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Germaine Krull (1897-1985)
led an extraordinary life that spanned nine decades and four continents.
She witnessed many of the high points of Modernism and recorded some of
the major upheavals of the twentieth century. Her photographs include avant-garde
montages, ironic studies of female nudes, press propaganda shots, magazine
picture stories, and some of the most successful commercial and fashion
images of her day. Her political commitments led her from Communist allegiance
to incarceration in Russia as a counter-revolutionary, to support of the
Free French cause against Hitler, to ownership of the Oriental Hotel in
Bangkok, to a final reclusive existence among Tibetan monks in India. Any understanding of Germaine Krull's photographic production must take into account her fiercely individualistic political and professional beliefs. Her work and life were inextricably intertwined, and photography allowed her to respond to the cultures she moved through. Krull was one of the most influential modern photographers of the interwar years, and almost single-handedly introduced German New Vision photography to France. Yet she refused to acknowledge a distinction between avant-garde and commercial practice. Her broad photographic activities were not exceptions; rather, they constituted a normal pattern for photographers of her time. Krull's work falls into three sections that not only mirror the broad geographical and chronological divisions, but also incorporate the large issues with which she grappled as she constantly renegotiated her position regarding Modernism. Her career divides logically into three sections -- Germany and Russia from 1915 to 1925, Holland and France from 1925 to 1940, and Africa and Asia from 1940 until the end of her life. These divisions are philosophical divisions as well. Krull reacted to and used her photographs to shape three of the most exciting and troubling developments of her era -- the growing equality of women, the expansion of industrialization, and the decline of colonialism. In her early work, she commented on and eventually transformed representations of the interwar New Woman. As a young woman in Munich, she adopted the prevailing style of Pictorialism. Then, in Berlin, she adopted the Freïkorperkultur of carefree Weimar society, but her nudes mocked as well as frolicked within the frames of the photographs. |
| In France
and Holland, in her most famous machine and urban images, Krull skillfully
combined abstraction, montage, and selective representation in a commentary
on changing attitudes toward the machine age. Krull's MÈtal series
of industrial details abstracted and celebrated industrial forms in a manner
that transformed the work of her French avant-garde contemporaries. Her
organization of images into disjunctive patterns owed much to Russian film
montage, and created an uneasy dance with industry. Finally, her street
photography in Paris melded the angles of German photography with a humanistic
look at street life. These pictures provided a model for French interwar
magazine photography in journals such as Vu, the important predecessor
to Life magazine. In her later, non-European work, Krull grappled with the evolving yet still enduring definitions of colonialism, as European nations and the non-European world transformed themselves during and after World War II. She condensed her abstracted simplicity to serve political causes, returning to a more transparent documentary style to reinforce her vision of the non-Western world. Krull's writings from these years reveal her continuing beliefs in individual and antitotalitarian rights. Krull left France in 1940 because of the double tragedies of the Hitler regime and the Vichy government's capitulation to Germany. She joined up with the Free French in Africa, directing de Gaulle's photographic information service. She left Europe again in 1945. She decided to settle in Thailand -- becoming owner/manager of Bangkok's Oriental Hotel -- partly because of the country's long tradition of fierce independence. Her support for the Dalai Lama and exiled Tibetan Buddhists in India forms part of the same political pattern. Krull followed no single formal path or stylistic fashion; she created her own. Jean Cocteau's description of her as a "reforming mirror" is a powerful one. Even as she responded to the stylistic dictates of each decade of her career, she made individual choices in response to the cultures she participated in, eventually both reflecting and reforming them. Kim Sichel Guest Curator |
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Germaine Krull: Photographer of Modernity has been organized by the Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany. |
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Copyright © 1996-2008 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 
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