Alois Löcherer

Publication 1980

Edited by Rudolf Kicken
Published by Galerie Rudolf Kicken & R.K. Books, Cologne 1980
Essay by Hans-Christian Adam
4 pages with 2 illustrations

 

This unique collection of nearly 80 early German calotype portraits is attributed to the Bavarian photographer Alois Löcherer (1815–1863). Based in Munich for all his life he is one of the very few German photographers who worked with calotype and salted paper processes exclusively and extensively from 1847 to 1852, then continued to work with wet collodium. Löcherer is well known for one of the earliest and most beautiful examples of photo reportage: the construction, transport and erection of the 100 feet tall ‘Bavaria’ statue in Munich. Löcherer is also known for an album of famous contemporaries, ‘Photographisches Album der Zeitgenossen,’ 1853. Though Löcherer’s portraits are not definitely characteristic in style, he shows good craftsmanship in these unidentified images of seemingly upper middle class citizens. Löcherer also became the teacher of other notable photographers, for example Josef Albert (1825–1886) and Franz Hanfstaengl (1804–1877). His work is considered to be extremely rare, and is only to be found in the collections of a few institutions. This publication constitutes a catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition with the same title at Galerie Rudolf Kicken, Albertusstraße 47-49, Cologne, Nov. 29, 1980 – Feb. 27, 1981.