2016 THESES DOCTORAL

Historians of photography have generally represented colonial photography as a predictable and oppressive genre. Taking the Belgian Congo (1885–1960) as its subject, this dissertation argues that the medium has also been the instrument of a rapprochement between metropole and colony, not only in the hands of Europeans, but also in those of Africans, as the consequence of a long-lasting reaction against the worldwide diffusion of the so-called “Congo atrocities” pictures (1904–1908). Chapter One explores this pivotal episode in the history of photography. The exceptional violence of these images prompted the counter-development of a representational ideal—the colonie modèle—that was deployed at two historical moments: first, in the interwar period with the illustrated magazine L’Illustration Congolaise, and after World War II with the governmental photographic service InforCongo. In Chapter Two and Three, the studies of L’Ilustration Congolaise and InforCongo trace how this colonial rapprochement was encouraged by increasingly representing Congolese décor and subjects as the mirrored image of Belgium, until it peaked in the late colonialism’s concept of a “Belgian-Congolese community.” Chapters Four and Five turn to Congolese family albums and queries how Africans’ self-representations sought to integrate—or not—the model colony. Based on research carried out in Belgium and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this dissertation is the first in-depth study of a history of photography in the Congo and the first comprehensive history of photography within a single colonial regime. Similarly, this project presents the first in-depth study of African family albums, examined in the multiple aspects that make up the significance of the photographic subject’s experience. Photography in the Belgian Congo developed in three contexts: European, African and colonial, which overlap but have usually been explored separately. This dissertation aims to weave together these different aspects, fully appreciating and integrating the vivid racial tensions inherent in a colonial system, but ultimately aspiring to complicate the visual colonial relations materialized in photography by taking into consideration parameters of assimilation and collaboration, co-authorship, or again, seduction.

Professor Dr. hc L.Fritz Gruber was an initiator and creative genius of photography. He was the friend of famous photographers from August Sander and Ansel Adams to Sebastiano Salgado, from Man Ray to Cecil Beaton, from Henri Cartier Bresson to Bob Capa. He was the friend of photographic editors and publishers from Arthur Dalladay to Andor Kraszna Krausz , Bert Kepler and Roger Montel.

L.Fritz Gruber was born in Cologne on 7th June 1908 and went to School and University there. In 1932 he edited the newspaper Koelner Kurier which was closed down by the authorities and made him emigrate to London where he honed his journalistic skills, until just before the outbreak of war in 1939, when his sick mother recalled him to Germany, where he was trapped by the war, in which he was not eligible to fight, as a result of childhood illness.

During the war he was a studio portrait photographer and had a document-photocopying business in Minden. 1950, to compliment the technical and industrial trade-fair “Photokina”, he initiated the famous Photokina thematic cultural exhibitions, and created 300 in all until 1980. His innovations are countless, he got architects and designers, from Chargesheimer and Michael Sanders to Manfred Heiting and Swoboda to style his exhibitions and he produced their resplendent catalogues, which are now rare, historic, collectors’ items.. He travelled the world to bring new and old applications and manifestations of photography to his exhibitions and met and befriended the great and famous photographers in America, Europe and Asia. I met L. Fritz Gruber at the first international Photokina in 1951. He showed me around his exhibitions and then he came back to London for me to show him around my Festival of Britain. Since then we were best friends for 54 years and travelled and worked together.

He started to collect photographs when he was still at School and his vast, wonderful Gruber-Collection is now the pride of the Ludwig Museum in Cologne. In the 1950s he initiated and made films of still photographs; made early films for TV about photography and photographers, which broke new ground then and inspired the creation of photographic galleries and museums, and he initiated the DGPh, the German Photographic Society.

After his retirement from photokina in 1980, at the age of 72, he continued, right to the end, together with his wife Renate, his dynamic and restless quest for photography, writing articles, producing books and exhibitions, and collecting new and young photographer friends and their photographs. His London years had transformed him into an English gentleman. He was always of striking appearance, immaculately and fashionably dressed, and thus was a favourite subject for photographers, press and TV and was much honoured by them.



L. Fritz Gruber died in Cologne on 30th March 2005. The photogenic light that had illuminated and sparkled up his 96 years through, with and for photography, has finally flickered out. He is survived by his wife Renate and his daughters Anneli and Bettina, the video-artist.

Gertrude Fehr (1895 – 1996) was a German photographer.[1][2]

She studied photography in the workshop of Edward Wasow, and at the Bavarian School.

After her apprenticeship with Wasow she established a photography studio dedicated mainly to portraits and the theater.[1] Hitler's rise to power forced her to go to Paris, and while there with her husband she opened PUBLI-phot, a school of photography.[1] In Paris she began to use solarisation for her photographs.

When war began in Paris, she had to go to Switzerland, where she created the photography school of Fehr.

After the war, she went to Vevey, where she worked as a photography teacher for fifteen years; one of her students was Jeanloup Sieff.

Beginning in the 1960s she devoted herself to doing portraits as a freelance photographer. Some of her work is held in the National Gallery of Canada, and some is held in the Musée de l’Elysée.