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Hedda
Hammer was born at Stuttgart in
December 1908, the elder of two
children.
The family’s life was more
than comfortable,
but for Hedda it was not always
happy: she was small; a polio
epidemic in 1911 – 12 left
her with one leg shorter than
the other and a slight limp; health
problems recurred; and her parents
looked more fondly on a younger
brother. Her limp and the family’s
feelings, while troubling
in her youth, appear to have given
Hedda the resolve – the
determination to overcome –
that blessed her later life. In
her early teenage years a Box
Brownie camera, and later a growing
desire to become a photographer,
engaged
her mind and also her heart.
In 1929 Hedda, against her parent’s
wishes, chose to study photography
at the State Institute for Photography
in Munich, Germany’s oldest
and most rigorous photographic
school. She was an accomplished
student. In particular Hedda took,
from the school of New Realism
photography, an interest in original
ways of |
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This
photograph of Hedda
Hammer was taken by Adolf
Lazi
in Stuttgart about 1931,
when she was working as
a volunteer photographic
assistant in his studio.
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| Collection:
Powerhouse Museum, Sydney,
Australia. Gift of Alastair
Morrison. |
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viewing commonplace objects, thus offering
fresh, exciting visual perspectives
of places
and life.
While many contemporary photographers
were seeking out modern subjects, particularly
scientific or industrial forms, Hammer
sought out the opposite – as seen
in her early photographs. Some of
these were taken while she was apprenticed
to
the Stuttgart photographer Adolf Lazi,
whose demanding standards helped to
refine Hedda’s training. These
images, of pottery making and regional
costumes, show aspects of traditional
life and local cultures. In China,
Hong Kong, and elsewhere across Asia
such subjects were to become her forte.
In the early 1930s documentary photography
was being revitalized and Hammer,
prior to leaving Germany, was no doubt
aware of the some of its leading exponents.
Documentary photographers typically
were guided by direct, reflective
observation; and many were imbued
with sympathy for people living beyond
established society, in some way disadvantaged
or simply different. Hammer probably
also drew inspiration from the lucid,
lyrical documentary realism of Eugene
Atget; and from social portraiture,
with its precise recording of individuals
in their surroundings,so tellingly
presented by the German August Sander. |
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