Everyday pictures from the West: Aunt Inges Fotoschatz

When Aunt Inge visited her relatives, she always had a camera with her. A simple, affordable camera from the mail order catalog, very inconspicuous. Her nephew Karsten Loh remembers that after such meetings she sent letters with one or two pictures: nice family photos, where he and his sisters stood bravely in front of a bush and laughed into the lens. Only late did he find out which unimaginable dimensions her hobby had really taken on.

When the old lady had to move to a nursing home with over 90 years, she had an urgent request: "Karsten should take care of my photos!" What the illustrator then discovered in her house in Goldbach near Aschaffenburg, took his breath away: in cabinets and drawers were heaps of accurately labeled albums and bags with pictures that his aunt had snapped in the course of her long life. Nobody had ever seen this private treasure until then.

Ingeborg Loh's photos depict a piece of everyday history of the Federal Republic. They are not masterpieces of the art of light art, on the contrary completely unaffected, spontaneous, direct. And that is exactly what makes their charm. There are snapshots full of situational comedy that arose on their doorstep or on vacation trips. A color photograph from 1970 shows her brother Eberhard, for example, who proudly holds a stretched umbrella over his bonnet and with self-irony.

photo gallery

26 pictures

Six years later, she started a late night camera with a good friend who had just had a birthday. He and a buddy look rather melancholy despite the happy occasion, probably after extensive alcohol consumption. And on a Christmas coffee table, two lonely goblins watch over a half-eaten cake.

Aunt Inge's second life

Of the total of about 30,000 negatives and prints, some already moldy, Karsten Loh was able to save and catalog well 16,000. "We knew that Aunt Inge had been photographing since she was a teenager, but nobody could imagine that she was so talented and had to constantly press the trigger in her entire life," he says. "Before us, she always kept this passion a secret."

Ingeborg Loh, born 1926 near Wuppertal, was considered by her family to be especially correct and responsible. Early on she had learned to stand on her own. As chief secretary in an industrial group, she earned her own living, had herself built a house in Lower Franconia and brought her parents to her. Three deeper relationships with men went to pieces, she never married and remained childless.

Archive Karsten Loh

Aunt Inge in Egypt (1993): The camera was always at hand

When sorting the pictures, Karsten Loh discovered completely new pages on his aunt. Celebrating with her friends, she seemed a lot happier and happier than her family had ever known.

In the eighties, she once took two women who had fun at the party game "Wandering Salt Bar": one bites off a piece of the snack and has to pass it on with her mouth without using her hands. Ingeborg probably did Loh herself with her snapshot in the box. On the last evening of her vacation in the South of France in 1989, she scoffed at three women who were fooling around and demonstrating lingerie.

Great echo on Instagram

The amateur photographer had a keen sense for the curiosity in everyday life and another great passion - traveling. On the wall behind her office desk hung a large map of the world. By bus, in the "rolling hotel", the adventurous woman drove with like-minded people through countries like Norway, Egypt, South Africa and Argentina. In Canada, where part of the family lives, she silently shot the picture of a man photographing a train from behind. Karsten Loh's cousin Susan was watched from the side as she snapped a dog.

Even in old age, Ingeborg Loh visited the magnolia grove in Aschaffenburg, well known far beyond the region, to photograph the blossom. "That was her way of holding on to life around her and leaving a personal mark" - perhaps she did not want to talk about her hobby in order not to lose her spontaneity, says Karsten Loh. Among her numerous books, he has not found a single volume on photography.

Karsten Loh describes her as a "spectacular photographer for not being a photographer". Only one recording was published in 1992 in the local newspaper. Then you see a cow on a pasture in the Upper Allgäu, whose flank adorns the brand "AB" - it is also the license plate of Aschenburg.

When Karsten Loh published the snapshots on social networks in 2018, the big echo surprised him. In the first three days, tens of thousands of users watched the photos on Twitter and on Instagram. "I told her how many strangers love her pictures, and she smiled happily," he says. "She did not quite understand it."

Aunt Inge died earlier this year, but she remains alive on the internet. As before, people who accidentally came to the photo and thus become part of this story are still reporting.