"Rebecca"
9 Photogravures from a magazine
The German writer, art historian, and publisher Prof. Dr. Julius Zeitler describes Frank Eugene (Smith) in the magazine Die Schönheit (Issue 12, Vol. 16, 1920) as an outstanding artist-photographer who transcends the boundaries of conventional nude representation. Traditional models rarely meet the ideal of artistic freedom, as they are usually marked by shame, social conventions, and a constrained bodily presence. Artists such as Klinger or Hodler therefore had to reshape their models according to their own ideals.
Eugene revolutionized nude photography by not merely depicting models, but by shaping them into living, artistic images through posing, lighting, and composition. Even his Munich works, which showed the same body under different muscle tensions, were highly appreciated by contemporary artists such as Albert von Keller and Fritz August von Kaulbach.
After his appointment to the Leipzig Academy (1911), Eugene shifted his work from the purely nude to the “pictorial.” His models – often not professional nude models – appear completely natural, lively, and free of contrived poses through his technique. He combines painterly sense of form, spatial awareness, mastery of light, and psychological insight, giving each image its own poetry, expressiveness, and harmony.
His nude images are not mere representations but “blooming human bodies”: they combine physical beauty with inner truthfulness, without theatrical exaggeration. Eugene ennobles even imperfect bodies, creates vibrant line rhythms and a poetry of light, achieving a timeless, Greek-inspired ideal. He is therefore far more than a photographer – he is a “body sculptor” who artistically perfects the essence of his models.
(Julius Zeitler)
Text and images in Die Schönheit (issue 12, vol. 16) (PDF German)
S-3004–3012, Front view
