ABSTRACT

An international tendency towards individual expression that was promoted and organised by Otto Steinert in the 1950s. Established the Fotoform group in 1949 to advance artistic photography. They sought to rehabilitate the experimentation of the pre-war period and invest it with a more personal expression, a tendency they called 'Subjective Photography'. Led by Steinert, Fotoform promoted Subjective Photography in three large group exhibitions in 1951, 1954 and 1958, shown variously in Central Europe, New York and Japan, and two accompanying publications. Together, the exhibited photographs conveyed a new way of experiencing the world that connected with US photographer and educator Minor White's influential theories of mystical and spiritual expression in photography. This allusion to the psyche is now often interpreted in relation to the post-war context within which the movement crystallised.