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About German photographer, Otto Maximilian UMBEHR / UMBO (*1902 in Düsseldorf)
"UMBO - this name has been synonymous with a kind of 'big bang' of modern photography in the mid-1920s at least since the retrospective of this artist organized by Herbert Molderings in 1995: UMBO, born as the second of ten children of a civil engineer and a teacher, is regarded as the inventor of the image of the 'New Woman', the new image of the street, the photographic reportage par excellence. His name stands for the youthful departure of the Wandervögel from the Wilhelminian era to the early Bauhaus, for a rapidly developing film, music, theater and cabaret scene in the media metropolis of Berlin in the 1920s, which was mainly inspired by Eastern European immigrants, as well as for views into the backyards and kitchens of overflowing tenements. Thanks to the impetus he received from his Bauhaus teacher Johannes Itten and his artist friend Paul CITROEN, the self-doubting young artist became famous as a photographer almost overnight and took part in all the important avant-garde exhibitions of his time. His attempts to reconnect with his earlier existence as a photographer of the avant-garde in the economic miracle of post-war West Germany failed, but in the 1970s his expressive early and then neo-objective work was rediscovered, so that in 1979, shortly before his death, he had his first solo exhibition in a museum context." (slightly adapted publisher's text, © Snoeck, 2019)
Photo books about the work of Otto Maximilan UMBEHR / UMBO
'Photographien 1925 - 1933' (1979); 'Vom Bauhaus zum Bildjournalismus' (1995); 'Otto Umbehr 1902-1980.' (1995); 'Photographer' (2019)