70 Years of LFI – the best covers – part 3
70 Years of LFI – the best covers – part 3
September 16, 2019
Issue #5/1974, commented by Hans-Günther von Zydowitz
“As Press and PR officer for the photography department of what was then Ernst Leitz Wetzlar GmbH, I was also responsible for the Leica Professionals Service. In this capacity, at the beginning of the seventies, I had the pleasure and honour of organising a number of visits to Wetzlar for Gunter Sachs. I was also able to accompany him during talks with the art director, Andreas Jaeckel, who was supported in questions of photo technology by Günter Osterloh of the Leica School. At the time, Sachs was known as a lover of beautiful women, and even considered a playboy by some; however, he was also already known as a documentary film maker and patron of the arts – as Hugo Schöttle, Editor-in-Chief of Leica Fotografie, wrote in the introduction to the article Die Mädchen des Gunter Sachs (The Girls of Gunter Sachs) in issue 5/1974.
Gunter Sachs – not least due to time spent studying in Paris as well as encounters with the American, avant-garde Pop Art scene in New York – had developed a very keen eye and taste, that was defined by his interest in contemporary art, design and photography, as his son, Rolf Sachs, himself an artist, acknowleged. Dr. Walter Boje wrote about the “talented photographer of girls” in his text about the images' publication in Leica Fotografie: “His pictures have something absolutely self-evident and unaffected. You can recognise the author's tendency towards an Art Nouveau inspired romanticism.”
In 1974, because of the quality of Gunter Sachs's work, Fritz Gruber, who organised the photo displays at photokina, chose some of his pictures to be presented at the trade fair in an exhibition titled Aspekte der Fotografie, that also included the work of seven other photographers. It should be mentioned that, at the time, it was rather risky to show pictures of young women in all their pleasing naturalness and youthful beauty, both at photokina and in Leica Fotografie – even to the point of having one on the cover shown here.“ (blu)
“As Press and PR officer for the photography department of what was then Ernst Leitz Wetzlar GmbH, I was also responsible for the Leica Professionals Service. In this capacity, at the beginning of the seventies, I had the pleasure and honour of organising a number of visits to Wetzlar for Gunter Sachs. I was also able to accompany him during talks with the art director, Andreas Jaeckel, who was supported in questions of photo technology by Günter Osterloh of the Leica School. At the time, Sachs was known as a lover of beautiful women, and even considered a playboy by some; however, he was also already known as a documentary film maker and patron of the arts – as Hugo Schöttle, Editor-in-Chief of Leica Fotografie, wrote in the introduction to the article Die Mädchen des Gunter Sachs (The Girls of Gunter Sachs) in issue 5/1974.
Gunter Sachs – not least due to time spent studying in Paris as well as encounters with the American, avant-garde Pop Art scene in New York – had developed a very keen eye and taste, that was defined by his interest in contemporary art, design and photography, as his son, Rolf Sachs, himself an artist, acknowleged. Dr. Walter Boje wrote about the “talented photographer of girls” in his text about the images' publication in Leica Fotografie: “His pictures have something absolutely self-evident and unaffected. You can recognise the author's tendency towards an Art Nouveau inspired romanticism.”
In 1974, because of the quality of Gunter Sachs's work, Fritz Gruber, who organised the photo displays at photokina, chose some of his pictures to be presented at the trade fair in an exhibition titled Aspekte der Fotografie, that also included the work of seven other photographers. It should be mentioned that, at the time, it was rather risky to show pictures of young women in all their pleasing naturalness and youthful beauty, both at photokina and in Leica Fotografie – even to the point of having one on the cover shown here.“ (blu)
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