Contributions to a History of Photography in Austria, volume 14

Edited by Monika Faber for Photoinstitut Bonartes, Vienna, and Walter Moser for the Photographic Collection of the Albertina, Vienna

In the 1920s and 1930s, film and cinema enjoyed a greater popularity than at any other point of time in recent cultural history. In order to guarantee their visibility beyond the sphere of projection, the help of their elder brother photography as a genuinely related medium was called for. This book is the first to explore a rare medium of film photography indebted to its day and, like film, relying on celluloid: brightly hand-colored stills owing their lucency to backlight illumination. Taken on the set, these mostly anonymous pictures were aimed at arousing the public’s visual curiosity in the lobbies of Vienna’s movie palaces and at encouraging them to purchase a ticket.

Roland Fischer-Briand is head of the Photograph and Film Documentation Department at the Austrian FilmMuseum, Vienna.

Image 1:
Anonymous Photographer, film still of Durchlaucht Radieschen (directed by Richard Eichberg, Germany 1927), nitrocellulose

Image 2:
Heinrich Gärtner, film still of Die tolle Lola (directed by Richard Eichberg, Germany 1927), nitrocellulose

Image 3:
Horst von Harbou, film still of Metropolis (directed by Fritz Lang, Germany 1927), nitrocellulose