Katharina Behrend's archive shows us a picture of a woman from a well-to-do, intellectual milieu in the first quarter of the twentieth century. From the moment she began to take photographs with her father's 9x12 camera in 1904, she kept a detailed diary from which she emerges as an energetic woman with liberal, modern opinions. She also kept registers documenting all her photographs. Not only her subjects but also data such as shutter-speed, aperture, location, names of the photographed More »
Katharina Behrend's archive shows us a picture of a woman from a well-to-do, intellectual milieu in the first quarter of the twentieth century. From the moment she began to take photographs with her father's 9x12 camera in 1904, she kept a detailed diary from which she emerges as an energetic woman with liberal, modern opinions. She also kept registers documenting all her photographs. Not only her subjects but also data such as shutter-speed, aperture, location, names of the photographed persons, weather and light conditions were painstakingly noted.
Katharina Behrend's archive is divided into two parts. The first covers the period up to 1913, during which she lived in Hanover. The second part applies to her life in the Netherlands, notably the period from 1913 to 1929. In 1913 she married a Dutchman called Arij Haentjens, director of the machine factory Monhemius and Haentjens in Leiden. After she started taking pictures on film rolls with a Zeiss Ikon Ikonta (4.5 x 6 cm) in 1930 her work became less interesting and she abandoned the registers.
In addition to pictures of her family and friends at home, her travels in the Netherlands and abroad feature prominently in the archive. In November 1950 she went to Algeria at the invitation of an uncle who was consul there. She took evocative pictures of temple ruins in Timgad, a caravan of camels, a casbah and a nomad encampment in Batna. In 1911 she photographed a children's hospital in Hanover where her sister Else was matron. Between 1913 and 1915 she took industrial photographs in her husband's steam engine factory. Striking items in her archive are her nude pictures of herself and her friends, who were members of the FKK, the German nudist society. « Less
