Harald Boockmann

Harald Boockmann (German, 1932–1967) studied in Saarbrücken with Otto Steinert from 1951 to 1954 (as Steinert’s darkroom assistant in 1953–54) and worked as a photographer at the art history department of the University of Saarbrücken from 1954. From 1963 on he lectured on “fotografik” at Saarbrücken’s Staatliche Schule für Kunst und Handwerk. In starkly graphic, overall black-and-white structures, his photographic artwork achieved a manifest alienation of the visible world by means of light. He participated in the third subjektive fotografie exhibition and showed his work with Steinert and students in 1958–59. His suicide in 1967 ended a rich experimental phase that began in the 1950s.