Germany and Austria at the beginning of last century represented Europe's achievements and its failures. The countries attained the heights of bourgeois opulence and then threw themselves into a warring continent's depths. The German and Austrian photographic portraits collected in this ambitious exhibition come together like a 'œglamorous gala attended by beauties, uglies, writers, thinkers, artists, loners,' said Grace Glueck in The New York Times. Lotte Jacobi, Josef Albers, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and August Sander, among others, captured the glitterati and the ordinary folk alike in the relatively new medium. Over four decades, the changes in both photographic technique and the self-perception of the subjects become clear. The portraits shift from stiff studio shots to innovative modernist artworks.
Looking at these faces is like 'œfalling down a rabbit hole,' said Ariella Budick in Newsday. They transport viewers to another time and place in an 'œodd mix of intimacy and revelation.' Many of the portraits are of other artists or are self-portraits. Artists are proficient myth-makers, so it's tough to say whether their images of each other truly represent the ideals of an age. But World War I soon 'œshattered the whole idea of coherence,' and the avant-garde was launched. Even the resolutely direct Sander took an experimental picture of his daughter, Sigrid, in 1928, showing just her right eye. By the 1930s, Bauhaus-trained photographers 'œfixated almost exclusively on form,' treating faces as formal icons.
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