engagement with photography, Peterhans saw only
problems of illusion. In contrast to Moholy-Nagy,
Peterhans was interested in promoting photography
practice and pushed photography toward typogra-
phy, advertising, and building construction.
Of greater significance than his own photo-
graphic work, which encompassed the photography
of architecture, landscapes, still-lifes, and portraits,
was his work as an instructor. He promoted the
development of applied art and sought to fight
back the new ‘‘academicism, fed on the dilettant-
ism’’ of the avant-garde (Peterhans 1930, 140). His
concept of education consciously worked against
the improvisational application of photography as
a means of self-expression and self-staging. He saw
his work more in line with the objectivity of Albert
Renger-Patzsch, Paul Outerbridge, Jr., and Edward
Weston than with the Bauhaus modernism of
Moholy-Nagy’s circle (noted in a letter from 1952
written by Otto Steinert). In the first American
appreciation of Peterhans that appeared in 1931,
Harry Alan Potamkin compared Peterhans with
his fellow German photographer Renger-Patzsch.
His photographs, like those of Renger-Patzsch, dis-
play a striving for technical perfection, working to
make clear the finest subtleties of an object’s mate-
rial characteristics and the effects created by light-
ing. Peterhans thought the special expressive qualities
of photography were a process of precisely detailing
objects with halftones. In a similar vein, he categori-
cally condemned the use of stark black and white
contrasts. Instead he sought to represent the surface
attraction of the most varied materials by means of
nuanced tonal subtleties. Even in his portrait photo-
graphy he aims to probe the texture of hair, skin,
and textiles.
But his works also possess abstract–surreal
themes and ironic subtleties. His still-lifes, which
represent the most unique aspect of his work, dis-
play this in the greatest measure. The arrangement
in his still-lifes of objects that seem randomly col-
lected introduces a playful behavior with the surface
reality of the photographic world of images. The
titles of such photo assemblages stimulate the free
play of form associations and infuse them with ico-
nographic significance. Such poetic echoes extend
far beyond the reach of the simple realism ofNeue
Sachlichkeit(New Objectivity); indeed, the work of
his colleague, Paul Klee, even served to motivate
him. In any case, these forays were always incidental
to him. In his programmatic essay from 1930 he
focuses on formal and technical problems and
never discusses any conceptual questions of the
medium. Peterhans began his theoretical master-
piece in the United States in relationship to his
teaching, but he never completed it. In the tradition
of neo-Kantianism, he wanted to root aesthetic cri-
teria in objective criteria that were scientifically valid
and thus make pedagogical instruction more acces-
sible. The methods that he developed as an instruc-
tor in Chicago became very influential in the years
that followed, and had a profound influence espe-
cially on American postwar photographic practice.
WolfgangBrueckle
Seealso: Auerbach, Ellen; Bauhaus; Formalism;
History of Photography: Interwar Years; Moholy-
Nagy, La ́szlo ́; Photography in Germany and Aus-
tria; Renger-Patzsch, AlbertBiography
Born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 12 June 1897.
Graduated High School in Dresden, Germany, 1916.
Afterwards military service. Prisoner of war, 1918. Stu-
dies at the mechanical engineering departments of the
Technical University of Saxony in Dresden, Germany,
1918; studied in machine construction and philosophy
in Munich, Germany, as well as a course of study in
philosophy and mathematics in Go ̈ttingen, Germany,
until 1924. Training in photography reproduction and
printing processes at the Academy of Graphic and
Book Arts in Leipzig, Germany, 1925–1926. Worked
as a freelance industrial and portrait photographer in
Berlin in 1927. Director of the photography course
work at the Dessau and Berlin Bauhaus, 1929–1933.
1933 instructor at Werner Graeff’s photography school
in Berlin and then at the Reimann-Ha ̈ring Schule, Ber-
lin, Germany, 1935–1937. Emigrated to the United
States and adopted U.S. citizenship, 1938. Thereafter
instructor of theory in the architecture department of
the Armour Institute in Chicago. Additional instruc-
tion in the Committee on Social Thought at the Uni-
versity of Chicago, 1945–1947. In 1953 guest instructor
at the Hochschule fu ̈r Gestaltung in Ulm, Germany,- Instructor at the Hochschule fu ̈r Bildende Ku ̈nste
in Hamburg, Germany, 1959–1960. Member of the
Gesellschaft deutscher Lichtbildner, 1928. Died in Stet-
ten near Stuttgart, Germany, 12 April 1960.
Individual Exhibitions
1929 Bauhaus; Dessau, Germany
1943 Photographs by Walter Peterhans; Art Institute of
Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
1967 Elementarunterricht und Photographische Arbeiten;
Bauhaus-Archiv, Ernst-Ludwig-Haus, Darmstadt, Ger-
many
1969 Werkkunstschule; Krefeld, Germany
1970 Neue Sammlung;Mu ̈nchen, Germany
1976 University of New Mexico; Albuquerque, New Mexico
1977 Sander Gallery; Washington, D.C.
1981 Neue Galerie; Linz, Austria
1983 Sander Gallery; New York, New York
1993 Museum Folkwang; Essen, Germany, and traveled
through GermanyPETERHANS, WALTER