Week 5: Legacy Photography

 

 

 

Who is the practitioner (what is their name?) and when were they practicing?

This photograph was taken by Heinrich Hoffman, the personal photographer of Adolf Hitler. Hoffman was charged with choreographing the regime’s propaganda carnivals and selling them them to the German public.

With the photo or video you are examining when was it produced (date)?

This photo was taken, alongside many others, in 1934. This was on September 30 at the Buckeberg Harvest Festival, where Hitler walks amongst his adoring and heiling troops.

How was the photo or video authored?

Hoffman took more than 2 million photos of Hitler and the regime’s message — feeding the demonic dream. Always showing position of power, and masses of the Nazi army as well as insignia. All of Hoffmans photos show adoring folllowers, strong and authoritative troops and paint the regime in a positive light.

How was the photo or video published?

Hoffmans photos were published as postage stamps, postcards, posters and picture books. Hoffman and Hitler received royalties from all uses of Hitler’s image, even on the postage stamps.

During the Third Reich, Hoffmann assembled many photo books on Hitler, including The Hitler Nobody Knows’ — a book that is defined today as a “central to Hitler’s extremely shrewd, extremely well-controlled effort to manipulate his image…to turn his notoriously non-Nordic-looking foreignness, his much remarked upon strangeness into assets to his charisma.”

How was the photo or video distributed?

This photograph was distributed throughout German society in a time when the country was humiliated by World War 1 and when the regime was eager to reclaim its sense of self. Hitler’s visage and portrayal of confidence and adoration by his troops and followers presented an uplifting message in distribution.

Hoffmans expertly rendered propaganda is a testament to photography’s power to move nations and change perspective through the simplicity of photography.