A VISIONARY “SPIRITUALIZATION OF TECHNIQUE”: FIRST EDITION OF HAJEK-HALKE’S EXPERIMENTELLE FOTOGRAFIE, 1955

HAJEK-HALKE, Heinz. Experimentelle Fotografie. Bonn: Athenäum-Verlag, 1955. Tall quarto, original brown cloth, original photographic dust jacket. $750.

First edition of the first photobook by Hajek-Halke, one of the “leading lights” of Germany’s Fotoform movement (Parr & Badger), with 46 full-page black-and-white photogravures.

With a photographic instinct that sought a revolutionary “spiritualization of technique” in the “strange beauty of the negative,” the X-ray and the photogram, Heinz Hajek-Halke (1898-1983) was one of the “leading lights of the ‘subjective interpretation of reality” school that led Germany’s influential Fotoform movement of the 1950s—an approach inspired by the Bauhaus and led by Dr. Otto Steinert, reflecting a resurgence of the Film und Foto exhibition that proved so “significant in suggesting a pan-European movement in creative photography.” Hajek-Halke’s work expresses the distinct goals of that movement, a vision that was “intensely purist… valued fine technique and impeccable finish, and favored the abstract over the realistic” (Parr & Badger I:191, 205). Preface by Hajek-Halke. Text in German, English and French. Bookseller ticket on rear dust jacket panel.

Book fine; light edge-wear to bright photographic dust jacket in near-fine condition.