Willi Ruge - Photographs New York Wednesday, October 12, 2022 | Phillips

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  • The two images offered here are part of a 1931 photo story conceived by photographer Willi Ruge for the popular picture magazine Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung. Ruge, who was a pilot and a certified parachutist, formulated the idea of a photographic essay that would document his own descent from an airplane to the ground in 1931. Ute Eskildsen's account of this photo shoot in her chapter ‘Willi Ruge and Fotoaktuell: Adventures for the Press’ in Object: Photo: Modern Photographs: The Thomas Walther Collection, reveals that it was a carefully choreographed production. Ruge was equipped with a camera and planned to photograph his descent as it happened. A second photographer in another plane, and a third on the ground, ensured that the event would be fully documented from a variety of vantage points. The full series, which was published in BIZ, as well as the Illustrated London News and several American magazines, shows Ruge’s leap from the plane as well as the tense expressions on the faces of the onlookers below. The images offered here document Ruge’s headfirst leap from the airplane captured by a colleague. The second was taken by Ruge at the moment his parachute opened, arresting his freefall. His captions reads, ‘It seemed to me as if some ruffian had suddenly grabbed me up by the collar of my coat and lifted me up: this was the decisive moment, because the pull showed that the parachute had unfolded and its braking begun.’  


    These two photographs bear full captions in English, and were licensed by the photographic publisher Underwood & Underwood for reproduction in Popular Science magazine in October of 1931. Even though Ruge was in the business of supplying photographs to the very active picture press of the day, surviving prints of this series are rare. Eskildsen recounts that Ruge’s archive was destroyed during an air raid on Berlin in 1943. With 15 photographs, the Thomas Walther Collection at The Museum of Modern Art has perhaps the largest number of prints from the series, including the images offered here.


    Ruge had made his reputation in the picture press of the 1920s and '30s. Equal parts daredevil and photographer, Ruge increasingly adopted a more experiential approach to his work, essentially putting the viewer in the center of the action. His photographs taken from the seat of a racecar, for instance, deliver a thrilling cocktail of speed and peril. He was an innovator in other ways, too, publishing a picture story entitled Negative Objektivität, consisting of a series of negative images. It is a Ruge image of a photographer featured on the poster for the seminal Film und Foto exhibition, although his work was not included in that show. Ruge also founded his own picture agency, Fotoaktuell, to distribute his photographs.

     

    Popular Science magazine, October 1931, featuring Willi Ruge’s daring photographic parachute jump
    • Literature

      'Parachute Jumper Photographs Himself While Falling,' Popular Science, October 1931, pp. 44-25 (these prints)
      Ruge, 'Ich fotografiere mich beim Absturz mit dem Fallschirm,' Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, no. 21, 24 May 1931, p. 845
      The Museum of Modern Art, Object:Photo: Modern Photographs: The Thomas Walther Collection, nos. 262 and 265 (other images from the series illustrated on front and rear free endpapers)

    • Catalogue Essay

      The two images offered here are part of a 1931 photo story conceived by photographer Willi Ruge for the popular picture magazine Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung. Ruge, who was a pilot and a certified parachutist, formulated the idea of a photographic essay that would document his own descent from an airplane to the ground in 1931. Ute Eskildsen's account of this photo shoot in her chapter ‘Willi Ruge and Fotoaktuell: Adventures for the Press’ in Object: Photo: Modern Photographs: The Thomas Walther Collection, reveals that it was a carefully choreographed production. Ruge was equipped with a camera and planned to photograph his descent as it happened. A second photographer in another plane, and a third on the ground, ensured that the event would be fully documented from a variety of vantage points. The full series, which was published in BIZ, as well as the Illustrated London News and several American magazines, shows Ruge’s leap from the plane as well as the tense expressions on the faces of the onlookers below. The images offered here document Ruge’s headfirst leap from the airplane captured by a colleague. The second was taken by Ruge at the moment his parachute opened, arresting his freefall. His captions reads, ‘It seemed to me as if some ruffian had suddenly grabbed me up by the collar of my coat and lifted me up: this was the decisive moment, because the pull showed that the parachute had unfolded and its braking begun.’

      These two photographs bear full captions in English, and were licensed by the photographic publisher Underwood & Underwood for reproduction in Popular Science magazine in October of 1931. Even though Ruge was in the business of supplying photographs to the very active picture press of the day, surviving prints of this series are rare. Eskildsen recounts that Ruge’s archive was destroyed during an air raid on Berlin in 1943. With 15 photographs, the Thomas Walther Collection at The Museum of Modern Art has perhaps the largest number of prints from the series, including the images offered here.

      Ruge had made his reputation in the picture press of the 1920s and '30s. Equal parts daredevil and photographer, Ruge increasingly adopted a more experiential approach to his work, essentially putting the viewer in the center of the action. His photographs taken from the seat of a racecar, for instance, deliver a thrilling cocktail of speed and peril. He was an innovator in other ways, too, publishing a picture story entitled Negative Objektivität, consisting of a series of negative images. It is a Ruge image of a photographer featured on the poster for the seminal Film und Foto exhibition, although his work was not included in that show. Ruge also founded his own picture agency, Fotoaktuell, to distribute his photographs.

121

Selected Images of the Berlin Parachute Jump

1931
Two gelatin silver prints.
Each 6 x 8 in. (15.2 x 20.3 cm) or the reverse.
Each with Underwood & Underwood credit stamp and an extensive caption on the verso.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$10,000 - 15,000 

Contact Specialist

Sarah Krueger
Head of Department, Photographs, New York
skrueger@phillips.com


Vanessa Hallett
Worldwide Head of Photographs and Deputy Chairwoman, Americas
vhallett@phillips.com

Photographs

New York Auction 12 October 2022