Immagine di una fabbrica [Pictures of a Factory]. Photographs by Kurt Blum. Text by Michele Parrella. Fretz & Wasmuth Editore, Zurigo, 1959 [reprinted in German edition, 1960]. 102 pp. Quarto. First edition, first printing. Hardbound with cloth spine. No jacket as issued. Gravure reproductions. (Text in Italian)
Blum was the subject of a 2012 retrospective at the Swiss Foundation for Photography . Immagine di una fabbrica is included in 802 Photo Books. A selection from the M+M. Auer collection
"Kurt Blum (1922-2005), who was born in Berne, was one of the outstanding Swiss
photographers of the post-war era. In addition to numerous stories for illustrated
magazines, as of the 1950s he also did free artistic and experimental works which were
presented to a wider public in exhibitions and publications. The focal points of his oeuvre were
the artists’ portraits he took as of the late 1940s, larger work groups on the themes of dance
and opera, and an intense involvement through photography and film with the world of industry
and labor. Blum always regarded himself as an artist, however, and strove for photography to
be recognized as an independent art medium. Above and beyond the documentary aspect, he
sought subjective expressiveness, the atmospherically dense moment, the consciously
composed photographic print. Blum thus belonged to the avant-garde of Swiss photography, so
it is not surprising that he also played a role in the 'subjective photography' circle around Otto
Steinert in Germany in the early 1950s....Kurt Blum worked for large industrial companies in northern Italy, leading
in 1959 to the book Pictures of a factory (German title Lebendiger Stahl, 1960), in which he
presented an almost infernal image of a steel works, sparks flying, by means of black-and-white
photographs rich in contrasts"--Swiss Foundation for Photography
Near Fine; upper corners worn; lower corners bumped and moderately abraded. |
back