Abstract
Photographic book production in Germany in the interwar period reveals immense inconsistencies and divergent trends. Predominant themes involve a shifting discourse between a pessimistic nostalgia for an apparently disappearing, slower pace of life and a more optimistic, technological utopianism, with dividing lines set between the old and the new, the urban and the rural, and between ‘progress’ and ‘tradition’. As the National Socialist era approached, however, there was a largely successful assimilation of these disparate, antagonistic elements of German culture in an attempt to create a sense of continuity rather than disruption. Collectively, photographic books provide a register of conflicting, contemporary concerns and anxieties. This article investigates how their variant discourses point to the complex realities of German interwar cultural politics.
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