In 1930, a murder took place in Berlin that made many headlines in the German press.
The watchmaker Fritz Ulbrich was murdered by a 16-year-old girl, Lieschen Neumann, in collaboration with her boyfriend, Richard Stolpe, and Ercih Benzinger, a friend of his.
What was initially planned as a robbery ended up being a homicide.
Three months later a trial took place that lasted six days.
Neumann, then four months pregnant, was sentenced to eight years and two months in prison.
Her boyfriend was sentenced to death.
Benzinger would have to spend six years and three months in prison.
'Untitled' (2018). Ronit Porat
'Untitled' (2018). Ronit Porat
'Untitled' (2018). Ronit Porat
'Untitled' (2018). Ronit Porat
'Untitled' (2018). Ronit Porat
'Untitled' (2018). Ronit Porat
'Untitled' (2018). Ronit Porat
'Untitled' (2017). Ronit Porat
'Untitled' (2017). Ronit Porat
'Untitled' (2017). Ronit Porat
'Untitled' (2016). Ronit Porat
Double page of 'Hunting InTime', by Ronit Porat.
Published by Sternthal Books (2023).Geert van Kesteren
Double page of 'Hunting InTime', by Ronit Porat.
Published by Sternthal Books (2023).Geert van Kesteren
Double page of 'Hunting InTime', by Ronit Porat.
Published by Sternthal Books (2023).Geert van Kesteren
Double page of 'Hunting InTime', by Ronit Porat.
Published by Sternthal Books (2023).Geert van Kesteren
Cover of 'Hunting InTime', by Ronit Porat.
Published by Sternthal Books (2023).
Almost a century later, Neumann becomes the protagonist of
Hunting In Time
, the intriguing visual story shaped by Ronit Porat (Israel, 1975) through images that the author has found in different publications and archives.
Appropriate photographs, among which we will find some signed by August Sander, Walker Evans, Ise Bing, Martin Munkacsi, Alphonse Bertillon, Claude Cahun, Batia Suter, Clare Strand and the watchmaker himself, which, subjected to different technical procedures and reorganized, overlooking any chronological or logical intention, they make up a narrative that has as its background the rich and turbulent period between the wars.
Fragmented images that acquire new meanings and open the way to a series of narratives within an atmosphere where you can breathe the tension of a detective plot and the disturbing poetry of surreal fantasy.
An evocative and subversive amalgam of images that the author uses to raise questions that point both to the ambiguity contained in the photographic medium and its function, and to the thin line that separates good from evil.
“Everyone knew it,” warns the phrase that accompanies the portrait of a young woman that opens the story.
Her image will be repeated in different attitudes along with the faces of other women, of nudes, of birds that see everything but cannot speak, of lenses that magnify and different parts of watches intended to measure time, of hands and also of weapons. .
A strange variety of objects that, skillfully framed and chained, give rise to a suggestive plot.
We will soon learn that Ulbritch had converted the back room of his business into a pornographic photography studio.
There were more than 1,500 girls and young women, Neumann among them, who gave free rein to the pedophile and erotomaniac fantasies of the watchmaker, whose life ended dramatically sometime between the night of October 28 and the early morning of October 29, while His country was embarking on a path of political fanaticism and barbarism that would drag the rest of Europe into war.
'Untitled' (2018). Ronit Porat
The book is based on three exhibitions, held between 2016 and 2018, in which the author revisits crime in different ways.
Ronit was born and raised in a kibbutz in northern Israel, “where the sense of community takes precedence over the individual, and where everyone knows everything about everyone,” highlights the artist during a video conference, held from the hotel where she is temporarily staying, after having been evacuated from kibbutz Kfar Galadi due to the war.
The author says that she was in that same town where, some time ago, her family experienced an extremely traumatic experience.
A story that since then the artist has wanted to tell but not directly.
“I couldn't do it with my own photographs and I chose to appropriate others,” she explains.
Hence, the single phrases that are found accompanying the images are associated with the trauma experienced by the author.
In any case, the arrival of digital photography marked a turning point for the artist.
“There were too many images circulating around the world.
It was a good time to stop doing more, even though photography is still my passion.
At the time, I understood that taking photographs was not enough for me, part of the narrative was lost, but it was a good starting point for all my projects,” she warns.
The author investigated the police archives of the time, it was there where she found Neumann's police files.
“These photographs are taken at the moment when the alleged criminals are arrested, but they will become part of the archive even if they are innocent,” notes the artist.
“I have always been interested in the role that the photographic gaze plays in establishing the jump between victim and perpetrator.”
He later learned of the existence of
Fritz Ulbrichs Lebender Marmor
, a book published shortly after the trial and edited by the Vienna Institute for Sexual Research, which brought together photographs taken by the watchmaker, as well as those taken by photojournalist Ernst Vespermann at the scene. of crime.
Censored prior to its publication, the book became a
best-seller
and, although it was extremely difficult to find in bookstores, it was successfully marketed among friends and insiders.
'Untitled' (2017). Ronit Porat
The author will also refer to the use of the Kaisepanorama;
a stereoscopic entertainment mechanism that had several seats located around it from where the viewer looked through a pair of glasses at a series of images that rotated from one person to another.
One of the most famous was in the Kaisergalerie Unter den Linden shopping gallery, where in addition to offering educational tours to visitors, it offered erotic shows.
“It was like going to the movies,” says Porat, “people dressed in their best suits. Sitting next to a stranger they would both have the same visual experience, although not at the same time and while they could breathe in the aroma of the perfume that the stranger gave off. another. I am very interested in that tension that is created between what one sees and what one does not see. In the practice of photography, when you press the shutter there is a moment in which you cannot see anything. We reflect moments that we cannot always see , and this is something that I try to put into practice and reveal when presenting my work.”
Hunting In
Time
resonates with the work of a generation of photographers and artists such as Iya, Madame d'Ora, Germaine Krull, Marianne Breslauer, Anne Marie Schwratzenbac and Hannah Höch, women who did not hesitate to let themselves be carried away by their experimental spirit in order to expand the potential of the photographic medium while “contributing to nude photography going beyond the narrow scope of sexist obsession,” as Ines Weizman points out in the magnificent text included in the publication.
With their androgynous appearance they will challenge traditional roles.
From that broken world that remained after the First World War, some will shape small universes through photomontage.
A spirit that finds echo in the cuts, enlargements, and manipulations that Porat uses where limits and also identities are blurred in order to protect and prevent its protagonists from being labeled again as victims or perpetrators.
As does the image of a flamingo that covers the face of a figure dressed in a suit, who poses for the camera while she holds a cigar in her hands.
The cover presents an image that comes from a magazine of the time dedicated to crime, where a woman shows her naked back marked by an enigmatic circle.
“I couldn't figure out what that mark meant,” explains Porat, “but it seemed to me that it could clearly be used to allude to how easy it can be to mark someone for life.
As in fact often happens today on the networks, with
fake news
or with parallel trials promoted by the media.
“There is a fine line between good and evil.”
As fine as the threads that weave together this constellation of images.
As Weizman warns: “You never examine a single issue in isolation.
From the point of intersection, you begin to unpack, navigate and travel outward along those gathered nodes of knowledge.”
'
Hunting In Time'.
Ronit Porat.
Sternthal Books.
192 pages.
56 euros.
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