May 08, 2025 - Sale 2703
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Sale 2703 - Lot 236

Price Realized: $ 10,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 7,000 - $ 10,000
GERMAINE KRULL (1897-1985)
A portfolio entitled Métal [Metal]. 1928.
Complete with 64 images. Preface by Florent Fels. Photogravures, the images measuring approximately 9¼x6¾ inches (23.5x17.1 cm.), and the reverse, each with Krull's printed credit, the portfolio title, publisher's credit, and plate number on recto. 4to-sized photo-pictorial folder designed by M. Tchimoukow (Louis Bonin) (French, 1906-1979) with a ribbon tie; with the colophon; contents loose as issued. FIRST EDITION. Paris: Librairie des Arts Décoratifs

Germaine Krull studied photography in Munich, where she opened her photo studio in 1918. She made a living as a commercial photographer, with a focus on fashion, nudes, and portraits. First in Munich and Berlin, then in Amsterdam and Paris, where she moved in 1924. She was a groundbreaking photographer who moved away from the traditional visual rhetoric and embraced the ‘new vision' movement of the 1920s, which praised the use of foregrounded experimental techniques.

With her photo book ‘Métal' published in 1928, she went one step further by adopting the principles of film montage. The book is composed of 64 unbound collotypes, with each sheet credited and numbered but not captioned, and depicts machines and other industrial subjects Krull encountered during her travels in European cities, such as Paris, Marseille, and Rotterdam. To that extent, it exemplifies her singular style in creating new perspectives, which emphasized shooting from extreme angles and unusual viewpoints to capture unexpected images. 

Her most well-known shots of the Eiffel Tower, for instance, demonstrate her ability in exploring montage principles and making the subject not easily recognizable at first sight. A few of these photographs were published in an article entitled ‘Dans toute sa force' (In full force) written by Florent Fels (who also wrote the introduction of Metal) and published in Vu Magazine in 1928, the first major French illustrated weekly. The magazine would launch her career in photojournalism and reveal how Krull's experimental techniques paid tribute magnificently to the decade's effervescence.
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