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Ferdinand Schmutzer - Photographic Works 1894-1928 by Ferdinand Schmutzer/Austrian National Library
Besides his extensive collection of etchings, Ferdinand Schmutzer left an imposing photographic oeuvre comprising more than 3,000 glass plate negatives and 330 vintage prints. First presented to the public in 2001, his photographic works is now the subject of a critical edition, where it is placed in its context in the history of photography. Ferdinand Schmutzer’s visual language is the result of a variety of motivations: his portrait photographs often served as studies and masters for his representative etched portraits of famous people, including Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Pablo Casals, and Arthur Schnitzler. His photographs of landscapes, places visited on his travels, and his family were taken for private purposes. The fact that Schmutzer was Vienna’s leading producer of etched portraits and the criticism some artists faced for using photography contributed to this part of his oeuvre’s remaining unknown until many years after his death. The exhibition, held in memory of the 80th anniversary of his death, has been organized in cooperation with the image archive at the Austrian National Library, which holds all negatives from Schmutzer’s estate. At the same time a book with 100 photographs is published by moser verlag Munich.
