Photo-Eye Fritz Block. New Photography. Modern Color Slides

Jaeger, Roland. Photo-Eye Fritz Block. New Photography. Modern Color Slides. Zurich: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2018. First edition. Small Folio. 320pp. Original bright red half cloth over photo-illustrated boards with white, black and red lettering on cover, black and white on spine. Photo-illustrated endpapers. Six frontispieces. Title page with modern design and typography, printed in red, white and black. Contains 499 mostly b/w photographs, including several photojournalistic works in sepia tone and some ninety color photographs at rear.

Fritz Block (1889-1955) was one of the dedicated proponents of the New Architecture. Since 1929 Block applied the modern impulse to photography. He made a name of himself with technical photographs and depicting nature and human beings in the style of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). He also worked as a photojournalist producing travelogs from Paris, Marseilles and Northern Africa and in 1931 from the USA. Being of Jewish origin the rise of the Nazis in 1933 his career in Germany came to an abrupt halt. He was banned from working as an architect and his photographs were prohibited from publishing his photographs. He continued his work as a photographer while traveling until he emigrated to the USA in 1938. He settled in Los Angeles and made photography his main occupation.

Photo-Eye is the first book about his work as photographer. His work includes photographs considered the “New Photography” of the 1920s in Germany all the way to his color photographs of the 1940s in the USA. Notable are his color slide series produced for advanced art classes, among them many photographs of the modern architecture in California. The book was published in conjunction with the exhibition “Foto-Auge Fritz Block. Der Architekt als Fotograf at the Chamber of Commerce in Hamburg. It was awarded the German Photography Award in 2018 (Bronze) in the category “Photography (Monographs). New in publisher’s shrink wrap. Hardcover. (53048) $75