Leopold Museum surveys New Objectivity photography

A new exhibition at Vienna’s Leopold Museum presents 219 works by 22 women and 34 men photographers who sought to record the visible world with precision after the First World War. The show opens on Friday, ORF reports.

The war’s effects remained strongly present in the 1920s, said Hans-Michael Koetzle, a member of the curatorial team. The photographers responded by documenting hardship as well as everyday life. New Objectivity photography was not limited to precise product images but also had a social and human dimension, he said.

The exhibition’s opening section includes photographs of people living in precarious conditions. The Leica, the first compact camera produced in series, was introduced in 1925 and made rapid sequences and snapshots possible. Edith Suschitzky, later known as Tudor-Hart, documented life on the streets. August Sander, who worked in Cologne, also photographed people during a visit to Vienna shortly after the global economic crisis. His images of war invalids are among the exhibition’s rarities, the organisers said.

Thirteen further sections explore themes including the “New Woman” in front of and behind the camera, nude photography, fashion, industry, architecture and advertising. The exhibition’s central image is Sander’s portrait of a young woman with short hair, fashionable clothes and a cigarette, looking confidently at the camera.

After the First World War, women had won the right to vote and were demanding a role in political and social life, curator Aline Marion Steinwender said. Their changing status was also reflected in their appearance. Women photographers were especially suited to portraying the “New Woman”, she said, because they were themselves examples of this new identity.

Photographers also explored new approaches to nude imagery, from intimate portraits to expressive movement and revealing compositions. Trude Fleischmann’s photograph of dancer Claire Bauroff was intended as an advertisement for a Berlin variety theatre but was seized for “indecency” and caused a scandal.

Photography replaced graphic illustration in fashion, while companies increasingly commissioned young photographers from around 1925. Images showed not only products but also factories, machinery and manufacturing processes. Architects also hired photographers to document new buildings, and photography became an established advertising medium.

The exhibition, “Neu.Sachlich. Fotografie der 1920er und 1930er”, runs until 28 February 2027. The museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., except Tuesdays. The rise of the Nazis, and the persecution, expulsion and murder of Jewish artists, abruptly ended New Objectivity modernism. The exhibition also examines how its visual language was later used for propaganda and how some of its practitioners accommodated themselves to the regime.