3 Vintage silver prints, each mounted on original cardboard
German troopers an der Save, Dalmatia 1943-44 29,7 x 19,8 cm (11.7 x 7.8 in) Annotated in an unidentified hand in pencil on the reverse
Soldiers of the Wehrmacht, Winter battle, USSR 1942 16,5 x 22,5 cm (6.5 x 8.9 in) Photographer’s stamp on the reverse, numbered in pencil on the reverse
Soldiers of the Wehrmacht under a camouflage net, USSR 1941-43 16,7 x 22,7 cm (6.6 x 9 in) “Mil. u. pol. nicht zensiert” stamp on the reverse, numbered in pencil on the reverse

Having begun his professional life as a press photographer, Walter Henisch experienced the high point of his career as a war reporter and propaganda photographer of the German Wehrmacht. He photographed the most important war scenes in Poland, Russia and Germany, among others. Especially his images of the Russian campaign and the war in the Balkans – which include the three vintage prints created between 1941 and 1944 – were widely reproduced in the contemporary press.
His son, Peter Henisch, based an insightful novel on his father’s life story, dealing with his father’s work for the Nazi regime, but also his relationship with the ruling system. Henisch himself always insisted on his neutral attitude as a photo reporter, no matter who commissioned his work – claiming he took photographs without judging, interested only in good pictures, not in events themselves. He was a war photographer par excellence, always suspended masterfully within the field of tension between being a direct witness of the horrors of war and his role as a supposedly invisible observer, always ready to shoot a picture at the right moment. This is obvious in the present images too: The silhouettes of three riders in backlit twilight, shadowed against dramatic banks of clouds, the angle of the light creating a pathetic atmosphere. Unlike the two USSR pictures, Henisch’s Balkan photograph is not presented as a documentary image shot in the midst of battle; instead, it presents a mythical, atmospheric image. All three images are dominated by a dramaturgy oriented towards composition, but also toward content – borne aloft by the interplay of clouds and light, and by the immediacy of the war.