Who is Baron Mario von Bucovich?

Interview with Professor Eckhardt Köhn | photo historian and literary scholar

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Mr. Köhn, back in 2014, you dedicated an issue of your magazine Fotofalle/Edition Luchs to the photo author Mario von Bucovich (1884-1947) and asked the legitimate question: Who was Baron Mario von Bucovich? This year you are advising on the world's first retrospective on Bucovich at the Kunsthalle Mannheim. A long but certainly rewarding path, we've talked about it from time to time.

That is true. A very long, above all an arduous path. Bucovich was considered lost in Mexico for decades, even the date of his death was unknown. Researching there proved to be extremely difficult. But in the end I was rewarded for my efforts, as I was able to find Bucovich's estate in Mexico City and finally acquire it. However, unlike today's photographers, his estate is not a well-organized archive, but a collection of photographs and documents of very different kinds, which have been stored in a damp garage since 1947 and some of which are correspondingly damaged.

You have always pointed out areas and aspects that have hardly or not at all been researched. In this respect, the photographer is an “old acquaintance” for you, in contrast to the broad, interested public, who now have the opportunity to examine his work comprehensively for more than three months thanks to the Mannheim exhibition. What approaches or focal points have proved successful, what new features are there?

My presentation in Fotofalle was based on my own research, which mainly related to his work in the Berlin years between 1925 and 1930, i.e. above all to his “glamor photography” and the two metropolis photo books on Berlin and Paris. With the acquisition of the estate, the material base has been considerably expanded, so that it is now possible to present Bucovich's life and work comprehensively in Mannheim. This includes a series of new focal points. They mainly concern his work in Spain between 1932 and 1934, where he spent a long time on the Balearic Islands. He planned to create a photo book about the culture of Ibiza. This resulted in ethnographically very interesting portraits of the islanders, but also documentary photographs of the local architecture, as it was believed that an “archaic modernity” could be discovered in the functional construction of the white houses. Images of this kind attracted the interest of Catalonian picture magazines at the time, which were trying to catch up with the modern visual language of the Western European design avant-garde. In the current cultural-historical reconstruction of this process, which was of great importance for the formation of Catalan identity, Bucovich has also been mentioned. This is evidenced by several recent articles about him in Barcelona's largest newspaper, La Vanguardia, where our Mannheim project is being followed with great interest.

A second new point concerns Bucovich's work in the USA, where he went in 1936. Not only were his works shown there in numerous exhibitions, but he also began to work as a photojournalist for major American newspapers. In September 1939, The Washington Evening Star sent him to Mexico City to photograph the former Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky, who was living there in exile. For Bucovich, who accepted the assignment, this was a far-reaching decision, as he decided to stay in Mexico.

The Berlin years play a special role for the Ullstein publishing house, whose high-circulation publications Mario von Bucovich supplied with his photographs during his lifetime. Several threads came together here: the contact with writers, editors and publishers, the great success of the Ullstein magazines, the Berlin location. Numerous publications speak of the intensive collaboration with Ullstein's Die Dame, Der Querschnitt, Tempo and Uhu. That's why ullstein bild collection is now able to provide the Kunsthalle Mannheim with important loans. How do you see this cooperation between Ullstein and the photographer?

When Bucovich took over Karl Schenker's renowned Berlin studio in 1925, he was presumably able to draw on numerous contacts in the media scene that Schenker had initiated, whereby those with the picture editors at Ullstein were certainly particularly important. Nevertheless, it is astonishing that Bucovich, ultimately a photographic amateur, succeeded so quickly in building on his predecessor's success in the media. The reason for this must be seen in Bucovich's ability to master the style of moderate, soft-focus art photography that was still predominant in the field of portrait photography at the time. In general, it can be argued that Bucovich, along with Paul Wolff, is probably the author of the most photographs in the illustrated press of the Weimar Republic. He can be seen as an authentic representative of the real visual culture of this era, something that the over-canonization of avant-garde photography has long obscured.

A quote by Bucovich from the Berlin period has been passed down: “I am expensive, I have to be. Because I work with love and spare neither time nor material.” This success story is reflected in his studio, important exhibitions and the widely acclaimed photo book Berlin. In addition to the original edition from 1928, three original photographs from this volume can be found at ullstein bild. What was decisive for these innovations and their success?

At the end of the 1920s, a new type of photo book emerged with a strong visualistic orientation, in which the images no longer functioned merely as illustrations for texts. In the spirit of the urbanism of the time, numerous photo books were published with the aim of capturing the physiognomy of a large city, which reveals itself not only in its sights, but above all in its everyday life. It is remarkable that Bucovich, who had previously worked almost exclusively as a studio photographer, took to the streets, so to speak, and was immediately commissioned to portray the two most important metropolises of the time, Berlin and Paris, for Albertus Verlag's popular series The Face of Cities. The volumes themselves are heterogeneous, typical motifs of urban architecture alternate with those of everyday scenes of street life; stylistically, the rather impressionistic, painterly photographs are followed by those that refer to the visual language of Neues Sehen and its sense of detail. The inclusion of sights and the multilingualism of the captions point to the market and tourists as the target group, while the everyday shots appeal more to a literary interest in seeing the big city anew through photography. There is certainly a thematic correspondence between Bucovich's photo book and Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. It is also fitting that the writer wrote the now often quoted foreword to Bucovich's volume and that there is now hardly an illustrated book about Berlin in the Weimar Republic that does not make use of Bucovich's pictures. It is also worth mentioning in passing that the Paris volume was in the library of both Sigmund Freud and Walter Benjamin, who praised the book highly in an article.

You describe von Bucovich as “an extremely reflective image author”, in what way does this characteristic shape his work?

Bucovich wrote several times about his work, both about the practical problems of his profession and about the genre of the portrait, which he regarded as the highest form of his subject. While many of his colleagues, especially those who counted themselves among the avant-garde, saw themselves more as technicians, Bucovich formulated his position unequivocally: “Photography is an art”, which of course means facing up to the formal demands associated with it. This does not exclude making occasional concessions to the market in order to secure a livelihood. In Bucovich's case, this can be found above all in his photographs taken in Spain and Mexico for the purposes of emerging tourism advertising. Ultimately, however, he had only one conviction, which he expressed in a letter dated September 2, 1945.  It was his faith “in the religion of beauty and perfection” that motivated him to continue despite all adversity.

What significance and what consequences did the time he spent in New York, London, Paris, Spain and Mexico have for Bucovich?

Cities such as Vienna and St. Petersburg are added to the list. But what at first glance appears to be the adventurous life of a conscious nomad of photography turns out, on closer inspection, to be a series of relocations for different reasons. Professional perspectives and personal interests have played a role in each case. There have certainly been numerous successes, but the “adversities” mentioned by Bucovich himself should not be neglected, or in philosophical terms, the constant struggle for recognition. From a psychological point of view, it was an enormous challenge to adapt to the conditions of each new environment, to make contacts and to explore work and publication opportunities. Starting over again and again required enormous entrepreneurial energy, social skills and aesthetic judgment. Bucovich obviously possessed all of these skills throughout his life, an amazing personality, and not just in photographic terms. So there is a lot to discover in the Mannheim exhibition Berlin, Paris and elsewhere.

Thank you very much for this interview, Mr. Köhn!

Questions: Dr. Katrin Bomhoff, ullstein bild collection.

First published on June 05, 2025.

In the gallery you can see a selection of the original photographs from the ullstein bild collection.

The corresponding dossier Mario von Bucovich at Ullstein can be found at ullstein bild.