Maria Zinfert
Siegfried Kracauer: The Past‘s Threshold. Essays on Photography

 

ed. Philippe Despoix and Maria Zinfert, translatations by Conor Joyce, (diaphanes) Zürich und Berlin 2014 

 

Siegfried Kracauer (1889 – 1966) was one of the most original intellectuals, evolving from Weimar Republic. Philosopher, novelist, sociologist, historian, and film critic, he was also a pioneering photo-theorist of photography. In this book, Philippe Despoix and Maria Zinfert have, for the first time, assembled essays on photography Kracauer wrote for the Frankfurter Zeitung from 1927 to 1933 along with a contribution to The Magazine of Art written in America where the „eminent émigré intellectual“* spent the last twenty-five years of his life.

With a foreword by Philippe Despoix offering insights into Kracauer’s theory and the historical context. Closing with a Curriculum vitae in pictures, photographs from the Kracauer Estate annotated by Maria Zinfert. Richly illustrated. 130pp

 

Französische Ausgabe: Siegfried Kracauer, Sur le seuil du temps. Essais sur la photographie