Heinz Hajek-Halke (German, 1898-1983)

Heinz Hajek-Halke was born in Berlin in 1898 but grew up in Argentina. In 1915, soon after having returned to Germany, he began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin. His education was interrupted a year later when he was drafted to serve as a soldier in World War I. He was able, however, to return to his studies and graduated in 1923. Hajek-Halke began working with photography in 1924 and was soon hired by the news agency Press-Photo. He experimented with photographic techniques such as light montages, double exposures, photo-collages and photo-montages. In 1933, Hajek-Halke was required by the NSDAP to falsify documentary film but soon after suceeded in escaping the grip of the Nazi party. He subsequently moved to Lake Constance in Switzerland where he focused on scientific photography and biology. In 1937, Hajek-Halke travelled to Brazil where he produced a documentary about a snake farm. Upon his return to Germany in 1939 he was conscripted by the German army and worked as an aerial and company photographer for the Dornier aircraft enterprises. In the last year of the war, he found himself imprisoned in France, but was able to flee soon thereafter. After World War II, he rejoined the emerging experimental photographic community in Germany, the Fotoform group. In the 1950s, his work was included in several key shows of experimental photography, such as Otto Steinert’s Subjektive Photographie exhibitions and the 1954 Photokina show in Cologne. He became a photography professor, and an active member of the German photography community, publishing his book on photogram techniques, Lichtgraphik. At this time, Hajek-Halke renewed his early interests in the cameraless photogram and in creating photographic abstractions by means of a wide variety of darkroom techniques he had mastered before the War. 

Image on the right: Heinz Hajek-Halke, Self-Portrait, 1948

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