Fotothek df ps 0003392 Vasen ^ bauchige Vasen ^ Porzellan ^ Museen ^ Kunstmuseen (cropped)

Richard Peter (10 May 1895 – 3 October 1977) was a German press photographer and

photojournalist Photojournalism is journalism that uses images to tell a news story. It usually only refers to still images, but can also refer to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography (such ...

. He is best known for his photographs of Dresden just after the end of the Second World War.

Life

Richard Peter was born and raised in Klein Jenkwitz, Silesia, where as a teenager he worked as a smith and a

miner A miner is a person who extracts ore, coal, chalk, clay, or other minerals from the earth through mining. There are two senses in which the term is used. In its narrowest sense, a miner is someone who works at the rock face; cutting, blasting, ...

while dabbling in photography. He was drafted into the German army in 1914 to serve in the First World War. After the war he settled in

Halle Halle may refer to: Places Germany * Halle (Saale), also called Halle an der Saale, a city in Saxony-Anhalt ** Halle (region), a former administrative region in Saxony-Anhalt ** Bezirk Halle, a former administrative division of East Germany ** Hall ...

and later in Dresden. He joined the

labor movement The labour movement or labor movement consists of two main wings: the trade union movement (British English) or labor union movement (American English) on the one hand, and the political labour movement on the other. * The trade union movement ...

and the

Communist Party of Germany The Communist Party of Germany (german: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, , KPD ) was a major political party in the Weimar Republic between 1918 and 1933, an underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and a minor party in West German ...

, and during the 1920s and early 1930s his photographs were published in various left-wing publications. Because of this, he was promptly barred from working as a press photographer when the Nazi Party rose to power in 1933. During the Third Reich, he worked in advertising, before being drafted again to serve in the Second World War. Peter returned to Dresden in September 1945 to find the city destroyed after the bombing of Dresden of February 1945. His personal archive and equipment had been completely destroyed in the raids. Starting over with borrowed equipment, he began to document the damage to the city and the beginnings of its reconstruction. His photographs were published in 1949 in a volume called ''Dresden, eine Kamera klagt an'' ("Dresden, a photographic accusation", ). Dresden was in the Soviet occupation zone, and Peter's later life was in the new communist East Germany. In 1949, Peter was expelled from the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany, the successor of the Communist Party, when he investigated corrupt party officials. He continued to work as a freelance art photographer in Dresden until his death in 1977, and eventually won some international recognition for his work. Peter's more than 5,000 negatives and prints were acquired by the Saxon State Library in 1983.

Gallery

File:Fotothek df ps 0000180 Abseilübung am Zirkelstein.jpg, Abseiling at the

Zirkelstein The Zirkelstein is the smallest table hill of Saxon Switzerland, in Germany. It is a wooded, cone-shaped hill with a striking summit block of sandstone rock. Location and area The Zirkelstein is located five kilometres southeast of Bad Schanda ...

File:Fotothek df ps 0000106 Blick vom Turm des Neuen Rathauses.jpg, The ruins of Dresden by Richard Peter File:Fotothek df ps 0001993 Landschaften ^ Hügellandschaften - Gebirgslandschaften.jpg , Zakopane and chairlift File:Fotothek df ps 0005825 Portale ^ Wohnhausportale - Haustüren.jpg ,

Stralsund Stralsund (; Swedish: ''Strålsund''), officially the Hanseatic City of Stralsund (German: ''Hansestadt Stralsund''), is the fifth-largest city in the northeastern German federal state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania after Rostock, Schwerin, Neub ...

in the 20th century

Sources

Deutsches Historisches Museum Berlin
''Richard Peter sen.'' (retrieved 11 February 2005). 1895 births 1977 deaths German communists German Army personnel of World War I German military personnel of World War II Photographers from Dresden German miners People from the Province of Silesia {{Germany-photographer-stub