Alfred Ehrhardt: Das Watt

By Alfred Ehrhardt 

"...an island of tranquil beauty in a cultural sea that was becoming increasingly barbaric." —Martin Parr, The Photobook

The reprint of the book Das Watt (The Tidelands) from 1937, as an exclusive facsimile edition by Éditions Xavier Barral...is an ode to nature and a masterpiece of book art." —BINT, Photobooks

Alfred Ehrhardt (1901–1984) taught at the Bauhaus between 1928 and 1933 alongside scenographer Oskar Schlemmer and painters Josef Albers and Wassily Kandinsky. Accused of Bolshevism in 1933 by the Nazis, Erhardt was forced to leave the Bauhaus. At that time he was working in painting, drawing and printmaking, but his exile precipitated a turn toward photography and film, of which the fundamentals he taught himself.

In 1934, after leaving Germany, Ehrhardt produced his first photographic reportage—a series of spare, enigmatic images taken on the windswept sand dunes of the Curonian Spit along the Lithuanian-Russian border. This gorgeously produced book presents his works from that time. Strongly influenced by his years of modernist training at the Bauhaus, Ehrhardt’s photographs focus on the clear geometric patterns abundant in this seaside wilderness. Maritime landscapes, shells, corals and crystals offered a plethora of subjects from which Ehrhardt could produce stark, stylized compositions.

Hardcover
96 pages
Text in German, French, and English
Editions Xavier Barral, 2014
0.8 x 10 x 12 inches
ISBN 9782365110266
Landscape Photography, Experimental Photography, Bauhaus