60 Fotos...

With the publisher's scarce wraparound band. The first monograph of Aenne Biermann's photographs, with the publisher's scarce wraparound band, which exists in three versions: German, French, and English. This book was supposed to be a part of a much larger series of books titled Fototek, but only the first two were published due to the economic and political circumstances in Germany at the time. The first volume, also titled 60 Fotos, is devoted to Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, with future unrealized titles announced at the rear, to include 'The Monsterous - Kitsch in Photography'; 'Photomontage edited by Jan Tschichold'; 'The Police Photograph'; 'El Lissitsky 60 Fotos and Typofotos'; 'The Sport Photograph'; and '100 years of Nude Photography', a note also states that several others were being planned. The series was edited by Franz Roh and designed by Jan Tschichold.

Roh and Tschichold had previously collaborated on Foto-Auge (1929), the book issued to accompany the Film und Foto exhibition in Stuttgart. Sales of the two Fototek volumes were sluggish, and the financial difficulties that Klinkhardt & Biermann encountered due to the economic crisis led to the sale of the publishing house. In March 1932, Franz Roh wrote to the photographer Moi Ver that he still hoped to be able to include his work in a later volume of the Fototek series but that negotiations with the new owners were ongoing. The following March, he again wrote to Moi Ver, stating that he hoped to continue the series with another publisher, adding that he had asked Laszlo Moholy-Nagy to come on board as a co-editor. However, shortly after this, the Nazi Party came to power, and the political and cultural changes in Germany made it impossible to continue a series like Fototek.

Anna Sibillia Sternefeld was born in 1898 in Goch am Niederrhein, Germany which is close to the Dutch border. In 1920 she married Herbert Joseph Biermann (after her marriage she used the name Aenne or Änne). Her work featured in all the major international photographic exhibitions of the late 1920s and early 1930s including Fotografie der Gegenwart (1929, Essen); Film und Foto (1929, Stuttgart); Das Lichtbild (1930, Munich); Die Neue Fotografie (1931, Basel); and International de la Photographie (1932, Brussels). She died in 1933 after an illness and was therefore spared the Nazi persecution suffered by her family and the family of her husband. In 1939 her widower Herbert Biermann emigrated to Palestine, he attempted to bring Aenne's photographic archive with him but Nazi officials intercepted and confiscated it in Trieste. Her archive has never been fully recovered, and prints of only around four hundred photographs are known to have survived.

In the 1987 catalogue issued to accompany an exhibition at Museum Folkwang, Essen, Ute Eskildsen writes that Biermann's work 'records a photographic career that combined an individual approach, female experience, and a perception specific to the period... [demonstrating] Biermann's outstanding ability to express the structure of the subjects, while invariably enlivening the image with observations particular to the given situation. Herein lies the nexus between everyday experience and individual vision.'

First edition; (249 x 175 mm, 9¾ x 7 in); black-and-white photographs printed in relief halftone by F. Bruckmann AG, Munich, introduction by Franz Roh, text in German, English, and French, design by Jan Tschichold; photo-illustrated wrappers printed in yellow and black, light rubbing to lower side, publisher's red printed wraparound band, minor wear, nick to upper panel, near fine in a custom drop spine box by Julie Nadot; 76pp.

Aenne Biermann Photographs 1925-1933; Regards sur un siècle de photographie à travers Le Livre no. 34; Fotografia Pública: Photography in Print 1919-1939 p57; Autopsie: Deutschsprachige Fotobücher 1918-1945 I, pp332-343.