CLAASEN, Hermann

About the Cologne photographer, Hermann CLAASEN (1899-1987)

First photographs by Hermann CLAASEN were taken before the First World War. His first income came from photographs of the frozen Rhine in St. Goar. In the 1930s he worked as a portrait and advertising photographer, and from the 1930s he produced his first color photographs. After World War II, he became known especially for his rubble photographs of destroyed Cologne. In addition to his documentation of the destroyed Rhineland, he dealt with current trends in post-war photography, as well as with the developments in modern art that were advancing abroad, and participated in many exhibitions.

Photo books by and about the work of Hermann CLAASEN

'Gesang im Feuerofen. Köln. Überreste einer alten Stadt' (Song in the furnace of fire. Cologne. Remains of an Old City' (1947, 1949); 'Pictures of the Rhine' (1951); 'The End: War Destructions in the Rhineland' (1983);  'Nichts erinnert mehr an Frieden: Bilder einer zerstörten Stadt' (Nothing Remembers Peace: Pictures of a Destroyed City, 1985); 'Zeitzeichen. Stations of Visual Art in North Rhine-Westphalia' (1989); 'Kirmes UKB 1950' (1992); 'Werkverzeichnis' (in five individual volumes, 1993); 'Nie wieder Krieg!: Bilder aus dem zerstörten Köln' (1994, 2000); 'Deutsche Fotografie. Power of a Medium 1870-1970' (1997); 'Experiments' (1997); 'Advertising' (1998); 'Cologne and its Photo Books. 1853-2010' (2010); 'Cologne and the War' (2016).

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