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Otto Steinert

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Otto Steinert (12 July 1915 – 3 March 1978) was a German photographer.[1]

Life and work

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Born in Saarbrücken, Germany, Steinert was a medical doctor by profession and was self-taught[2] in photography. After World War II, he initially worked for the State School for Art and Craft (Staatliche Schule für Kunst und Handwerk, today HTW) in Saarbrücken.

Otto Steinert's photography is characterized by his opposition to straight photograph using experimental techniques that explore light, motion, and abstraction, often utilising the expressive potential of photographic blur. He frequently used long exposures, camera movement, and unconventional framing to transform ordinary subjects into dynamic, visually striking compositions.[3]

He was the founder of the fotoform photography group.[4][5]

From 1959, he taught at the Folkwang Hochschule design school in Essen, where he later died.

His archive is part of the photographic collection of the Museum Folkwang, Essen.

Steinert's conception of subjective photography also shaped postwar developments in Japan. Introduced there in 1954, his ideas informed the founding of the Japan Subjective Photography League in 1956 and the First International Subjective Photography Exhibition later that year, whose Steinert-curated international section briefly placed prewar avant-garde figures such as Shūzō Takiguchi and Kansuke Yamamoto alongside younger photographers including Kiyoji Ōtsuji, Ikkō Narahara, and Yasuhiro Ishimoto.[6][7][8][9][10]

Exhibitions

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  • Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany, 2015/2016[11]
  • 2019/2020: Ludwig Windstosser. Fotografie der Nachkriegsmoderne, Museum für Fotografie, Berlin
  • Photo Élysée, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2023 – Flou. Une histoire photographique / Blur. A Photographic History[12]

Publications

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  • Parisian Forms. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2008. Edited by Ute Eskildsen. ISBN 978-3865216243. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at Museum Folkwang, Essen.[13]

Collections

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Steinert's work is held in the following public collections:

References

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  1. ↑ Tate. "Otto Steinert". Tate. Retrieved 2019-11-12.
  2. ↑ O'Hagan, Sean (25 May 2008). "Sean O'Hagan reviews the Street and Studio photography exhibition at Tate Modern, London". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 2019-11-12 – via www.theguardian.com.
  3. ↑ "Blur. A Photographic History". Photo Élysée. Retrieved 2025-10-01.
  4. ↑ "besprechung fotoform und toni schneider". (in German)
  5. ↑ Feustel, Marc (2 May 2019). "Michael Wolf obituary". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-11-12 – via www.theguardian.com.
  6. ↑ "主観主義写真（主観的写真）" [Subjectivist Photography (Subjective Photography)]. artscape (in Japanese). Retrieved 2026-03-22.
  7. ↑ "Exhibiting "The End of Modern Photography": Ten Artists of Contemporary Japanese Photography and Fifteen Photographers Today". SFMOMA. Retrieved 2026-03-22.
  8. ↑ Kaneko, Ryūichi (2013). "The Position of Kansuke Yamamoto: Reexamining Japan's Modern Photography". In Keller, Judith; Maddox, Amanda (eds.). Japan's Modern Divide: The Photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto. Los Angeles: Getty Publications. p. 172. ISBN 9781606061329.
  9. ↑ Fujimura, Satomi (2022). "前衛写真の終焉" [The End of Avant-Garde Photography]. In Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (ed.). Avant-Garde Rising: The Photographic Vanguard in Modern Japan (in Japanese). Tokyo: Kokusho Kankokai. p. 195. ISBN 9784336073679.
  10. ↑ Stojković, Jelena (2020). Surrealism and Photography in 1930s Japan: The Impossible Avant-Garde. London: Routledge. p. 168. ISBN 9781788314053.
  11. ↑ "Otto Steinert". Museum Folkwang. Retrieved 2019-11-12.
  12. ↑ "Blur. A Photographic History". Musée de l’Élysée. Retrieved 2025-10-01.
  13. ↑ Museum Folkwang Essen; Eskildsen, Ute. Otto Steinert: Parisian forms. Göttingen; Essen: Steidl : Museum Folkwang. ISBN 9783865216243. OCLC 1110324709.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  14. ↑ "2 results for "Otto Steinert"". www.metmuseum.org. Retrieved 2019-11-12.
  15. ↑ "Otto Steinert". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2019-11-12.
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