Frankfurt. City of skyscrapers, city on the river Main, city of art and museums, city of Goethe, Frankfurt School, Frankfurt cuisine, city centre, old town, apple cider and green sauce. Concrete and glass, half-timbered houses and green belt. An international city with strong contrasts. But what was the city like 100 years ago, in the 1920s? People were building, partying, many things were tried out and, above all, there was photography - and women were often at the forefront.
The novel Zebras in the Snow by Florian Wacker and the current exhibition City of Women Photographers at the Historisches Museum Frankfurt are both about women photographers. A double reason to introduce you to both.
Zebras in the Snow
Frankfurt am Main 1927. Ella and Franziska are best friends. The two young women dream of freedom and artistic success. Ella, who comes from a modest, lower middle-class background, wants to become a photographer. Her parents, who want her to study maths and see her as the hope of the family, have no sympathy for their daughter's passion for photography. Ella's friend Franziska has it a little easier. She has no financial worries and also enjoys the greatest freedom when it comes to choosing a career. Her uncle and aunt, with whom she lives, enable her to study art at the renowned Städelschule, where famous artists such as Max Beckmann can also be found. The two friends could not be more different in temperament. While Ella is plagued by insecurity, self-doubt and remorse towards her parents, Franziska seems to have no such worries at all. She lives for the day, is erratic, impulsive, hungry for life and unwilling to compromise. When Ella, through a chance acquaintance, gains access to Ernst May's architectural circle and finally dares to take the leap into independence, this leads to a break with Franziska, who has now joined a communist group. For her, Ernst May epitomises the bourgeois life she is trying to escape. Both women follow their own paths in life until they meet again under dramatic circumstances.
In addition to the story about the two friends, the novel follows a second storyline. 1997 in New York City. Franziska's son Richard, a 50-year-old museum curator, accidentally comes across a previously unknown photograph of his mother, which shows her at a communist demonstration in the early 1930s. Fascinated by the photograph, he tries to find out more about how it was taken and about his mother's life in Germany, which she had kept quiet about all her life. Seventy years later, he returns to Franziska's home town of Frankfurt and embarks on an exciting search through the past, which holds a few surprises in store for him.
Zebras in the Snow is a novel about friendship, self-discovery, the future and the past, about forgetting and rediscovering. Art, architecture and photography and a metropolis in a state of transformation are always at the centre of the narrative. Alongside Ernst May, we meet other celebrities such as the architects Martin Elsässer and Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, the photographers Ilse Bing, Grete Leistikow, Nini and Carry Hess and many more. The intoxicating spirit of the 1920s is reawakened when we spend a wild night with Ella in the Malepartus dance club:
New Year's Eve at Malepartus. Life overflows in the robber's den, slithers across the dance floor, clusters around the tables, foams over in the glasses, lurches, slurs and shrieks. The place is packed, the waiters are sweating their way to the tables, wearing golden crowns and white tails, the musicians are playing their heads red*.
In addition to roaring nights, we also experience quieter and more thoughtful moments in which the role of photography as a modern, artistic medium is discussed. The question arises as to whether photography is art at all, but for Ella this is beyond doubt. For her, photography is more than just pressing the shutter button. It is a subjectively chosen section of the world, capturing a moment, a movement, a mood. Light, perspective, aperture and lens also contribute to turning a photograph into an individual work of art. In Ella's case, the camera is not only an instrument for creating art, but also a symbol of independence, through which Ella manages to break away from her parental home and go her own, self-determined way. Ella realises that photography can also be political when she and Ernst May's group are asked to document a new housing estate in Russia and get into conversation with a sceptical local:
[...] a picture is just a moment. [...] You can shape the truth with your camera by choosing a specific detail.**
Exhibition: City of Women Photographers
If you are now curious about the novel or the topic of women photographers, I can highly recommend the exhibition City of Women Photographers Frankfurt 1844 - 2024 at the Historical Museum. From the beginnings of photography to modern times, works by a wide variety of female photographers are on display, all of which have a connection to the Main-metropolis. On display are portraits of society and artists, architecture, fashion and advertising photographs, urban impressions of a constantly growing city, as well as everyday scenes and socially critical photographs and collages by 40 female photographers, some of which are being presented to a wider audience for the first time.
Many of the artists and themes featured in Zebras in the Snow can be seen again in the exhibition, making it a wonderful accompaniment to the exhibition. You can still see City of Women Photographers at the Historisches Museum in Frankfurt until 22 September 2024.
I hope you now feel like taking a trip to Frankfurt or embarking on a mental journey through my hometown with Florian Wacker's novel, in any case I hope you enjoy it!
See you next time!
Yours, Marleen Tigersee
All quotes from Florian Wacker's novel were taken from the German edition and were translated:
*Florian Wacker, Zebras im Schnee, Berlin/München 2024, S. 94
**ebd., S. 225
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