#grman expressionism

[rainydaypaperback]

A MODERN DANCE OF DEATH - by Frans Fiedler- German Weimer Republic

A weird and wonderful album of life's dance with sex, love and death by the eccentric photographer Franz Fiedler (1885-1956). which shows a nude woman with a skeleton in various erotic poses. The preceding text, tells about death who is a fool and her playmate. A wonderful and in every sense of the world unique album, made against the backdrop of unstable Weimar republic, in which hedonism, sex and fear where indeed intimated companions. Fiedler won at the 1911 world exhibition in Turin the first prize and had another exhibition in Prague in 1913. He belonged to the circle of Jaroslav Hašek and Egon Erwin Kisch and in 1916 married Erna Hauswald in Dresden where he occupied astudio at Sedanstraße 7. From 1919, he began to work with a 9×12 folding camera and in 1924 became one of the first professional photographers to use a Leica. After expanding his studio in 1925, he took part in the exhibition "Film und Foto" in Stuttgart. The outstanding publication on the city of Dresden, conceived in the spirit of Die Neue Sachlichkeit, is one of the first illustrated works created according to the new principles of photography. It marks a turning point in his work. Fiedler's studio was destroyed on 13 February 1945. All that was left was a box with photographs for an exhibition which was deposited with his family in Moravia. After 1945 he did not have his own studio and earned a living in the GDR as author of books on photography. Anneliese Kretschmer, Dortmund, is one of his pupils.