Fantasy and Dream

Heinz Hajek-Halke

Johanna Breede presents Heinz Hajek-Halke (1898 – 1983), one of the great photography pioneers of the 1920s and early 1930s in Germany. He was one of the first to experiment with superimposed images and montages, to leave the documentary aspect of photography behind him and enter the world of the unreal and the ambiguous. The face of a clock is projected onto a face; an oversized female nude appears in the middle of a street scene. With alienations such as those in Üble Nachrede (Slander) or the famous Schwarz-Weissen Akt (Black and White Nude), Hajek-Halke not only demonstrates optical ingenuity but also evokes an abundance of associations and opens up new forms of perception. With his imaginative play on meaning and deeper meaning, Hajek-Halke conquered the illustrated magazines and journals of the roaring twenties, whose hunger for the unexpected and unusual is quite comparable to our present-day way of seeing. Thus we recognise the artist Hajek-Halke as a pioneer of virtual worlds of images whose powerful compositions are still spellbinding today.