When Peter Bock-Schroeder died in 2001 he left behind a photographic archive of remarkable range and power. An enormous body of work that spans his seven decade career as a world traveling photo journalist it includes more than 6,000 carefully stored negatives and more than 1,000 vintage prints. After itemizing and cataloguing the images, his son Jans Bock-Schroeder, himself a photographer, has spearheaded the family's efforts to keep his father's legacy alive.  Bock-Schroeder By Bock-Schroeder is a unique venture by the late photographer's son and the Peter Bock-Schroeder estate to present his work to the public by framing images captured in the 1930s,'40s, '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s and '90s in a modern context. 

 

To do so, Jans took to the streets of Paris with a select number of his father's pictures and re-photographed them in settings that alternately reflect the composition and themes and moods of the originals and in others comment upon them.

 

A phantasmagoric onion domed Russian cathedral constructed many life times before the birth of the television age and photographed by Peter Bock-Schroeder in Moscow in 1956 was taped to the dead screen of a discarded Bang Olufsen TV set that his son found on a sidewalk in the 12th arrondissement in 2011. 

 

Moscow 1956 by Peter Bock-Schroeder by Jans Bock-Schroeder Paris 2011

 

Another Kruschev-era image of a mother and her three children posing for a snapshot in front of a Moscow landmark is set on an otherwise barren wall below the word  "REPRODUCTION" stenciled in black by a street graffiti artist.

 

Moscow 1956 by Peter Bock-Schroeder by Jans Bock-Schroeder Paris 2011

 

Other such BSBYBS images like one of an indigenous Alaskan woman sitting under a Cold War poster advising civilians how to spot enemy Russian bombers in the skies overhead was re-photographed by Jans who placed it in the middle of a drawing of a 19th-century battlefield strewn with dead bodies that he found on a wall outside a butcher shop, are limned with double and triple layers of irony.

 

Alaska 1959 by Peter Bock-Schroeder by Jans Bock-Schroeder Paris 2011

 

Text by Steve Dougherty

 

Bock-Schroeder By Bock-Schroeder is currently on display at Paris Photo.

10.11.-13.11.2011 Grand Palais, Serge Plantureux-Stand: C52

 

 

 

 

 

 

@Paris Photo 2011, Grand Palais
Serge Plantureux, Stand : C52

In 1956, one year after the peace treaty between Russia and Germany, Peter Bock-Schroeder was the first official photographer to be allowed to work in the USSR. The Assignment came from a West German Film Production. The task was to travel with a international film crew on the production of the documentary: Russia today, We saw with our eyes. The film had been approved by the Soviet authorities. It was made under the same conditions in which all Western journalists in the Soviet Union worked at the time. In almost a year's production, they created the documentary under unimaginable difficulties. Several times the German and the Russian film crews had threatened to cancel the production. After months of hard fought negotiations the German production company and the Moscow Central Documentary Film Studio agreed on the version of the respective authorities and their censorship institutions, although sometimes grudgingly given. The Soviets, who came up for all the expenses of the four western camera groups in the USSR, were granted an extensive veto, control and participation rights. All photographs, text and editing had to be "tuned" with the Soviets. Section three of the contract provided: 'theme of the film is the objective reporting of the USSR, the work of the Soviet people, their everyday lives, their art, recreation and other aspects of social and cultural life."  Most of the discussion focused on the core word "objective."

 

Red Square, Moscow 1956 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

 

It turned out that the support of the Moscow Central Studio was a more of a burden. Especially in the Caucasian republics the escort from the capital were noticeable unwelcome. In the Georgian capital of Tiflis, the head of the Georgian film production - every Soviet Republic had its own film studio - made clear, that he would not lift a finger to support a film under the misleading title of "Russia Today" . "The Soviet Union is not Russia and  Russia not the Soviet Union", he said.

 

Uzbekistan 1956 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

 

Added to that there was the eternal rivalry between the various authorities and organizations. 

In Baku, it required patients and a special ministerial permission, to visit the oil fields. A local trade union committee complained about the fact that the crew photographed a Barack idyll with dirty laundry. 

 

Baku 1956 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

 

When they filmed backyards in Moscow, they were stopped by a Soviet film official. Showing a glossy picture book of Hamburg, he had brought along, he pointed out: "Here, no german backyards are shown in this book, so why do you want to photograph backyards in the Soviet Union? "

 

Moscow 1956 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

 

In spite of the close supervision by a suspicious minder that follow him everywhere, Peter Bock-Schroeder managed to avoid censorship most of the times. The silent click of his Rolleiflex twin lens camera helped him to work almost unnoticed from the authorities. He had travelled the world for almost a decade prior to the Russia job and was used to difficult work circumstances. For the Western cameramen there was a seemingly unbridgeable differences in mentality. Soviet documentaries in the 1950's, exemplary in their graphs, landscapes and wildlife shots, did not include the human experience: Everything in it was directed to propaganda effects. 

