Immaculately produced by French publisher Xavier Barral, this stunning
facsimile of Alfred Ehrhardt's masterpiece Das Watt makes this key
work of photobook history available to the public at long last.
Singled out in Martin Parr and Gerry Badger's The Photobook: A History
as a key example of early 20th-century abstraction, Ehrhard's striking
compositions highlight the geometric patterns in natural forms. His
formal stance and sequencing show the strong influence of his years at
the Bauhaus. Produced by Xavier Barral to an exacting standard with rich
blacks beautifully printed on high-quality paper, this facsimile volume
captures the magnificant densities of the original and is an important
addition to any photography book library
Alfred Ehrhardt (1901-1984) taught at the Bauhaus between 1928 and
1933 alongside scenographer Oskar Schlemmer and painters Josef Albers
and Wassily Kandinsky. Accused of Bolshevism in 1933 by the Nazis,
Erhardt was forced to leave the Bauhaus. At that time he was working in
painting, drawing and printmaking, but his exile precipitated a turn
toward photography and film, whose fundamentals he taught himself. In
1934, after leaving Germany, Ehrhardt produced his first photographic
reportage--a series of spare, enigmatic images taken on the windswept
sand dunes of the Curonian Spit along the Lithuanian-Russian border.
