Gertrudes Altschul and Modernist Photography at the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante
During the rule of Brazilian dictator Getúlio Vargas (from 1930 to 1945) and the subsequent democratic period, the city of São Paulo saw a dramatic rise in artistic production and architectural development. One significant expression of this was the September–October 1953 cover of the publication Foto Cine Boletim (FCB) that featured Lines and Tones, a photograph by the German-born Brazilian photographer Gertrudes Altschul (1904–1962). Inspired by São Paulo’s ongoing vertical growth, Altschul contrasted the wavy lines and acute angles found in modernist Brazilian architecture, offering the viewer an opportunity to imagine the experience of encountering an array of architectural styles typical of downtown São Paulo.
Depicting new buildings was a common motif in midcentury Brazilian photography. In November 1951, Foto Cine Boletim published works by Eduardo Ayrosa, Marcel Giró, and Kazuo Kawahara that also contrasted curves and straight lines in architecture against an empty sky (above). Altschul expanded this vision in Lines and Tones, framing the cloudless sky with three distinct structures, allowing their forms to overlap and the viewer to experience them as a visual canopy. Currently, Lines and Tones hangs among nine other Altschul prints in The Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction. This exhibition highlights the accomplishments of both renowned and unknown women artists in MoMA’s collection and suggests alternatives to male-dominated narratives of midcentury artistic practice.
Gertrudes Altschul’s achievement was notable in São Paulo’s expanding modern-photography circles, which centered around the activities of the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante (FCCB), its monthly publication (Foto Cine Boletim), and its annual international salons.[1] The FCCB — which had emerged from weekly meetings of amateur photographers — was founded in 1939 and succeeded in nurturing a passion for photography across a wide network of Paulistas (São Paulo residents) who worked professionally as lawyers, doctors, accountants, or entrepreneurs (like Altschul, who, with her husband, made artificial flowers for millinery). Over a decade after fleeing Nazi persecution and settling permanently in São Paulo in 1941, Altschul became an active member of the FCCB in 1952 and its 1,008th member. Many FCCB members were recent immigrants or the children of immigrants, often hailing from Eastern and Southern Europe and Japan. Together, they compiled a variety of global aesthetic experiences that they infused into their reflections on São Paulo’s changing scenery.
Drawing inspiration from the interwar abstract photography of László Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, and others, FCCB members created non-referential images inspired by technological developments and urban growth. They employed techniques such as photomontage, photograms, and solarization, adapting them to their own reality: the development of São Paulo — which until the 1930s was more of a pastoral city — and the influx of immigrants that was transforming Brazilian identity. FCCB members’ fascination with abstraction during the postwar period resonated with similar movements in Germany and the US during this period — including Otto Steinert’s Subjective Photography — which they knew through exhibitions and publications.
Equipped with a 35mm camera, Altschul joined a small group of women artists at the FCCB whose work in technique and composition rivaled that of the dominant male contingent. Barbara Mors, for example, participated in FCCB activities from its earliest days; she was one of the only Brazilian women who contributed to the January 1949 salon and participated in the club’s activities. Some of the photographers’ wives joined their husbands as FCCB members: Menha Polacow, wife of Foto Cine Boletim editor Jacob Polacow, participated in several seminars whose discussions were transcribed in the Boletim, and the work of Maria Cecilia Agostinelli (wife of Julio Agostinelli) was featured in the February 1950 “Photographs of the Month” section (above, right).
Altschul fell ill in the late 1950s and, starting in 1957, her participation at the FCCB began to wane. Following her death in 1962, Foto Cine Boletim published an obituary that was accompanied by a reproduction of her photograph Filigree. The publication had first featured this work in April–June 1953, and in the subsequent decade either she or the Boletim staff decided to reverse its orientation. The earlier reproduction appeared in the same issue as an extensive article about photograms, and one suspects the editors may have enjoyed the association of this method with Altschul’s work, which — although seemingly made from a negative — delicately transcribes light penetrating the veins of a magnificent papaya leaf against a plain background.[2] A common Brazilian plant, the papaya suggests Altschul’s commitment to producing a photographic language steeped in Brazil’s socio-cultural environments. In their tribute to Altschul, the Foto Cine Boletim editors wrote that they considered Filigree one of the artist’s best works, one that exemplified her brief but incredibly rich career.
Full video of the In Black and White: Photography, Race, and the Modern Impulse in Brazil at Midcentury conference (May 3, 2017, The Graduate Center, CUNY) is also available online.
All translations are by the author. Deepest thanks to Sarah Meister for her invaluable insight, and to Isabel Amado and Paula Kupfer for their help with accessing archival materials.
[1] For an extensive history of the FCCB, see Helouise Costa and Renato Rodrigues, A fotografia moderna no Brasil (São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2004).
[2] Paula Kupfer, “Gertrudes Altschul and the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante: Modern Photography and Femininity in 1950s São Paulo,” MA thesis, Hunter College, CUNY, 2016, 67.