 

Stalingrad 1956 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

 

The night before returning to Berlin Bock-Schroeder sewed most of the exposed rolls of film into his trench coat and brought his work out of Russia into the west.

 

When the Film's final version was presented in German Cinemas, in August 1957, it offered the viewer the perspective of a western tourist following the wishes of a Soviet travel agency. 

 

Baku 1956 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

 

In contrast, Peter Bock-Schroeder's photographs captured the authentic and candid view of the USSR in the post Stalin years.

 

Bock-Schroeder developed the rolls of film and kept them for himself. Asked by the West German Secret Service Agency if he had been able to bring uncensored and “interesting” material to the West, he denied having anything of interest. The only reason for him to take the risk of  "smuggling" his work out of the USSR was that he disapproved censorship.

 

Moscow 1956 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

 

© copyright 2011 The Peter Bock-Schroeder Estate, Paris.

The work of Peter Bock-Schroeder is represented exclusively by the PBS-Estate.

 

 

 

Disturbed Landscapes

by Peter Bock-Schroeder 

Here my problem begins, having to find something to say about landscape photography. Geographical pictorials are the pet hate of every editor in chief of every major illustrated current-affairs publication. There is no such thing as a landscape photographer at a magazine. And that is why for me landscape photography is something like a flight from the pictorial feature I am usually told to do. But if it has to be landscape, then at least make it "photo journalist’s landscape," as one of the most accomplished magazine makers used to say. He draws a line at your common, garden-variety landscape photos, which means not only sunsets, moonrises, fields and forests, but every view one might consider "pretty." And yet it is still the best escape for me from my job. I suppose I have to take a few steps back to make that more understandable: Where does my fascination for photography come from and how did I become a photo journalist?

 

Celilo Falls, Portland Oregon 1956 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

 

The advantage I was born with was probably a good eye, which has enabled me to enjoy an excellent photographic career. A little further down the road, a friend of the family, who believed to have discovered a visual talent in me, took me to one of Berlin's most renowned photo studios, Atelier Binder on Kurfürstendamm, run by Frau von Stengel. The tuition fee was 150 Reichsmarks a month, and one could con- sider oneself privileged to be an apprentice in this very well managed studio. That didn't save anyone from having having to take the so-called taste test though, me included. Fortunately I passed. It perhaps deserves mention that the studio had already shaped colleagues with such great names as Erich Balg, Sonja Georgi, Hubs Flöter, Friedrich Aschenbräuch and Jo Niczky. Anyway, in the time that followed I was rotated around the various stations, practicing my skills at retouching negatives, then positives, playing the peek-a-boo clown for children's portraits or even going to buy the bread rolls for the boss. He then recognised that my talent might go further than these responsibilities and advised me to go to a school for photography.

 

Alaska 1959 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

 

“Travel is the best education for a photographer.”

 

So it was that after a few months at Atelier Binder, I registered for the Bräuhaus school in Berlin, where the well known photographer Erich Balg taught. The little technical know how I have, I owe to him. For example, one of his school exercises was to take a photo of Brandenburg gate as no one had ever seen it before, using only a very rudimentary camera. Yes, a new way of seeing something that had already been photographed millions of times. I took my shot of it looking between the legs of the police there, an unusual perspective at the time, and got a good grade.

 

“I was married to my camera”

 

While attending that school I went on a field trip to Holland, where I first discovered my love of landscape photography. I was fascinated by the vastness and cleanliness of the country. Snow-white cloud formations on the blue horizon, children with clogs on their feet, that's how I saw the island of Volendam. It was the first feature I was paid for.

 

Holland 1935 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

 

 

After two years of school my journeyman period began. I went to Sweden, England and Belgium, big trips in pre-war times, and they gave me so much, both for my personal development and for my photography. Travel is the best education for a photographer. I was able to experiment and shoot however I felt like. I had time, there were no "musts", and earning a living wasn't an issue. I was married to my camera, and of my entire career, these wander years were the time I enjoyed the most. The photos I took during those years of travel were my best.

 

Dublin 1956 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

 

But back to the photo journalist’s landscape. The way I see it, you can find this breed of landscape anywhere. It isn't dependent on any given light or season. Squalid old X-street in Dublin is just as much part of the landscape as are the typical "islands-of-green" pics. For me, the pipelines in the desert of Talara in the north of Peru are much more symbolic than the admittedly highly picturesque scenes in the oil city Talar. Of course, on that job I tried to capture the special atmosphere of this hot desert town with its stunningly beautiful Creole women and the lazing Indios that contrasted so wonderfully with the feudal American country club with swimming pool. But nonetheless, those pipelines leading off into eternity still left more of an impression on me.

 

Peru 1952 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

 

“The landscape deserves to be photographed the way it presents itself to us.”

