Hugo Erfurth...

Hugo Erfurth, Elsa Wiesenthal, Staatliche Landesbildstelle Hamburg, collection on the history of photography, paper, pigment print, image size: height: 22,6 cm; width: 16,4 cm, signed, in lead: Hugo Erfurth, inscribed: verso u. li. in ink: Hugo Erfurth, stamp: verso and right: handwritten with ballpoint pen: B 218 2, inscribed: inside left passepartoutside and left: in lead: No. B 2182, Wiesenthal, label: verso passepartoutside cardboard: in typewriter font: No. B 2018/2, Hugo Erfurth, Wiesenthal, inscribed: verso passe-partout cardboard: with black felt-tip pen: measurements, stamp: verso passe-partout cardboard: inventory stamp of the State Picture Gallery Hamburg, handwritten in ink: B 218 2, portrait photography, dancer, full-length portrait, movement, dancing, dress, Elsa Wiesenthal, At the beginning of the 20th century, the artist was a member of the Staatliche Landesbildstelle Hamburg (State Picture Gallery Hamburg) At the beginning of the 20th century, Hugo Erfurth, along with Rudolph Dührkoop and Nicola Perscheid, was one of the most famous professional photographers in Germany. After completing an apprenticeship as a photographer, he opened his own studio in Dresden at the age of only 22. Soon Erfurth orientated himself towards the up-and-coming pictorialist photography, participated in numerous amateur photographic exhibitions from 1894 onwards and managed to make a name for himself both as an artistically ennobled amateur and successful professional photographer. Portraits are central to his work, which he began taking in 1906 in his new studio, a classicist palace, in a stylishly elegant ambience, appealing to the wealthy bourgeoisie. He also produced numerous portraits of famous personalities, including Käthe Kollwitz, Otto Dix and Joachim Ringelnatz. While his studies around 1905 still show full-length figures depicted in an atmospheric way, from the 1920s onward the focus is on the face, which is photographed against a simple monochrome background