Platanen, 1947
Gelatin silver print
11 ¾ × 16 inches
Copyright stamp on verso
October 5, 2026
This otherworldly image looks at first like it could be a scene from science fiction, depicting life on some alien plant. Closer inspection reveals that, in fact, we're seeing the growth of dense new foliage on freshly pruned tree branches, which were superimposed and intertwined in a multiple exposure. German cities have historically embraced pollarding—heavy pruning of upper tree branches—on these plane trees (Platanen) that are planted along urban parks and promenades.
This fascinating picture was made by German photographer Siegfried Lauterwasser, and it's an early example of his contribution to the cohort of German experimentalists whose work came to be identified as “subjektive photography”. The movement grew out of the Fotoform collective, which represented a conscious return to the experimental approach and Modernist tradition established by the Bauhaus, which had been stamped out during the second World War. Lauterwasser was among this generation of German photographers who rebelled against an objective conceptualization of photography, and instead sought highly personalized visions like this one, and often pushed their photographic images to near-abstraction.
