The Volkskorper Photographs of Erich Retzlaff 1929-1945

This chapter explores the photography of Erich Retzlaff (1899-1993) from a metaphysical and physiognomic premise. Retzlaff was a German photographer who has become at best a footnote in all the varied histories of photography due largely to the approbation he received from Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist government. This general neglect is unfortunate as Retzlaff's work is highly significant in relation to his experiments with the innovative Agfa colour films of the 1930s, his studio portraits and his ambitious ideological catalogue of the German working classes (and agricultural workers in particular) that he made between the two world wars. By examining Retzlaff’s own photographic works, the paper assesses Retzlaff’s use of photography to physiognomically deliniate the notion of Volkskörper, that is, the visualisation of the National Socialist folk-community.