Hans Watzek, Mountain Landscape 1906

Hans Watzek

Mountain Landscape, 1906

Camera Work XIII

Photogravure, 14.3 x 20 cm

Hans Watzek, was an Austrian photographer born in 1848 in Bílina, Czech Republic and who died in 1903 in Vienna, Austria. Watzek became especially interested in the gum bichromate process and, together with his Camera Club colleagues, Hugo Henneberg and Heinrich Kuhn, in 1897 formed the Cloverleaf or Trifolium group, which specialized in this technique. The process later became very popular with other Pictorialists as it allowed for hand-manipulation of the image and emphasized tonal values, thus creating a photograph which, they believed, clearly reflected the photographer's artistic intent.

The Trifolium exhibited together in several international exhibitions, and their photographs attracted the attention of such leading photographers as the American Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), with whom Kühn, in particular, was to maintain a long association. Stieglitz included their photographs in several issues of his influential journal Camera Work.

While photogravures from gum bichromate prints necessitated rephotographing the print, photogravure was a great medium to translate the soft qualities and tones of the gum process.