Why not limit this survey to strict foto reportage, or to those responding to the romances of Karl May?
SL: Native Americans revere story tellers. It will not surprise them to hear that a German storyteller inspired so many German travelers to bring back pictures and thereby preserved these history stories of great value to Native People. It will seem poetry to them…as it seems to me. Gropius, who exerted such an influence on the Bauhaus, regarded photos as news. I am proceeding with that in mind. German photographers have explored the Americas for 160 years, its land, flora, fauna, indigenous cultures, archeological legacies, and its modern times. It is this broad, uncurated brush which combines to weave an American tapestry for those who would know more about their unvarnished history. Were one, for instance, to limit the scope to those who were directly inspired by Karl May’s Winnetou after the mid 1870s, you would leave out the Germans photographers here before 1875, those who were seeking the natural man of Goethe and the interconnectedness of von Humboldt. You would see only the
SL: Native Americans revere story tellers. It will not surprise them to hear that a German storyteller inspired so many German travelers to bring back pictures and thereby preserved these history stories of great value to Native People. It will seem poetry to them…as it seems to me. Gropius, who exerted such an influence on the Bauhaus, regarded photos as news. I am proceeding with that in mind. German photographers have explored the Americas for 160 years, its land, flora, fauna, indigenous cultures, archeological legacies, and its modern times. It is this broad, uncurated brush which combines to weave an American tapestry for those who would know more about their unvarnished history. Were one, for instance, to limit the scope to those who were directly inspired by Karl May’s Winnetou after the mid 1870s, you would leave out the Germans photographers here before 1875, those who were seeking the natural man of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the global interconnectedness of Alexander
