untitled

multiple bromoil transfer print

Rudolf Sulke was an Austrian amateur photographer and the son of wealthy parents. After taking early retirement at the age of 47, he devoted himself exclusively to photography. On numerous journeys through Austria and Italy, he took photographs with preferably idyllic motifs, which he endowed with blur by processing the prints almost exclusively in the bromine oil process - as in this work by multiple reprinting. After the Second World War, he ended his photographic activities, but continued to mount exhibitions of his earlier photographs. Sulke is one of the Austrian photographers who practiced and propagated the pictorialist manner of the turn of the century for the longest time. Pictorialism was a photographic style that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in Europe and North America. It was characterized by an emphasis on the aesthetic qualities of photography, such as composition, tonality, and texture, and a rejection of the purely documentary approach. The goal of pictorialism was to elevate photography to the level of fine art; photographs were to be as expressive and beautiful as paintings or sculptures.
(Christoph Fuchs)