Juhl, Ernst (1850-1915), German photographic collector, patron, and critic, born and active in Hamburg. From a wealthy business family of Danish origin, Juhl devoted himself from 1896 entirely to promoting photography. Like Alfred Lichtwark, he saw it as a means of enlivening Hamburg's rather spartan cultural scene, and believed that pictorialism, practised by leisured amateurs, would establish it securely as a fine art. By organizing a series of international exhibitions between 1893 and 1903, playing a leading role in the secessionist Society for the Encouragement of Amateur Photography (f. 1895), and supporting the Hofmeister brothers and other local pictorialists, he helped to establish Hamburg as a leading photographic centre c.1900. He was also a prolific writer and, 1896-1902, picture editor of the Photographische Rundschau.
Juhl's aesthetic views were distinctively modern, ranking expressiveness of form and quality of treatment above conventional hierarchies of subject matter. (The fine-art equivalent was the provocative claim that a bundle of asparagus painted by Manet was more significant than an academic history painting.) From 1909 Juhl helped to create a public photographic collection in Hamburg, Germany's first. Much of his own collection was bought by the Hamburg Museum for Art and Design in 1915.
— Robin Lenman
Bibliography
- Kaufhold, E., Bilder des Übergangs: Zur Mediengeschichte von Fotografie und Malerei in Deutschland um 1900 (1986).
- Kunstphotographie um 1900: Die Sammlung Ernst Juhl (1989)
