Fotoform is regarded as the most important German photographers' association of the early post-Second World War period. It was founded in the first instance, on the initiative of Wolfgang Reisewitz in 1949, as an exhibiting society. Early members included Siegfried Lauterwasser, Ludwig Windstosser, Peter Keetman, and Toni Schneiders, but it was Otto Steinert, the group's spokesman, who decisively shaped its programme. Heinz Hajek-Halke and Christer Christian joined later. Fotoform's members presented their work under the programmatic label ‘subjective photography’, and had a formative influence on art photography in West Germany. A collective stand was taken against the old-fashioned validation methods of the professional associations. In general, fotoform harked back to the avant-garde, experimental photography of the 1920s, and developed within the orbit of non-representational art. It made its breakthrough at the first Photokina exhibition in Cologne in 1950, and by the mid-1950s was breaking up.
— Ulrich Rüter
Bibliography
- “‘subjektive fotografie’”: Der deutsche Beitrag 1948 bis 1963 (1989)
