Otto Arnold: Von Siegen aus – Fotografische Streifzüge durch Kulturlandschaft und Arbeitswelt

Otto Arnold - Photo pioneer from the Siegerland region

In 1905, Otto Arnold (1881-1944) came to Siegen as a teacher, where he later became headmaster of the Nordschule and the Sieghütter Hauptschule. In the mid-1920s, he bought a Zeiss-Ikon plate camera and began his extensive photographic documentation of the Siegerland region. On numerous excursions, on foot, by bus or train, with family or friends, with colleagues as well as with his school classes, he was intensively on the trail of the connections between landscape and work. His photos tell of the Haubergswirtschaft, a sustainable form of communal forest management, tanning, charcoal burning, work in mines and smelters, in industry and home labour in textile production. He was driven by an educational goal, as he used the photographs for his slide projections in class to illustrate regional life to his pupils. Today, his photo archive paints a unique picture of the changing Siegerland region in the 1920s and 1930s. Otto Arnold's work was analysed and exhibited for the first time by his daughter-in-law and grandson in the 1980s. 40 years later, the 2024 exhibition on the occasion of Siegen's 800th anniversary will once again focus on Otto Arnold's view of the people, architecture and landscape and their connections with traditional and industrial work processes. The texts for the book "Von Siegen aus - Photographische Streifzüge durch Kulturlandschaft und Arbeitswelt" have been compiled and edited by Eva Schmidt, including Dieter Pfau, historian of the Siegerland region, who explores Otto Arnold's motifs, and Joseph Imorde, Professor of Art History at the Weißensee Art Academy in Berlin, who writes about Arnold's series of pictures and about the medium of photography in teaching in the 1920s and 1930s, by Gabriele Conrath-Scholl, head of the Photographic Collection/SK Foundation Cologne, who ventures a comparison between Otto Arnold and contemporaries such as August Sander, and by the editor, who talks to Detlev Arnold about the history of his grandfather's archive.

Exhibition:
Municipal Gallery Haus Seel, Siegen, 11/7 - 25/8/2024