Heinz (Heinrich Josef Anton Alois) von Perckhammer (1895–1965) was a Tyrolean photographer best known for his Chinese nudes and Beijing street scenes.
Life
Perckhammer was born in
Merano
Merano (, , ) or Meran () is a city and ''comune'' in South Tyrol, northern Italy. Generally best known for its spa resorts, it is located within a basin, surrounded by mountains standing up to above sea level, at the entrance to the Passeier V ...
, Austria-Hungary (now Italy) on 3 March 1895. In the First World War he served aboard the
SMS Kaiserin Elisabeth during the
Siege of Tsingtao
The siege of Tsingtao (or Tsingtau) was the attack on the German port of Tsingtao (now Qingdao) in China during World War I by Japan and the United Kingdom. The siege was waged against Imperial Germany between 27 August and 7 November 1914. Th ...
and from 1917 to 1919 was a Japanese prisoner of war. He remained in China for several years after his release. In 1928 two volumes of his photographs were published in Berlin: one of carefully posed Chinese nudes, many taken in Macao brothels, under the title ''Edle nacktheit in China'' (The Culture of the Nude in China), and one of Beijing
street photography
Street photography (also sometimes called candid photography) is photography conducted for art or enquiry that features unmediated chance encounters and random incidents within public places. Although there is a difference between street and ca ...
, as ''Peking''. In 1929 he accompanied the airship
LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin
LZ 127 ''Graf Zeppelin'' () was a German passenger-carrying, hydrogen-filled rigid airship that flew from 1928 to 1937. It offered the first commercial transatlantic passenger flight service. Named after the German airship pioneer Ferdinan ...
on its round-the-world tour, as a photojournalist for the Berlin illustrated weekly ''
Die Woche
''Die Woche'' (, "The Week") was an illustrated weekly newspaper published in Berlin from 1899 to 1944. It reported on popular entertainment, including "sensationalist crime stories", and covered celebrities in sports and show business. Its publish ...
''.
By 1932 Perckhammer had established a studio in Berlin, where his work included nudes and fashion photography. In the late 1930s some of his images were used as propaganda for the
Strength Through Joy
NC Gemeinschaft (KdF; ) was a German state-operated leisure organization in Nazi Germany.Richard Grunberger, ''The 12-Year Reich'', p. 197, It was part of the German Labour Front (german: link=no, Deutsche Arbeitsfront), the national labour org ...
movement,
and during the Second World War he served as a war photographer attached to the
Waffen-SS
The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscripts from both occup ...
. His studio in Berlin was bombed out in 1942, and after the war he returned to Merano. He died, aged 69, on 3 February 1965.
Sources
External links
*Patrick Boehler
Shaman dancers, coolies and suffragettes: rare photos of 1900s Beijing discovered from Austrian archive ''
South China Morning Post
The ''South China Morning Post'' (''SCMP''), with its Sunday edition, the ''Sunday Morning Post'', is a Hong Kong-based English-language newspaper owned by Alibaba Group. Founded in 1903 by Tse Tsan-tai and Alfred Cunningham, it has remained ...
'', 12 September 2014.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Perckhammer, Heinz Von
Austrian photographers
Photography in China
1895 births
1965 deaths
People from Merano