Erich Salomon. With tail coat and lens through politics and society – Photographs 1928–1938

Erich Salomon (1886–1944) is incontestably one of the most important photographers of the 20th century. During his lifetime, the doctor of law and polyglot gentleman who was accepted by great personalities from the fields of politics, culture and society as one of themselves, was exceptionally successful as a photojournalist.

In 1928, the son of an upper class Jewish Berlin family became famous overnight as a star reporter of the firm Ullstein when his first, secretly taken court reportages became known. Shortly afterwards he took pictures such as had never been seen before of the world of political conferences. Unlike most of his colleagues, Salomon was on friendly terms with several great personalities on the international stage (for example Gustav Stresemann, Aristide Briand and Wilhelm Furtwängler), which enabled him to report on them from an unusually close perspective. The end of this brilliant and work-filled life is therefore all the more incomprehensible: after 1933, Salomon settled in Holland where, following the German invasion, he tried unsuccessfully to hide. In 1944, he and his wife and younger son were murdered in Auschwitz.

The exhibition was curated by Janos Frecot. Realisation in Winterthur: Urs Stahel. A cooperation with the Berlinische Galerie and the Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne.