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Lot Essay
Lots 86 and 87, two compelling portraits by Erwin Blumenfeld, belong to distinctly different periods of his career, but share the common characteristic of his tireless experimentation in the darkroom.
Throughout his career, Blumenfeld photographed himself as a means of playing with technical possibilities and this example is one such fascinating manipulation.
From the 1920s onwards, Adolf Hitler’s cult of leadership and the Nazi propaganda machine ensured that his face was plastered everywhere and so became the focus of much contemporary anti-fascist imagery, including Blumenfeld’s.
Reproductions of Blumenfeld’s macabre 'face of terror’, made on the eve of the Fuhrer’s rise to power in 1933, were dropped by the US Air Force over German cities as part of a propaganda exercise a decade later.
Throughout his career, Blumenfeld photographed himself as a means of playing with technical possibilities and this example is one such fascinating manipulation.
From the 1920s onwards, Adolf Hitler’s cult of leadership and the Nazi propaganda machine ensured that his face was plastered everywhere and so became the focus of much contemporary anti-fascist imagery, including Blumenfeld’s.
Reproductions of Blumenfeld’s macabre 'face of terror’, made on the eve of the Fuhrer’s rise to power in 1933, were dropped by the US Air Force over German cities as part of a propaganda exercise a decade later.