These are photos from „Das Gesicht des Krieges” (“The face of war”),
the 31st edition of the German Camera Almanac, published in March 1941, in the middle
of World War II. It doesn't say so,
but it appears to have been published by the “Reichsbund deutscher Amateur-Fotografen
e.V.”, a nationwide camera club, and it contains a number of interesting photos and
articles. As the name suggests, the theme was war, but it would be wrong to put it down as
propaganda. Here are some I thought interesting:
These two (and many more) show the real face of war. It's not fun, but of immense
historical interest.
The equipment
It's interesting to note how little has changed in the last 70 years. The photos were taken
either with Leicas
or Contaxes, such as this one (Leitz
didn't have an advertisement in the book):
The films are of kinds that I recall from the 1960s. Agfa Isopan F was still available, and
it still had the same sensitivity: 17/10°, as they wrote at the time, now ISO 17° (40 ISO in
the linear scale), only 1⅓ EV less than most modern cameras.
Other articles in the book discuss colour photography (much in use, but much more difficult
than black and white because of limited dynamic range and lack of soft and hard paper to
print on), stereoscopic (3D) imaging and panoramas. The tools we have now are much better
than they were 70 years ago, but it seems we're not doing anything very new.
