Surreal, Sexy, Sinister: the
photographs of Marta Astfalck-Vietz
Curated by Dr. Katherine Tubb, Department of History of Art,
University of Glasgow
24 September - 26 October 2012, Ground floor corridor,
Mackintosh building
Surreal, Sexy, Sinisteris the first solo exhibition of Berlin
photographer Marta Astfalck-Vietz (1901-1994) outside Germany. The
21 reproductions featured showcase a range of her personal
responses to the social, sexual and political transformations that
shaped the German metropolis after World War One. Inspired by film
and dance, they are all mediated realities in which human figures
imply the figurative: a black dancer embraces a white woman,
stirring Germany's fears and fascinations about blackness and the
primitive; a woman's decapitated head conjures gutter-press reports
of the grisly stigmata borne by victims of Berlin's seedy
underworld. Comprising mostly self-portraits, this show is a rich
microcosm of creative registers: courage, black humour and sexual
passion. In Astfalck-Vietz's erotic images, domestic objects take
on a powerful fantasy life - with a piece of lace she becomes a
high society lady, a remote goddess, a masked seductress. The
erotic atmosphere in these photographs encompasses dream and
loneliness, joie de vivre and the mourning of lost love. Berlin,
oft mythologised as a mercurial woman, is reflected in this
romantic, bittersweet array of female fortunes; through it, Marta
Astfalck-Vietz makes the city her own.
Almost all of her archive was lost when her Berlin home was
bombed in 1943. What remains was discovered by the curator Janos
Frecot in 1989 and is now housed at the Berlinische Galerie in
Berlin. Sadly, her original photographs are in bad condition and
rarely travel. This show, however, is a precious opportunity to see
reproduction prints. These works are a valuable addition to the
history of Berlin's avant-garde, but they have wider significance.
They add a new facet to the practice of female self-portraiture in
photography. Like Lady Hawarden before her and Cindy Sherman after,
Marta Astfalck-Vietz is model, stylist and creative director in
images that provocatively examine the construction of identity. As
she once put it:Only when your self is no longer visible, may you
be as you are.
