Dr. Paul Wolff

de Paul Wolff, Hans-Michael Koetzle

Around 1930, the trained physician and self-taught photographer Dr. Paul Wolff (1887-1951) was among the most successful German photographers. He positioned himself at an early stage as a pioneer of the Leica and achieved international renown through his highly-regarded guidebooks. Together with his business partner Alfred Tritschler, Wolff satisfied the pictorial desires of his time: from architecture photography to advertising and illustration, from reportage to propaganda. Up to the end of the war, Dr. Paul Wolff & Tritschler was a brand with its seat in Frankfurt am Main and set standards in the then still young field of industrial photography. The first comprehensive book on Wolff and Tritschler recapitulates the work and careers of both photographers against the backdrop of a politically, socially, and artistically turbulent period and thus closes a gap in the discourse on photography in the 1920s to 1940s.