On the Photographic Practice of Lili and Siegfried Kracauer

The originator of the photographic portraits of Siegfried Kracauer taken from the late 1920s onward, portraits which have been unpublished to this point, is his wife Lili Kracauer. This finding, established through an extensive inspection of the photographic and supplementary material in the estate, allows for the interpretation of these photographs as achievements of a collaborative photographic practice the self-taught photographer and the critic of photographic media shared for decades. Following Kracauer's thoughts on the aging and afterlife of photographs and thus acknowledging the significant change of meaning they undergo with the passing of time, a failed portrait of Kracauer is examined for meanings that arise from today's point of view. Each respective shot is seen as valuable testimony to the said photographic practice and analyzed in its significance as a picture in its own right. By comparison with a series of other portraits in the estate, these portraits prove to be typical yet unique, invalid yet emblematic

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