What Germans Wanted

As many professionally produced photographs outlive their short-term use, they are absorbed into the history of artistic photography. This lavishly illustrated book brings back to life the fashions, lifestyles, aesthetic concepts, and socially significant events from the last three decades of German commercial photography. Freed of their topical context, the pictures are impressive in terms of their superb design quality, and transcend their original function as fashion, advertising, or news photographs to reflect the desires, fantasies, and values that defined the new consumer culture in post-war Germany. They are drawn from various genres, such as architecture, industry, fashion, beauty, food, journalism, reportage, still life, portraiture, transportation, travel and landscape, and reconstruct a fascinating chapter in the history of photography in Germany. The BFF Bund Freischaffender Foto-Designer was founded in 1969 as a professional association. Today it comprises 500 exclusively freelance photographers and art school teachers, and is one of Europe's most respected photographers' associations.