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Indepth Arts News:
"Loheland Photography Workshop: Picturing a New Generation of Females"
2007-04-25 until 2007-07-09
Bauhaus Archiv, Museum fuer Gestaltung
Berlin, ,
DE Germany
In 1919, the same year that the Bauhaus was founded, Louise Langgaard and Hedwig von Rohden established the Loheland Colony for the purpose of training girls and young women to become teachers of physical education – a career field that was just developing at the time and offered women the opportunity to earn an independent living. The Loheland students also had access to a variety of workshops run by the school and were able to complete a trade apprenticeship. The school quickly earned a reputation as one of the leading educational institutions for women in Germany; its products were shown at many major venues, including the Weissenhof Exhibition in 1927 and the Werkbund show in Paris in 1930.
Advertising for the school and products of Loheland was highly professional and adhered to a clear strategy: 'Our advertising efforts must be very energetic and radical, if we are to achieve pecuniary success.' (Hedwig von Rhoden) To a degree that was unparalleled by other institutions, Loheland placed an emphasis on the use of photography for this purpose. Under the direction of Valerie Wizlsperger, the photography workshop produced efficacious images of classroom activities and hand-crafted objects that were disseminated throughout Germany, making the excellent quality of Loheland products recognisable and familiar to a wide public. These photographs are worthy of comparison with the work of acclaimed masters such as Albert Renger-Patzsch and Hans Finsler.
Soon after the colony was established, Loheland gained a wide reputation for its expressive dance performances, which toured through major cities across Germany. The photographic series created in conjunction with these dances number among the most important documentations of expressive dance from this era.
Loheland played another significant role in the history of photography by providing an essential stimulus for the photograms of László Moholy-Nagy. The work of Bertha Günther, an early Loheland student who created photograms of natural objects, inspired the Bauhaus master to pursue this method of cameraless photography. The complete collection of these unusual artworks will be shown for the first time in this exhibition.
The exhibition was organised in collaboration with the Loheland Stiftung and is accompanied by a catalogue publication.
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