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PHOTOGRAPHY

OTHER PHOTOGRAPHIC FINDINGS

Ushuaia. Tierra del Fuego, 1960.

Gelatin silver print in black and white, with white margins. Measurements: 31.2 x 38 cm / 12.28 x 14.96 in. Large exemplary, with the author's identification located on the back in a wet stamp in a rectangular format and with the legend: "FOTO - Herbert Kirchhoff". The image was obtained with a medium or large format camera.


Kirchhoff stood at a high point to encompass in a panorama-like effect almost the entire city. From this watchtower, with the bay behind him, he approaches at his feet one of the main streets of Ushuaia, flanked by the picturesque houses with steep metal roofs to resist the weight of the snow. Towards the bottom, the urban landscape frames the imposing snowy peaks of the Martial chain.


The image was reproduced in the last of the photographic books on Argentina made by Herbert Kirchhoff and edited by the Graphic Workshops of Guillermo Kraft Ltda-Sociedad Anónima de Impresiones Generales: "Argentina Austral - Latitude South". It is an original folder or suite with 35 sheets of photomechanical printing in black and white on Tierra del Fuego and especially, from the Argentine Antarctic Sector; in a bilingual Spanish and English edition. All the images, the texts and the layout of the set are the work of Kirchhof.


Kirchhof was part of a contingent of excellent European photographers who, in the interregnum between both World Wars and even soon after, for various reasons -the war, political persecution, economic crisis, racism or unemployment- emigrated to our country; all of them came from Central Europe, especially from Germany, Russia, Poland or Hungary.


In reference to the few available biographical references, it is known that Herbert Kirchhof "(...) was born in Hamburg in 1908. At the age of twenty he came to Argentina where he died in 1976 (...)". Sameer Fouad Makarius -recognized Egyptian-German photographer who belonged to that same stream of European emigrants- indicated this in the catalog of his exhibition "Argentine Life in Photos" (Museum of Modern Art. Buenos Aires. 1981). It included in that exhibition five vintage works by this author, all "Property of Josefina O. de Kirchhoff". Willing to provide more biographical information, we identified his wife: María Josefina Pía Ocampo Vedoya (1901-2001) -widow of Saturnino Alberto de Álzaga Unzué (1898-1965) -, a lady from Buenos Aires high society who married in second marriages with the German photographer Herbert Kirchhoff, without descendants of this union.


So little information about his life, contrasts with his extensive photographic career in South America, and perfectly documented thanks to a collection of remarkable books published with the photographs of his authorship. In the edition of these photobooks, the figure of the German Herbert Kirchhoff grows, since his mastery in artistic documentary photography soon caught the attention of the Argentine firm Guillermo Kraft Ltda., Whose advanced printing workshops were then put at the service of that inspired traveling camera.


From the 1940s on, true art books on Latin American reality will be printed, all of them with exclusive photographs taken by Herbert Kirchhoff: "Bolivia. its Types and Beauties" (1942); "Bolivia and its People" (1944), "Bolivia in Action" (1949) "Venezuela" (1955), "Peru. Yesterday and Today" and "Peru" (1958). We must clarify that other companies also required the services of their cameras, such as the Editorial Buenos Aires for the book; "Peru. Yesterday and Today" (1951).


In the same line, three titles referring to our country came to light; the first dedicated to "The Argentine National Parks" (1945), later the two voluminous volumes of "La Argentina" (1949), with 500 photographs obtained "in a long pilgrimage over more than 50,000 kilometers", and in 1961 the last , "Argentina Austral - Latitude South", which includes this fantastic panoramic view of Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, with just 5000 inhabitants at the time.


By Abel Alexander President of the Iberoamerican Society for the History of Photography.



LHM
AUTHOR KIRCHHOFF, HERBERT
ITEM 1

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