Towards a (new) objectivity: Hermann Muthesius, photography and the English house

Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth century, the binding of photography to architectural debates in Germany was symptomatic of a larger fascination with the aesthetic potential of machine culture that had developed even before 1900. The public deployment and exchange of ideas through polemical texts, propagandist journals and touring exhibitions by founding members of the German Werkbund in the pre-war years celebrated the potential of mass production, which was publicised in part to serve larger societal aims.The Werkbund founding member Hermann Muthesius’ early writings incorporate numerous specifically commissioned photographs in a polemical way to present English Aestheticism as a precursor to modernism, reflecting his progressive approach to both practice and pedagogy. This essay examines Muthesius’ use of photographs in his early publications, which reflect his enthusiasm for photography as a ‘pertinent’ medium for instituting reform.While The English House (1904–05) remains his best-known and most-cited work, Muthesius’ reliance on photographic imagery for the discursive impact of his study has been largely overlooked. His publications from this period constitute some of the earliest examples of the systematic and directed used of photographs by any architect of the time. They signal not only the shift in how photographs were being appropriated for publication, but also how Sachlichkeit could designate tectonic, visual, and cultural principles.