Lot 18 Nα

The town of Venice pertained to those travel destinations that Heinrich Kühn repeatedly visited in order to capture them in his photographs. It might have been the town's atmosphere and in particular the light that attracted the photographer, since these elements fit perfectly into his cosmos of pictures. His large-format gum bichromates, created in the late 1890s, resemble impressionistic studies rather than conventional photographs. The focus lies not on the faithful reproduction of what has been seen, but on the atmosphere and the mood perceived by the photographer at that moment.
The gaze wanders across the softly rippling water, reflecting the boats that dominate the foreground of the picture in the gentle waves, and then continues to the Bacino di San Marco to the Doge's Palace and the campanile of St. Mark's Basilica. Their delicate silhouettes separate the water from the sky, which constitutes a greater part of the picture as an immobile, uniform surface forming an exciting contrast to the dynamic surface of the water. Kühn sets strong accents with the dark contrast of the barque with the two oars on the left and the sailing boat on the right, whose diagonal lines of oars and masts cause the composition to oscillate as if in interaction with the curved reflections on the waves. Kühn positions himself entirely in the tradition of 19th century veduta painting, which focused less on the exact depiction of architecture but rather on the reproduction of idyllic attractions and genre-like details.
In 1911, the publisher Alfred Stieglitz dedicated an issue of the journal Camera Work to his colleague and friend Heinrich Kühn. The fact that this view of Venice was also included in the journal testifies to the particular esteem in which both photographers held this motif, which is now presented here as a representative rubber print.