PETER BOCK-SCHROEDER (1913-2001)

Stalingrad 1956 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

www.bock-schroeder.com

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Disturbed Landscapesby Peter Bock-Schroeder (1964)

Here my problem begins, having to find something tosay about landscape photography. Geographical pictorialsare the pet hate of every editor in chief of every major illus-trated current-affairs publication. There is no such thing as alandscape photographer at a magazine. And that is why forme landscape photography is something like a flight from thepictorial feature I am usually told to do. But if it has to belandscape, then at least make it "photo journalist’s land-scape," as one of the most accomplished magazine makersused to say. He draws a line at your common, garden-varietylandscape photos, which means not only sunsets, moonrises,fields and forests, but every view one might consider "pretty."And yet it is still the best escape for me from my job. I supposeI have to take a few steps back to make that more under-standable: Where does my fascination for photography comefrom and how did I become a photo journalist?

The advantage I was born with was probably a good eye,which has enabled me to enjoy an excellent photographiccareer. A little further down the road, a friend of the family,who believed to have discovered a visual talent in me, took

In 1964, the editors of Quick, the groundbreaking German photo news-magazine, published the work of a dozen of its leading contributors. Each of thephoto journalists included in the volume, Report Der Reporter, were invited todiscuss their art in an accompanying essay. Among the photographers highlight-ed was Peter Bock-Schroeder, who vividly chronicled life on the far-flung fringesof the post war world in his journeys as a foreign correspondent for Stern andRevue magazines, as well as Quick. Bock-Schroeder’s wide-ranging travels tookhim from the palace of the exiled German Kaiser Wilhelm II in Doorn,Netherlands, to remote and impoverised villages of native peoples in the junglesof Peru and the Alaskan tundra. Bock-Schroeder’s camera captured some of thelast moments in the disappearing lives of salmon fishermen in Oregon, the indige-nous peoples of Alaska, Bolivia and Peru and the displaced peasants of SovietRussia. In regions as distant from one another as the war-ravaged cities of hisown Germany, the remote mining towns of Bolivia and the devastated formerbattleground at Stalingrad, Bock-Schroeder chronicled worlds in collision. Thescenes he framed in his camera lens were landscapes, he wrote. But they werenot the pretty pictures of “willows by the river or beeches in the fog” that he wasafter, but rather the landscapes of a world violently “disturbed” by man.

- Steve Dougherty

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me to one of Berlin's most renowned photo studios, AtelierBinder on Kurfürstendamm, run by Frau von Stengel. Thetuition fee was 150 Reichsmarks a month, and one could con-sider oneself privileged to be an apprentice in this very wellmanaged studio. That didn't save anyone from having havingto take the so-called taste test though, me included.Fortunately I passed. It perhaps deserves mention that thestudio had already shaped colleagues with such great namesas Erich Balg, Sonja Georgi, Hubs Flöter, FriedrichAschenbräuch and Jo Niczky. Anyway, in the time that fol-lowed I was rotated around the various stations, practicingmy skills at retouching negatives, then positives, playing thepeek-a-boo clown for children's portraits or even going to buythe bread rolls for the boss. He then recognised that my tal-ent might go further than these responsibilities and advisedme to go to a school for photography.

So it was that after a few months at Atelier Binder, I reg-istered for the Bräuhaus school in Berlin, where the well-known photographer Erich Balg taught. The little technicalknow-how I have, I owe to him. For example, one of his schoolexercises was to take a photo of Brandenburg gate as no onehad ever seen it before, using only a very rudimentary cam-era. Yes, a new way of seeing something that had alreadybeen photographed millions of times. I took my shot of it look-ing between the legs of the police there, an unusual perspec-tive at the time, and got a good grade.

While attending that schoolI went on a field trip toHolland, where I first dis-covered my love of land-scape photography. I wasfascinated by the vastnessand cleanliness of the coun-try. Snow-white cloud for-mations on the blue hori-zon, children with clogs ontheir feet, that's how I sawthe island of Volendam. Itwas the first feature I waspaid for.

“Travel is the best education for a photographer.”

“I was married to my camera”

Volendam Holland, 1936 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

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After two years of school my journeyman period began. I went to Sweden, England and Belgium, big trips in pre-wartimes, and they gave me so much, both for my personal devel-opment and for my photography. Travel is the best education for a photographer. I was able to experiment andshoot however I felt like. I had time, there were no "musts",and earning a living wasn't an issue. I was married to mycamera, and of my entire career, these wander years were thetime I enjoyed the most. The photos I took during those yearsof travel were my best.

But back to the photo jour-nalist’s landscape. The wayI see it, you can find thisbreed of landscape any-where. It isn't dependent onany given light or season.Squalid old X-street inDublin is just as much partof the landscape as are thetypical "islands-of-green"pics. For me, the pipelines inthe desert of Talara in thenorth of Peru are muchmore symbolic than the

admittedly highly picturesque scenes in the oil city Talar. Ofcourse, on that job I tried to capture the special atmosphereof this hot desert town with its stunningly beautiful Creolewomen and the lazing Indios that contrasted so wonderfullywith the feudal American country club with swimming pool.But nonetheless, those pipelines leading off into eternity stillleft more of an impression on me.

For Alaska the commission was to shoot an extensivepictorial about the German emigrants there and the willing-ness of this north-westernmost point of the American conti-nent to defend itself with military means. A visit to a radarstation in Alaska brought considerable difficulties with it. Forunderstandable reasons I was checked over any number of

“The landscape deserves to be photographed

the way it presents itself to us.”

