Skulptur in neuem Licht: Bildhauerei in Fotografie und Film der Weimarer Republik

Sculpture appears in a new light in its appropriation by photography and film. The three-dimensional, static, and tactile character of sculpture as a media is transformed and recoded. In photography, sculpture becomes two-dimensional, and in film, it is rendered visible in moving images. In addition, the locus in which sculpture is encountered changes. Visualised in mass-media photography and film, sculpture can no longer solely be experienced in the art sphere, but independently of location.

This study analyses the visibility of sculptures in photographs and films of the Weimar Republic (1918–1933). With the spread of mass media and increased interactions between the applied and fine arts in the 1920s, a process of differentiation towards an emerging modern visual culture takes place. Sculpture enters into a chain of mimetic reproduction in photography and film. These intermedia relationships form the focus of this work. The subject of investigation is photographs and films from the 1920s that engage with sculpture as a motif and thereby open up themselves to the medium of sculpture.

Anja Grossmann studied art history and philosophy at Eberhard-Karls-Universität in Tübingen and Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität in Munich. From 2018 to 2021, she was a research assistant at LMU Munich and a doctoral candidate at the International Doctoral College MIMESIS in the Bavarian Elite Network. In 2020, she completed a research stay at the Department of Film Studies at the University of Zurich. She received her doctorate in Munich in 2023.