Heinz von Perckhammer

"The Thomas Friedrich Scholarship for Research in Photography has been organised at the Berlinische Galerie since January 2014. Initiated by patron Manfred Heiting, it offers academics an opportunity to spend a year working on a specific body of material in the Photography Collection. Most of the exhibits by Heinz von Perckhammer dating from the Nazi years (1933-1945) exemplify National Socialist propaganda in photography. Work still needs doing by historians to understand and illustrate its mechanisms of influence and the fascination exerted by this aesthetic. The pictures taken by Heinz von Perckhammer after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 show that he not only picked up the propaganda aesthetic cultivated by the Nazi regime in a significant number of his works, but also marketed them effectively. In the years prior to this, during the Weimar Republic, he had already achieved international success as a photographer with his spectacular pictures from China and with images influenced by a modernist idiom. Heinz von Perckhammer had evidently adapted to the new political context. In this respect he is typical of many photographers whose professional careers continued seamlessly under the conditions of a dictatorial regime."--Berlinische Galerie.