks numberexhibits: 4