Los 4206

Jacobi, Lotte
(1896-1990)Photogenic abstraction

Aus dem Katalog
Fotografie des 19. – 21. Jahrhunderts
Auktionsdatum 5.6.2024

Photogenic abstraction. Circa 1950. Vintage gelatin silver print. 19,7 x 24,6 cm. Photographer's Photogenics /copyright stamp on the verso, hinge-mounted in upper corners to mat.

Encouraged by Leo Katz, in the early 1940s Lotte Jacobi began experimenting with making photographs without a camera. It was Katz who coined the term "Photogenics" for these renditions of paths of light. To him these images were true "original" art objects, devoid of the reproducible nature of normal photographs. Jacobi's photogenics follow the new concepts in the visual arts of the time. They were included in such avantgarde exhibitions as In and Out of Focus in 1948 and Abstraction in Photography in 1951, both at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as well as in the second Subjektive Fotografie exhibition in 1954, in Saarbrücken. – A few minimal nicks in edges, otherwise in near excellent condition.

Provenance: Christie's. Light, Volume and Form: Photographs from the Shalom Shpilman Collection, May 24-June 2, 2016, lot 85.

Lit.: Marion Beckers/Elisabeth Moortgat. Atelier Lotte Jacobi - Berlin, New York. Berlin 1997. ill. pp. 191-192 (similar photogenics).