 

For Alaska the commission was to shoot an extensive pictorial about the German emigrants there and the willingness of this north-westernmost point of the American continent to defend itself with military means. A visit to a radar station in Alaska brought considerable difficulties with it. For understandable reasons I was checked over any number of times by various military officials before the permit was issued. But as appealing as the job seemed, just as disappointing was what the place had to offer from an optical point of view. The actual function of this kind of radar station, known as the Green Eye (or was it blue or red?), is quite impossible to capture with a camera. What to do? After convincing myself at first hand that the food and accommodations for these hand-picked soldiers were excellent, if not necessarily my taste, I trotted around the near surroundings, always a little worried I might break one of the rules, and in doing so suddenly discovered a certain angle from which to document the contrast between the endless, barren expanse of the tundra and the ultra- modern military base. This photo shows the isolation and bleakness of the landscape in the midst of which the futuristic military defense facility, which itself doesn't deliver much in the way of visual highlights, stands. The way I see it, this picture epitomises the term "journalist landscape" particularly well. An amateur landscape photographer probably wouldn't think of taking photos of this uninviting scenery, though perhaps a spy might.

 

Alaska 1952 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

 

“The photo journalist’s landscape has to be more than just a pretty picture; it has to make a statement”

 

The same is true of the photo of Mamai Hill near Stalingrad that became so famous in the war. Since Stalin gave the order to completely rebuild the city of Stalingrad in 1945 for reasons of prestige, it was difficult to find anything reminiscent of perhaps the greatest tragedy of World War II in the city. I had expected to find ruins, but despite my best efforts I could only discover buildings in the customary confectionary style. There was an old observatory presented to the city as a gift from East Germany, in which I saw the original Russian film Stalingrad. Deeply stirred by this staggering documentary, I took a taxi straight to the tractor factory that had been so bitterly fought over, and then to Mamai Hill, which had attained the tragic fame of having soaked up the blood of thousands of soldiers from both armies. It is astounding: nothing there reminds you of the huge battle except a tank turret on a stone pedestal and an inscription. For me, that photo is Stalingrad. Sure, there are much more scenic shots you can take of the Volga, but this is the way it appeared to me, a little grey and eerie, because I knew what a significant role it had played in the winter of 42/43 when it was frozen over.

 

Stalingrad 1956 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

 

After returning from Russia I was often asked what it was "really like over there", whether the taxis were old or new, if there were omnibuses and hairdressers, whether there were fashion stores, photo studios, friendly policemen, popsicles and all that, and I tried to answer all these questions to the best of my ability. But there was one question that was posed particularly insistently: What are the Russians like? Are they polite and friendly, charming or gruff, are they open-minded? After thinking about it for some time, I always only came up with one answer: that the human being is shaped by the surroundings in which he lives. And that is particularly true of Russia. For me, the shot of the crowd at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition in Moscow is, as strange as it may sound, a landscape photograph. Just look at the faces. That is Russia the way we imagine it: soldiers, farmers, cities. There's a lot of Khrushchev in those people.

 

Moscow 1956 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

 

“These images harbour absolutely no tendency to be cliched”

 

You don't need special cameras or highly expensive photographic equipment for landscape photography. What counts is the perception, the eye. Nor do you have to travel half way around the world to take landscape photos. A street you see every day of your life and that never seemed to be of any particular interest can suddenly become a fascinating motif if you really look at it closely. Just as tastes have changed in the art of painting over the decades, they have also changed in photography, and especially in landscape photography. I always try to capture something extra in the landscape, because as I said, the photo journalist’s landscape is not willows by the river or beeches in the fog, it is much more a disturbed landscape. Just as the landscape forms the people, and I could cite numerous examples of this, people also put their mark on the landscape. They erect trams and gondolas in the most untouched mountain ranges, they drown entire districts in man-made reservoirs, they destroy the harmony of rolling hills with mines and pit frames, I could go on and on. For us, the engineered landscape has already become an accustomed sight. So we needn't go looking for a little piece of earth free of all traces of human activity, for it is the landscape altered by man that repeatedly gives us something new, that offers us fascinating motifs. Of course there is still the lovely natural landscape. It is the same one we have known for centuries, but it has gained a sterile touch now. The photo journalist’s landscape has to be more than just a pretty picture; it has to make a statement.

 

Peru 1952 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

 

 

Take any city street, which can look very romantic and at the same time very realistic with its oil smears in the early morning sunlight. A forest of television antennas can completely alter the impression of a sleepy small town. These images harbour no tendency to be cliched, as can so easily be the case with floral landscape photography.

 

USSR 1956 by Peter Bock-Schroeder

 

I can't and I don't want to be a teacher for amateur photographers. My personal opinion is: Who "sees" well will also be able to take an appealing landscape photo. That is to say a photo that is not melodramatic but realistic, not cute and playful but uncontrived and honest. The landscape deserves to be photographed the way it presents itself to us.

 

Peter Bock-Schroeder (1913-2001)

 

The work of Peter Bock-Schroeder is represented exclusively by the Peter Bock-Schroeder Estate, Paris. © 2011 The Peter Bock-Schroeder Estate

http://www.bock-schroeder.com