"Abendopfer"

gelatin silver print

"F. Relief" pseudonym (see Franz Fiedler, Lachendes Leben, 1925).

The supine nude shows a young, beautiful woman, obviously suffering and introverted, waiting for her end in front of a burnt offering table. The already rising smoke of the offering and the title Evening Sacrifice draw a parallel to the evening sacrifices in the Temple in Jerusalem, where a burnt offering was offered daily in the morning and evening (Ex 29,38-42; Num 28,3-8). Fiedler thus imposes a clearly moral interpretation on us and assigns himself with his composition to the prevailing symbolism in art history.
"The motif 'Death and Maiden' is probably one of the most popular in the visual arts. Beginning with works of the Renaissance, for example by Hans Baldung Grien, through works by Egon Schiele, and musical pieces from the 19th century to works of contemporary art in theater and literature, death appears as a seducer and lover of young women and reminds them in a grotesque way of the finitude and transience of youth, beauty and life. The threatening nature of the motif is the starting point for those representational formulas that are primarily linked to moral aspects."¹
Franz Fiedler, as a student of the well-known German portrait photographer Hugo Erfurth, was himself occupied with the photographic portrait throughout his life, among other things. Fiedler published numerous textbooks on image composition and lighting in portrait photography.
At the time the photograph was taken, Franz Fiedler was also a representative of artistic photography at the I. Internationale kunstphotographische Ausstellung (1^st International Art Photography Exhibition) in Vienna in 1929. This important photo exhibition of amateur photographers shows Fiedler's importance in the scene in German-speaking countries. "The Federation of Austrian Amateur Photographic Societies now considers it its duty to bring to the federal capital a great show of the achievements of its societies and their members and to inform the public of its aims, works and successes. It is, after all, his endeavour to promote above all the artistic side of photography and thus to enhance the good reputation of Austrian photographic art."²
Fiedler's pictorial compositions and the symbolic loading of his pictures, as well as the fact that he must have been in Vienna in the 1920s, lead us to conclude that he also had contact with the Vienna Secession movement.
(Christoph Fuchs)

Artistic nude photography

Nude photography is not without reason regarded with suspicion by wide circles of people with regard to its artistic value and purpose. The photographic fidelity in the reproduction and the often lacking aesthetic tact in the figurative arrangement impair an unbiased, artistic appreciation. Efforts to make nudes pictorial usually fail because the essence of artistic nude representation is first sought in the pose or the beauty of the models. Certainly, a beautiful human body can contribute a great deal to the success of an artistic representation of the nude. However, the reproduction of movement, the interplay of line, surface and sculpture, the distribution of light and shadow in space and on the figure, etc. are far more decisive for the representation itself. Apart from the fact that human beings are seldom perfect in their external proportions, it is well known that photographic reproduction itself, with its falsification of tonal values, exaggerated or understated perspective and limited zone of sharpness, has so many defects that, with few exceptions, photographic nudes are rejected by those who truly understand art as works of artistic value and are regarded only as photographs that pursue more erotic than artistic purposes, unless they serve sporting or scientific purposes or are intended as study material for the artist. In these cases, they are nude photographs, nothing more.
The distinction between a truly artistic representation of the nude and the photographic nude, which pursues more or less clear aims, must be made at some point, since under the guise of art all kinds of photographic nudes are spreading in the trade, which awaken a sense of pornography rather than a sense of the beauty of the human body and its relationship to nature. So what requirements must a pictorial photographic representation of the nude fulfil?
This question has often been asked and can generally only be answered to the effect that the nude picture should be designed in such a way that it expresses a thought or an idea in form and movement in such a visible way that it allows the imagination of the viewer to resonate. It is not the concreteness or temporality of the photographic nude image, but the idea in its eternal, formal and rhythmic design that should captivate and exhilarate us. This can only happen, of course, if the idea of the picture is emphasised by emphasising the essential and characteristic while suppressing everything that is secondary. Such representations, however, require artistic intuition and creative power, which are either innate or acquired through artistic education and training.
Without going into the question of whether works of art can be produced with the help of photography, the present works by the Dresden photographer Franz Fiedler certainly seem to us to be borne by a strong artistic impulse. Some of the nudes remind us involuntarily of biblical depictions or motifs that echo events from the history of culture and art. In almost all of the depictions, it is the rhythm of nature that moves the arrangement and structure of the motifs, without any sense of posing. We see the depicted nudity as such and are influenced by the idea of the picture as a whole. The nude as such is objectified and permits an unbiased, aesthetic contemplation that removes any memory of the randomness of the person. Only in this way can an ideal representation of the human nude be given.
(Karl Weiß, from: Franz Fiedler, Künstlerische Aktaufnahmen, Berlin 1925 – translated with AI www.deepl.com)
digitised version (German)

1
SKD, The Daulton Collection, Los Altos Hills, California (US)

2
VI. Internationale Jubiläums-Ausstellung. Wien, Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst / Gegenwartskunst, Vienna, 1953.