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  Werner Rohde, Mask, Gelatin Silver Print c. 1920’s

  WERNER ROHDE (1906-1990) Germany

  Mask   c. 1920s

  Gelatin silver print

  Signed on the back of the photo: Werkbundausstellung “Film und Foto” (typed on label); 9.) 9/ (in ink and red crayon); Kupfer ofun Rourk 60 m R 10.5 x 14.5 cm / ump ubonpposhm bu 6/5 10088 (all in pencil script); fmlg-Rohde Woopswerk (in pencil); Werner Rohde Malen Breuien Oobben 58 (ink script)

  H: 21 7/16” x W: 18 13/16” (framed)

  Price: $17,500

  Werner Rohde’s visual play with the animate and inanimate draws him close to the aesthetics of the surrealists while maintaining a strong alignment with Germany’s new-vision avant-garde. Rohde experimented widely with double exposures, photomontage, perspective and dramatic lighting that reflected his interest in filmic effects. The son of a glass painter (a medium he would turn to later in life), Rohde took up photography during his studies at the Arts and Craft School in Halle. Like Kesting, Willy Zielke and Kretschmer, he participated in the 1929 ‘Film und foto’ exhibition in Stuttgart that remains one of the historical focal points for Germany’s new photographic vision. Despite this early recognition of his work, Rohde fell into obscurity after the war until the rediscovery of his photographs in the mid 1970s. Rohde’s fascination with the play between life and lifeless, animate and inanimate, has strong reverberations with surrealism. Masks, mannequins and paper models were used in his photographs to illuminate the uncanny. They were also employed in his self-portraiture in which he mimicked his idol Charlie Chaplin. These techniques of visual illusion provided a mnemonic tool for the images of his wife in which she is posed and photographed to resemble a doll or mannequin. In the act of art imitating life, ‘Wachspuppenkopf’ is uncanny in its mimicry of the human form with realistic teeth, eyes, skin and even the unusual detail of small wrinkles under the eyes. The downward angle, lighting and odd doubling of the neckline utilizes standard surrealist methods to infer life and movement.

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  Eugene Omar Goldbeck, Indoctrination Division, Air Training Command, Lackland Air Base, San Antonio, Texas, July 19, 1947 , Gelatin silver print

  EUGENE OMAR GOLDBECK (1892-1986) USA

  Indoctrination Division, Air Training Command, Lackland Air Base, San Antonio, Texas, July 19, 1947

  Signed: Natural Photo and News Service EO Goldbeck © photo (on matting); LR Conner EG 81

  Size: H: 19” x W: 16 ½”; Size (with mat): H: 24” x W: 20”

  Framed: H: 26 5/8” x W: 23 7/8”

  Price: $6,500

  Known as the “unofficial photographer of America’s military,” Goldbeck conducted three-year tours to all of the major military bases in and outside of the United States until demand diminished for military group photos after World War II. He pushed the limits of his craft by working with larger and larger groups in striking designs. For his record setting group shot, in which 21,765 men were arranged to represent the Air Force insignia, he spent more than six weeks building a 200-foot tower and making blueprints of the formation and attire of his subjects. The photograph was subsequently featured in Life magazine and became the most frequently reproduced of his prints.