The woman photographer

An exhibition at the Jeu de Paume, in Paris, pays tribute to the work of Germaine Krull, who made photography a form of expression and emancipation as much as commitment. From Soviet Russia to India via the Second World War, this pioneer has crossed the entire XXe century.

Two major issues underlie the Germaine Krull (1897-1985) exhibition. A photographer’s destiny: on the one hand, the continued exploration of the work of these women photographers who offer a “ alternative view » (p. 5) of the history of photography and, on the other hand, the desire to make known the forgotten work of Germaine Krull, a true collector of images who considered photographic practice as both a social necessity and media.

Nicknamed “ crazy dog » in her youth, this enthusiast made her gourmet and generous practice a livelihood as much as an art. An extraordinary personality, freed from all types of conventions, she let herself go “ to his “idea” », according to his desires and his inspirations, “ without ever adhering to slogans, without claiming to belong to groups or movements » (p. 13). Thus she made photography an agent of expression and emancipation as well as commitment.

A committed non-conformist

Trained at the Munich School of Photography in 1915-1917, Germaine Krull quickly abandoned her studio to become active in the German Communist Party, take an active part in the German revolution of 1918-1919, then embark in 1921-1922 in the Soviet adventure and join the IIIe International in Moscow. But the story is cut short: she is incarcerated at Lubyanka and, after a traumatic mock execution, returns to Berlin sick and broken by her political experiences. From then on, Krull abandoned activism and took up his camera again. She becomes a photographer. A photographer in love with political struggles and workers.

We find her in 1940, embarked as a war correspondent for Free France, joining De Gaulle in Algiers in 1944, participating in the “ southern landing » then going back to Strasbourg to cover the Battle of Alsace. Passed to Germany in 1945, it bears witness to the liberation of the Vaihingen camp.

Immediately leaving for the Far East, she became a hotelier in Bangkok until 1966, always photographing and documenting Buddhist culture before settling in India in 1968 with Tibetan exiles whose fate she shared until 1983, two years before passing away in Germany.

However, this energetic involvement in milestone events should not overshadow his determination to photograph everyday people. And it was in Paris, between 1927 and 1933, that Krull became deeply rooted in the life of the streets of the capital and that she created in images what her friend Pierre Mac Orlan would call the “ Paris-Krull “.

Continuing the tradition of Eugène Atget, she wanders through the city day and night, immortalizing the life of the slums and the “ area », that of bars and fairs, the activity of Halles and flea markets or car traffic on the boulevards. She is interested in the culture of the common people to whom she feels close. Marked with a “ unprofessional quickdraw » (p. 67), his shots are spontaneous, often unexpected and daring: their singular aesthetic supports and enhances the empathy of his social gaze.

As Michel Frizot demonstrates, Germaine Krull is not a photographer-artist but, like her compatriot Gerda Taro (1910-1937), a woman engaged in “ photographic actions » (p. 161). Indeed, according to her, the “ photographer is a witness. The witness of his time “. Anxious to preserve her fierce independence, Krull was an active witness, a curious person cut out to become a reporter.

Profession: reporter

Eager to meet individuals and situations, to show beings and uses, and to share her experiences, Germaine Krull is accomplished in the field. She does not have a studio and makes her living from reporting, stating bluntly: “ The real photographer is the everyday witness, he is the reporter “. In fact, his natural and unaffected method, combined with disturbing optical effects (high-angle shots, low-angle shots, deframing, superimpositions), will seduce Lucien Vogel, who created the magazine Seen in 1928 and surrounded himself with a trio of young photographers – Germaine Krull, André Kertész and Eli Lotar – to launch the Nouveau Reportage.

Overflowing with photos, Seen is innovative and avant-garde. He “ disrupts the viewer’s eye » (p. 41) with its illustrated articles which benefit from unparalleled heliogravure printing quality and unfold their carefully illustrated layouts, true “ small paper cinemas », which offer photography accessible to all.

Interested in the “ reality of his day-to-day work » (p. 10), Michel Frizot shows how the choice of reporting allows Krull to preserve his creative freedom and his autonomy. It also allows a greater dissemination of her work, just like the multiple books and portfolios that she published throughout her career and which make her original. An avid image taker, the reporter spent her life publishing (rather than exhibiting) her works, attentive to their distribution and keen to offer them to as many people as possible. In this sense, highlighting the “ media perspectives of photography » (p. 9), the exhibition is fully in line with current research in visual history.

With its profuse reproductions of articles illustrated by Krull, it immerses us in the eventful life of the photographer who worked for the major magazines of the time. Whether in the Province or in the capital, it each time reflects a changing reality. Served by the spontaneity of her Icarette, a small, light and handy device, she accounts for this “ intensity of nervous life » which Georg Simmel considered appropriate for modern life and the modern city.

New visibilities

A free woman, Krull is interested in her contemporaries, whom she distinguishes in her reports through her portraits of tramps, romanichelles and workers – without forgetting her iconoclastic nudes, models for advertising and some female artists. Each time, Krull captures attitudes, moving bodies, gestures. She is as passionate about the social condition of young girls, the ritual actions of beauty salons or the expressive force of models’ poses. She herself celebrates her freedom of movement when, launched on the roads, she photographs from her car.

The art of technical reproducibility, photography stands out as the ideal medium for celebrating the mechanical modernity of the 1920s and 1930s. Reaching “ realities that all natural vision ignores “, Krull stands out and becomes known with the acrobatic views and the disconcerting “ modern beauty » of his irons. Until 1930, she regularly photographed overhead cranes, machines, factories and automobiles which made her personal mark and, with the publication of Métal in 1928, gave her an aesthetic identity close to the New Vision of Moholy-Nagy and the urban symphonies signed Ruttman and Cavalcanti.

Flushing out “ the secret detail that people don’t always see » (p. 219), it also magnificently illustrates the “ fantastic social » dear to Mac Orlan. At the crossroads of modernism and verismo, between humanism and the avant-garde, she takes social snapshots that offer a “ support for imagination and self-reflection » (p. 116), testifying to a poetic realism sometimes flirting with the fanciful.

Abundant, the exhibition continues with the rich catalog of Michel Frizot, which brings an entire world to life. Through the prism of his work, he bears witness to the impact of new technologies (photography, rotogravure, automobiles) which, by producing new visibilities, have transformed our gaze.