Vintage silver print 17,6 x 12,5 cm (6.9 x 4.9 in)
Photographer’s copyright studio stamp on the reverse

Lothar Rübelt is one of the most important sports photographers of the period between the world wars. An active track and field athlete himself, he turned to photo journalism in 1919. His photographs of the 1936 Olympic Games for the Berliner Illustrierte brought the breakthrough for the Nazi sympathiser and became icons of sports photography. Today, they can be evaluated as documents of their times. Rübelt, who used the Leica’s technical advantages for the dynamic sports studies he created from 1929 onwards, became a guiding light for photo journalism in the late 1920s and 1930s, due to his new visual strategies and his unfamiliar visual language, setting impulses for “photographic modernism”.
The present photograph, taken ca. 1932, shows a dive from a three-meter board. Captured at the moment of highest physical tension, the diver seems completely isolated before a background of sky, floating freely; the only object providing visual support is the diving board visible in the lower right-hand corner. The photograph is part of a rich oeuvre of diving pictures taken by Rübelt throughout his career, which proved to be popular motifs. Marked by variable perspectives, the snapshots capture not only highlights of sporting activity, but also the aura of diving, its association with freedom. Rübelt manages to grasp the aesthetic quality and elegance of movement in flight, which is lost to the eye since the moment of diving itself passes too quickly. The captured moment becomes a symbol of movement.