Arnold Genthe

Arnold Genthe ( born January 8, 1869 in Berlin, † August 9, 1942 in New York City ) was a German American photographer and philologist. He was mainly known for his photographs of the destroyed city of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake, as well as by its own unique photographic impressions of the original Chinatown before the disaster, the photo-historical value.

Life and work

Arnold Genthe was the son of Hermann Genthe (1838-1886) and Louise Zober. The father was a professor of Latin and Greek at school Berlinischen to the Grey Abbey. His grandfather was the writer Friedrich Wilhelm Genthe ( 1805-1866 ).

Genthe followed in training his father. In 1894 he received his doctorate in philology at the Friedrich -Schiller- University of Jena, where he was known by Adolph Menzel, a cousin of his mother. 1895 was followed by an invitation Genthe in San Francisco for two years to teach as a teacher. To capture the impressions of the vibrant city, and bought a camera and taught himself photography at. Genthe had a great interest in the local Chinese population and began to operate photographic studies in Chinatown: he photographed children, old people, dealers or addicts of opium dens; sometimes he hid to get his camera around natural, candid shots or to its photo opportunities not to scare. Sometimes he removed signs of Western culture from the images by she cut or deleted.

In the late 1890s he successfully participated in several exhibitions on the West Coast. In 1897 he opened his own photo studio and began to work independently. Genthes reputation grew quickly as an excellent portrait photographer and as soon counted contemporary actresses likes of Sarah Bernhardt or Nance O'Neil to its customers but also writers and members of the Boheme as Jack London, Frank Norris or Mary Hunter Austin.

Genthes photo studio as well as his entire estate was destroyed in the earthquake of April 1906, only the negatives of Chinatown, which were stored in a bank vault, were spared. Shortly after the quake Genthe got a new camera and documented the effects of the disaster. These images and more than 200 photographs from the original Chinatown have photo-historical value.

1908 Genthe moved to New York, where he was again recognized as a portrait photographer. In Genthes New York studio, among other impressive portraits of Greta Garbo emerged even before it was internationally known and suspected to have decisively promoted with the career of the actress.

Furthermore, Genthe recorded as a specialist from the dance photography and made numerous recordings of famous dancers such as Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis and Anna Pavlova on. These photographs have been published in 1916 in the works The Book of Dance. In addition, the photographer, the Autochrome process, an early color photography process use.

Arnold Genthe died in 1942 at the age of 73 years in New York of a heart attack. His extensive photographic estate he bequeathed to the Library of Congress.

Bibliography

Publications by Arnold Genthe

Monographs

• Genthe 's Photographs of San Francisco 's Old Chinatown. Selection and text by John Kuo Wei Tchen, Dover Publications, New York, 1984, ISBN 0-486-24592-6

Swell

• Photograph of the 20th century. Bags, Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-8228-8818-4, pp. 197f.