Untitled (Ms Schürmann, Negative), after 1925

About the Work

Like the art photographers at the turn of the century, Hugo Erfurth relied on the painterly effect of soft focus. Flowing contours and soft colour gradients in the positive consciously make use of stylistic devices of pictorialism, at the same time he positions his model before a monochrome background and shows a reduced detail as is characteristic of representations in the style of Neue Sachlichkeit. In the negative the values of dark and light are inverted and the work seems abstract and evokes surrealism: the eyes of the sitter stare demonically at the onlooker, while the rest of her face is obscured by darkness.