Helmut Gernsheim, born in Munich, Germany, on this date in 1913, the descendant of a distinguished German-Jewish family. Though he had studied art history, his inclination toward a specialisation in photography history came from becoming a photographer, beginning in the late 1930s making commercial work in colour, in Germany and then in the UK working for Rolls Royce and the shipping line P&O. There he gained citizenship in 1946, continuing to live there after the war. It is extraordinary to think that his career as a photography historian began here in Australia. As an ‘enemy alien’ he was deported and interred at Hay in New South Wales, just as Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack (1893–1965) was at Tatura in Victoria after his arrival on the Dunera troopship. Other German artists transported as ‘enemies’ were tenor Erich Liffmann, composer Ray Martin, visual artists Johannes Koelz (1895–1971), Heinz Henghes (1906–1975) and Erwin Fabian (*1915), photographers Henry Talbot (1920–1999) and Hans Axel, art historians Franz Phillipp (1914–1970) and Ernst Kitzinger (1912-2003), author Ulrich Boschwitz and furniture designers Fred Lowen and Ernst Roedeck. Like Hischfield Mack, Gernsheim beat the boredom of internment by presenting lectures on the aesthetics of photography, and used the time to commence his first book New Photo Vision, 32 pages of text largely drawn from the writings on photography of others, ranging from Henry Fox Talbot to Laszló Moholy-Nagy, followed by 32 pages of his own Neue Sachlichkeit imagery. It received mixed reviews. The most immediate was in the The British Journal Of Photography of November 13 , 1942 which described it as ‘provocative’, but ‘a rather indigestible mass’; and ‘an omnium gatherum of opinions’ though a great ‘source book of debatable questions’, but lacking clarity. However it praised his pictures as ‘perfect examples of masterly photography...see more at onthisdateinphotography.com/2018/03/01/march-1-connoisseur undefined

More on Google