Karl Spiess
Toronto. The late Karl Spiess of Germany took many photographs in war torn Europe during the second world war (WW2). Newz4u.ca recently announced that the Stephen Bulger Gallery here in Toronto in a recent article would feature his photographs.
The article says in part, “On April 14th the famed Stephen Bulger Gallery will be launching the Canadian book Karl Spiess 1891-1945: A Saxon Light Artist and His Photographs by Dietmar Riemann and published by Carl Spiess. The original German book was released in Germany last year dedicated to ‘the women and men who lost their lives without legal advice in Soviet-Russian internment camps in the east of Germany.’”
The book and the Gallery have a selection of prints from period glass plate negatives taken by Karl Spiess about 80-90 years ago. The Karl Spiess book site linked above states in part, “The last works of German Photographer Karl Spiess were to be disposed of in a dump in East Germany.
“220 of his glass negatives were saved by photographers Dietmar and Marga Riemann. The negatives demonstrate his skill as a photographer and capture a moment of time long forgotten.
“There is now a complete book outlining his life as a photographer and citizen of Germany in the 1920s to 1945. We look forward to eventually sharing the negatives with a Canadian archive that will continue to preserve and contextualize these important images.”
