The Significance of Landscape in Postwar Austrian Private Photography

Abstract

How could the beauty of landscape be better described than by means of photography? Based on this (naïve) assumption, landscape photographs have always been very popular with both professional photographers and amateurs. This article deals with the significance of landscape in Austrian private photographs mainly from the 1950s and 1960s, and with the correlation between private and public pictorial culture concerning the representations of landscape. Private landscape photography was strongly influenced by the aesthetics of the so called Heimatfotografie. Furthermore, both private photography and Heimatfotografie contributed to making landscape a national lieu de mémoire.