Pictures of a Factory For CEO’s Only Foto Industria Bologna 2013 Kurt Blum Company Photography

BLUM, Kurt: Pictures of a Factory, 1959

BLUM, Kurt, Pictures of a Factory. / Photographs by Kurt BLUM. Text by Michele Parrella. Cover by Eugenio Carmi. – Zürich: Fretz & Wasmuth 1959. – 28,5 x 23,0 cm. [16] S. Text, [104] S. mit 101 Tiefdruck-Abb., Beiblatt «List of illustrations». Halbleinenband illustriert. Ohne Schutzumschlag erschienen. 

Blum was the subject of a 2012 retrospective at the Swiss Foundation for Photography . Immagine di una fabbrica is included in 802 Photo Books. A selection from the M+M. Auer collection "Kurt Blum (1922-2005), who was born in Berne, was one of the outstanding Swiss photographers of the post-war era. In addition to numerous stories for illustrated magazines, as of the 1950s he also did free artistic and experimental works which were presented to a wider public in exhibitions and publications. The focal points of his oeuvre were the artists’ portraits he took as of the late 1940s, larger work groups on the themes of dance and opera, and an intense involvement through photography and film with the world of industry and labor. Blum always regarded himself as an artist, however, and strove for photography to be recognized as an independent art medium. Above and beyond the documentary aspect, he sought subjective expressiveness, the atmospherically dense moment, the consciously composed photographic print. Blum thus belonged to the avant-garde of Swiss photography, so it is not surprising that he also played a role in the 'subjective photography' circle around Otto Steinert in Germany in the early 1950s....Kurt Blum worked for large industrial companies in northern Italy, leading in 1959 to the book Pictures of a factory (German title Lebendiger Stahl, 1960), in which he presented an almost infernal image of a steel works, sparks flying, by means of black-and-white photographs rich in contrasts"--Swiss Foundation for Photography 

For CEO’s Only is a selection of international company photobooks from the private collection of professional photographer Bart Sorgedrager, based in Amsterdam. Research assistant Clara Jankowski (MA Master Photographic Studies, Leiden University) has compiled a bibliography and captions for this particular selection of company photobooks and is presented in the exhibition as FOR CEO’S ONLY (alluding to the title of a company photobook by Richard Avedon for M&A Group in New York).