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Indepth Arts News:
"Bernatzik - Africa: Vintage Photographs by Hugo A. Bernatzik"
2004-04-16 until 2004-06-05
Throckmorton Fine Art
New York, NY,
USA United States of America
Throckmorton Fine Art is pleased to announce our upcoming photography exhibition,
BERNATZIK - Africa. This very rare selection of images will be the first in a series of
exhibitions planned over the next several years of an extraordinary body of images from
Africa, Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. In this first installment we will see stunning
images that reveal Central Africa and her people as they are captured through the lens
of Bernatzik.
Hugo A. Bernatzik (1897-1953) abandoned his medical studies at the University of Vienna
in the early 1920's and sought adventure in Spain and northwest Africa. He immediately
became enthralled in the peoples and cultures he encountered. Upon his return he
enrolled in the philosophy department of the University of Vienna to continue his studies
in the areas of ethnology, psychology, and anthropology. In 1925, he traveled to Egypt
and Upper Sudan where he began seriously photographing people in their traditional
environment. Subsequent extended trips throughout Africa, Southeast Asia, and the
South Pacific provide us with an incredible early look at the many people and places he
encountered. He fell ill on his last trip to Morocco and died on March 9, 1953 from a
tropical disease, at the age of fifty-six.
The vast, open space of southern Sudan was, in 1927, one of the most remote places in
Africa. Situated at the confluence of several great rivers, the land was a sea of swamps
and grasses, expanding and contracting with the seasonal rains. It was a land far from
colonial administrative centers and only reasonably accessible by the occasional river
steamer. Bernatzik came to this region to hunt the game that still abounded, and much
more importantly, to photograph and document the many different peoples who
inhabited the area. His journals indicate that as he began to lose interest in the search
for animals he further developed his talents for capturing images of the people whom he
encountered.
The inhospitable nature of the environment also reflected the difficulty in photographing
the inhabitants. Historically, these people were fiercely independent, suspicious of
outsiders and prone to skirmishes and warfare, either amongst their own ethnic groups, or
with outsiders, indigenous or European. Bernatzik found it hard to gain the trust and
confidence of his subjects, oftentimes having to snap shots surreptitiously, or resorting to
making payments of trade goods to local chiefs, which enabled him to shoot within the
local communities. He was adept at seizing any opportunity to photograph something
interesting.
IMAGE
Hugo A. Bernatzik
A warrior practicing archery, Eastern Jur, 1927
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