Deutsche Vita – A retrospective

Deutsche Vita

Stefan Moses undoubtedly belongs to the most influential and original authors of contemporary photography. His central subject has been the Germans, their way of living and their disposition, which he has captured across the spectrum of social classes. Politicians, street workers, actresses, park watchmen, writers, tram conductors, sculptors and artists are harmoniously arranged in Moses’ representation of German society. Despite the different aims of their work, the typologically defined portraits of society created by August Sander have found a worthy heir in the physiognomies of Moses’ portraits.
In various ways, Stefan Moses has written the history (or histories) of photography in the past decades. Recall the series he created for Stern in 1964 with members of the German Bundestag holding dumbbells in which, similar to Erich Salomon’s photographs of the Weimar Republic, the other more human side of professional politicians beyond their representative appearances was made visible. Moses’ photographs brought a fresh wind and a new form of matter-of-factness into the parliamentary chambers of the political powers – years before the relationship between politics and the public sphere was loosened up by the protests of the 68-generation.
But Stefan Moses’ further biography was less entangled in politics than in the spheres of the fine arts, literature, and theater, with which he was always closely involved. Evidence of this can be found in the portraits of artists whom he knew and those who were his friends – from Joseph Beuys to Maria Lassnig – and whose company still constitutes a spiritual home for him today. Stefan Moses once tried to explain his unfailing interest in portaiture with a sentence by Novalis that became something of a leitmotiv for him: “Each person is a small society.” On call – one almost wants to add, sadly recognizing that each photograph contains a small death, reminding the living of the fleeing existence of their own and others’ lives. But at the same time, photography is also resistant to forgetting because it sets free the forces of memory. This is what happens when we see Stefan Moses’ portraits of the “Great Elders in the Forest.” Stefan Moses is not interested in the dazzling celebrities of the day. His affinity and acknowledgement of the representatives of 20th century German culture are unmistakable, and these representatives, such as Hilde Domin or Sebastian Haffner, have weathered exile or other stormy periods of history and – having preserved their creative energies and intellectual integrity – have become moral authorities in German intellectual culture.
We know about the difficulties or even the impossibility of capturing a person’s character and ontology in a single image. And in these times of fast living, the expectations of precise and unambiguous portraits are immense. It is easy to forget that the act of photography is a distinct form of dialogue, a conversation that is marked by reciprocal negotiations of closeness and distance. For Stefan Moses, photography is a form of magic and conspiracy, of enticing and flattering, from which one can only withdraw by conjuring up a counter-spell. Stefan Moses is not only a friend of humankind; when he is photographing, he catches people and their shadows with an undeceiving feel for the depths of the soul, strengths and weaknesses, in other words, for the hidden and visible sides of a personality. Put in his own words, everything that happens is a spectaculum, a theatrum mundi, and he employs the camera such that thanks to fantastical exaggerations and his sense for the absurd, those standing opposite him are lifted out of the role of mere extras and, if his magic is successful, a relaxed mood sets in.

Is it Possible to Photograph “the Germans”?

A Commentary on the Photography Exhibition “Deutsche Vita” (“German Vita”) by Stefan Moses

Since antiquity, images have been a fixed part of the repertoire of artistic creation as well as philosophical reflection: To some, internal images seem a necessary mirror of outer reality, to others, an image’s likeness is a statement about the facts put forth. On the other hand, the mirror-image, the central metaphor of all aestheticism from Narcissus to Dorian Gray, has had many interpretations.
“Deutsche Vita” (“German Vita”) is the title of the exhibition put together by the Goethe-Institut Inter Nationes and the Fotomuseum im Münchner Stadtmuseum. The exhibition will take the photographs of Stefan Moses on a world-wide tour in coming years, thus contributing to the German’s image abroad. “Deutsche” (“Germans”), “Abschied und Anfang – Ostdeutsche Porträts” (“Taking Leave and Beginning – East German Portraits”), “Selbst im Spiegel” (“Self in Mirror”), “Deutsche Gesellschaft” (“German Society”), “Die großen Alten” (“The Great Elders”), and “Künstler machen Masken” (“Artists Make Masks”) are the titles of the photograph series on exhibit which together represent the various manifestations of this image of what it means to be German.
It is difficult to say what exactly constitutes the German-ness of the Germans that are portrayed here. If for outsiders it appears that the common traits and characteristics of another people are in the foreground, for the members of that people itself it is the differences, the individual markings that most immediately stand out. Beyond the context of art history, one might make the association with the idea of “globalization” here. This idea also creates an image – namely one of a world that is increasingly uniform. But while the surface of the world is becoming more and more uniform, underneath the radical differences between various worlds bump up against each other. And so one could say of all cultures, as Claude Lévi-Strauss ascertained, it is not the similarities that are similar, but the differences. This is true as well for those Germans whose portraits were taken by Stefan Moses.
Those who observe Moses’ photographs are confronted with themselves. But even more essential is that a dialog simultaneously begins, an encounter with the Germans takes place. This experience is the result of an exchange of gazes.
In these photographic series, Moses creates a systematic portrait of the Germans, of the differences within their similarity. He develops a sketch of society which acquires lasting validity through its examples. Everyone has a place. Many portraits correspond to common ideas of a certain professional class, which is represented by those who pose, for example the woman who sells newspapers or the tram conductors; others depict an optimism that seems questionable today, such as in the 1960s series Deutsche: Porträts der sechziger Jahre (Germans: Portraits of the 1960s). And if one observes the portraits of artists such as Joseph Beuys or Emil Schumacher, then one sees how Stefan Moses exposes with his own artistic means the roles that people play on the stage of life.
It is the sum of encounters found in this selection of photographs that condenses into an overall representation of a people. A colorful and diverse Germany finds representation. The exhibition “Deutsche Vita” (“German Vita”) shows us a portrait of German society that corresponds to the photographer’s ideas and his dialog with the Germans.
We would like to extend a special thanks to the Fotomuseum im Münchner Stadtmuseum, in particular to the director, Ulrich Pohlmann, for the enriching and productive cooperation in all phases of the planning and execution of this exhibition.

Annesusanne Fackler-Kabisch,
Director of the Fine Arts Program,
Goethe-Institut Inter Nationes