Dublin 1956 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

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times by various militaryofficials before the permitwas issued. But as appeal-ing as the job seemed, justas disappointing was whatthe place had to offer froman optical point of view. Theactual function of this kindof radar station, known asthe Green Eye (or was itblue or red?), is quiteimpossible to capture with acamera. What to do? Afterconvincing myself at first

hand that the food andaccommodations for thesehand-picked soldiers wereexcellent, if not necessarilymy taste, I trotted aroundthe near surroundings,always a little worried Imight break one of therules, and in doing so sud-denly discovered a certainangle from which to docu-ment the contrast betweenthe endless, barren expanseof the tundra and the ultra-modern military base. This

photo shows the isolation and bleakness of the landscape inthe midst of which the futuristic military defence facility,which itself doesn't deliver much in the way of visual high-lights, stands. The way I see it, this picture epitomises theterm "journalist landscape" particularly well. An amateurlandscape photographer probably wouldn't think of takingphotos of this uninviting scenery, though perhaps a spymight.

“The photo journalist’s landscape has to be more than just a pretty picture;

it has to make a statement”

“What counts is the perception, the eye.”

Peru 1953 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

Radar Station,Alaska 1959 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

The same is true of the photo of Mamai Hill nearStalingrad that became so famous in the war. Since Stalingave the order to completely rebuild the city of Stalingrad in1945 for reasons of prestige, it was difficult to find anything reminiscent of perhaps the greatest tragedy of World War IIin the city. I had expected to find ruins, but despite my bestefforts I could only discover buildings in the customary con-fectionary style. There was an old observatory presented tothe city as a gift from East Germany, in which I saw the orig-inal Russian film Stalingrad. Deeply stirred by this stagger-ing documentary, I took a taxi straight to the tractor factorythat had been so bitterly fought over, and then to Mamai Hill,which had attained the tragic fame of having soaked up theblood of thousands of soldiers from both armies. It is astound-ing: nothing there reminds you of the huge battle except a

tank turret on a stonepedestal and an inscription.For me, that photo isStalingrad. Sure, there aremuch more scenic shots youcan take of the Volga, butthis is the way it appearedto me, a little grey and eerie,because I knew what a sig-nificant role it had played inthe winter of 42/43 when itwas frozen over.

After returning fromRussia I was often asked

what it was "really like over there", whether the taxis wereold or new, if there were omnibuses and hairdressers,whether there were fashion stores, photo studios, friendlypolicemen, popsicles and all that, and I tried to answer allthese questions to the best of my ability. But there was onequestion that was posed particularly insistently: What arethe Russians like? Are they polite and friendly, charming orgruff, are they open-minded? After thinking about it for sometime, I always only came up with one answer: that the humanbeing is shaped by the surroundings in which he lives. Andthat is particularly true of Russia. For me, the shot of thecrowd at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition in Moscow is,as strange as it may sound, a landscape photograph. Just

“It is the landscape altered by man thatrepeatedly gives us something new”

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Stalingrad 1956 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

look at the faces. That is Russia the way we imagine it: sol-diers, farmers, cities. There's a lot of Khrushchev in thosepeople.

You don't need special cameras or highly expensive pho-tographic equipment for landscape photography. Whatcounts is the perception, the eye. Nor do you have to travelhalf way around the world to take landscape photos. A streetyou see every day of your life and that never seemed to be ofany particular interest can suddenly become a fascinatingmotif if you really look at it closely.

Just as tastes have changedin the art of painting overthe decades, they have alsochanged in photography,and especially in landscapephotography. I always try tocapture something extra inthe landscape, because as Isaid, the photo journalist’slandscape is not willows bythe river or beeches in thefog, it is much more a dis-turbed landscape. Just asthe landscape forms the

people, and I could cite numerous examples of this, peoplealso put their mark on the landscape. They erect trams andgondolas in the most untouched mountain ranges, theydrown entire districts in man-made reservoirs, they destroythe harmony of rolling hills with mines and pit frames, I couldgo on and on. For us, the engineered landscape has alreadybecome an accustomed sight. So we needn't go looking for alittle piece of earth free of all traces of human activity, for itis the landscape altered by man that repeatedly gives ussomething new, that offers us fascinating motifs. Of coursethere is still the lovely natural landscape. It is the same onewe have known for centuries, but it has gained a sterile touchnow. The photo journalist’s landscape has to be more thanjust a pretty picture; it has to make a statement.

“These images harbour absolutely no tendency to be cliched”

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Moscow 1956 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

www.bock-schroeder.com

The subject of the photograph, be it in the foreground, centreor background, should be in focus. Take any city street, whichcan look very romantic and at the same time very realisticwith its oil smears in the early morning sunlight. A forest oftelevision antennas can completely alter the impression of asleepy small town. These images harbour no tendency to becliched, as can so easily be the case with floral landscape pho-tography.

I can't and I don't want to be a teacher for amateurphotographers. My personal opinion is: Who "sees" well willalso be able to take an appealing landscape photo. That isto say a photo that is not melodramatic but realistic, notcute and playful but uncontrived and honest. The land-scape deserves to be photographed the way it presentsitself to us.

-Peter Bock-Schroeder 1964

Contact:

Jans Bock-Schroeder0033 (6) 84 59 11 59

mail@ bock-schroeder.com© 2010 The Peter Bock-Schroeder Estate

Peter Bock-Schroeder, 1952.